These may seem like small matters, but when people are confined within a small space, they get on one another’s nerves so much more easily and for smaller causes. It is Anne’s father who is always the “peacemaker” in the “Secret Annexe,” the one who always has to assume the responsibility for “pouring oil on troubled waters” and soothing ruffled feelings.
In fact, Anne’s father does his best to keep the younger members of the group busy, assigning them study tasks to do and ensuring that there is a constant supply of books for them to read as well. They all follow events in the outside world on a clandestine radio, and Anne struggles valiantly with French lessons. She also quarrels with her mother and complains to her diary that she cannot understand her mother and that her mother cannot understand her. Anne also resents the interference of the other members of the group. To illustrate this, Anne quotes a “squabble” with Mrs. Van Daan during dinner one night, ending with Mrs. Van Daan’s saying to Anne’s father, “I wouldn’t put up with it if Anne were my daughter.” According to Anne, these always seem to be Mrs. Van Daan’s first and last words: “if Anne were my daughter.” Understandably Anne confides to her diary, “Thank heavens I’m not!” (September 27, 1942).
Anne suffers a great deal from the constant criticism of the other members of the group in hiding; she is confused herself and unable to understand fully the emotional suffering and horrible fears of both her own family and the Van Daans. In particular, though, Anne feels that her mother is not defending her sufficiently, and Anne resents the fact that she has always to keep so very quiet and restrain her adolescent impulse to “sass people back.”
Anne also gives us a fairly detailed description of the washing and lavatory arrangements, which are far from ideal. Again, the stress in her relations with her family is not easy. Clearly, she feels a greater affinity with her father than with her mother, and it appears that there are various “scenes” and quarrels because of what her mother perceives as Anne’s faults and failings. As always, Mr. Frank attempts to improve the situation and asks Anne to be more helpful in the house, but Anne stubbornly declines, preferring to concentrate her efforts on her schoolwork.
The war news filtering in from the outside is bad, and the little group in hiding hears that many of their Jewish friends have been taken away, crowded into cattle trucks and sent off to concentration camps, first in Holland, and then farther east, into Poland. Anne asks herself, “If it is as bad as this in Holland, whatever will it be like in the distant and barbarous regions they are sent to? We assume that most of them are murdered. The English radio speaks of their being gassed” (October 9, 1942).
An admirable attempt is made to celebrate the birthdays of the little group, and everyone tries to procure a little gift through the people in the office, who constitute their only link with the outside world. Generally, these gifts consist of items of food, but also they occasionally include such “luxuries” as flowers and books—things we take for granted, but which were precious for the little group in the “Secret Annexe.”
Anne’s relations with her family continue to fluctuate. On October 16, 1942, she writes, “Mummy, Margot, and I are as thick as thieves again. It’s really much better,” and then she describes how she and Margot squeezed together into bed, letting one another read parts of their diaries—and also, girl-like, discussing their “looks.”
Then on November 7, Anne writes: “Mummy is frightfully irritable and that always seems to herald unpleasantness for me. Is it just a chance that Daddy and Mummy never rebuke Margot and that they always drop on me for everything?”
Clearly, the situation of being in hiding in the midst of a busy city produces many hours of extreme fear and tension—especially for an adolescent girl. When a workman comes to fill the fire extinguishers in the house, his noises terrify the unsuspecting, frightened little group, and they fear that their hiding place has been discovered. Anne writes: “My hand still shakes, although it’s two hours since we had the shock” (October 20, 1942).
