Anne Frank and the Children of the Holocaust by Carol Ann Lee

Author:Carol Ann Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

It was seven thirty in the morning, on June 12, 1929, when Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt’s city hospital. Her birth had been long and difficult, and the nurses were so tired they accidentally wrote in the hospital register that the eight-and-one-quarter-pound baby was “a male child”! Within a few hours of her birth, Anne had had her first photograph taken by her proud father, and was given a necklace with a Hebrew inscription on one side, and her birth date and the words “Lucky Charm, Frankfurt” on the other. Mrs. Frank kept baby books for both her daughters, and in the one for Anne, she wrote: “Mother and Margot visit the baby sister on June 14. Margot is completely delighted. Home on June 24. At night for six weeks she cries a lot. Julius and Walter [Anne’s uncles from Aachen] arrive by car on July 6. Anne is suffering from the heat wave.”

The baby’s first smile, when she was just a month old, was for her father. Anne soon became a real daddy’s girl, while Margot favored her mother more. Mr. Frank was a good father and, unusually for that time—when men didn’t generally play a very active role in their children’s early lives—he played with his daughters, bathed them, fed them, changed their diapers, and told them stories before they went to sleep each night. Mrs. Frank took care of her children during the day, but when Mr. Frank came home from work, he liked to spend as much time with them as possible.

In August of 1929, the family traveled to Aachen for a holiday with Mrs. Frank’s family, and little Anne cried all the way. In Aachen, she settled down, and Mrs. Frank wrote in the baby book that Anne was happy if someone, especially her uncle Julius, came into her room in the mornings. Mrs. Frank added, “Anne does so many silly things. We return home on September 3. Anne sleeps all the way.” These baby books tell us how different Anne and Margot were as children. Margot was always very quiet, well behaved, and neat (Kathi called her “the little princess”), while Anne slept badly, cried a lot, and was often quite disobedient. This pattern continued as the two of them grew older. Mr. and Mrs. Frank always held Margot up as an example to Anne, who found this very frustrating and annoying. When they were very young, Margot and Anne were both popular girls who loved fun and games, although Anne liked to get into mischief. One morning, when Anne was a toddler, Kathi found her sitting on the balcony in the rain, in the middle of a puddle. She was giggling, and even when Kathi picked her up and scolded her, she didn’t cry, but asked if Kathi would tell her a story—while she, Anne, went back to her puddle!

Anne liked to have her own way and said things that she really shouldn’t. But she was such a lively, affectionate, and

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