A yellow star, marching footsteps, and two words

“HEIL HITLER”

A greeting to bring a smile to one's face or tears to their eyes,

now a custom within a corrupted society.

One Jewish girl and one diary to hold her truest emotions saw nothing of the sort.

She feels tolerance towards society in dark times.

The workers clocked in to find that Mr. Frank was not there.

The Franks “left Amsterdam” as it was said written on a note in their kitchen.

While they may have never left Amstardam they were now nowhere to be found.

They were in hiding, unnoticeable, forgotten.

Banished to a world of silence,

a world with no fresh air, food or freedom 

just an attic and the stale air that they have breathed over and over again. 

In and out forever in silence.

But there was hope and patience and tolerance

for a girl nobody seemed to notice.

The rough pages of the diary are the only thing keeping her tied to the life she had.

Two years told by one book, two years of hiding.

Flip through the pages retelling the life of a girl who longs for the ecstatic joy she sees in the kids out the window, in the grass, the kids who are seemingly in another world. 

The pages tell the story of a girl who lived in corruption but feels tolerance.

empty.

No food in their stomach, 

no sound of voices,

no music to be heard, 

nothing left to feel.

One rule: don’t alert the workers.

 You can’t hear each step she takes because any sound could alert the workers,

No taste of food because it is now a memory she can barely remember,

Her thoughts are no longer original because there is nothing left to think.

Still in the hard times there was a thirteen year old girl forced to stay quiet and she showed tolerance and did as told.

Now you can go to the attic and see the dilapidated rooms. 

No longer a place of residence, the attic sits there waiting. 

the attic is waiting for Anne; the only person to ever appreciate it.

The attic was like Annes sun in a world which deemed her darkness.

Anne retreated to the light because even if it wasn’t perfect 

it was the only place to call home. 

and so Anne, a girl as useful as a rat to a society filled with corruption, 

had tolerance because she knew there was good to be found.

I will bear witness by seeing the good in life just as Anne once did.

I will find tolerance when the world feels corrupted 

because Anne wanted to find the good in everyone even when they did see it in her.

I will feel the breeze, look up at the trees, and touch the grass just because I can.

locked up in my house I feel safe but I know in the attic Anne felt everything but. 

By knowing this I can value going outside and doing things that she dreamed of.

I can tell her story,

and reflect on how she may have felt in times of misery and suffering

and even though I will never be able to relate I can feel

I can imagine what it would feel like to be in a place just like her anex, 

I can imagine what it would feel like to be captured,

I can imagine what it would feel like to be trapped in a life that I can’t live freely,

and I can remember that through hardship

I can find tolerance within myself for a corrupted world.