4 The Secret annexe

Chapter 4 The secret annexe Five months later, Anne was lying in bed. staring up at her bedroom wall. She had covered it with photographs of her family and her pictures of movie stars to make it seem more like home.

"It's amazing," Anne was thinking. "There are eight people all living in this tiny space." A week after the Franks moved in, the van Pelses had come to join them. "Mr. van Pels tells terrible jokes and Mrs. van Pels is always scolding me," Anne grumbled to herself. "It's a shame their son. Peter, is so dull. But it's good to have other people around. If only I didn't have to share a room with the exasperating Mr. Pfeffer.." As Anne turned, her bed made a loud creaking noise. "Shh, shh," muttered Pfeffer, from his side of the narrow room. Anne clenched her fists. "Next time he shushes me," she thought, "I'm going to shush him right back. But I know I mustn't moan... I must be reasonable." Fritz Pfeffer had arrived in November, four months after the Franks. The van Pelses had immediately presented him with a Guide to the Secret Annexe. Fritz needed to learn the rules of the annexe quickly, so he didn't put everyone in hiding at risk.

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As soon as Pfeffer arrived, everyone pelted him with questions about the outside world. "Things are getting worse for the Jews," he told them. "Night after night, the Nazis cruise the streets. They break into people's houses, looking for Jews in hiding. Anyone found is taken away to the camp at Westerbork." There was silence after that. Miep had told them about Westerbork. The people there hardly got anything to eat. And the camps in Poland were even more terrible. The radio said Jews were being gassed there. "Perhaps that's the quickest way to die," thought Anne. "It's so quiet here and we're safe, at least for now. I should be grateful. We're the lucky ones." But it was hard to be grateful all the time. Being cooped up all day meant arguments broke out frequently, and Anne hated having to tiptoe around each day, keeping her voice to a whisper. "I long to be able to move around freely again," she confided to her diary. She was terrified, too, that they'd be discovered and shot.

As the war dragged on, things seemed to be getting worse. News reports on the radio told of battles being fought in Africa, Russia, Italy... "The whole world is at war," Anne wrote in her diary. "And the end is nowhere in sight." When Anne peeked out from behind the curtains now, the children on the streets looked ragged and starving. As the months

passed, food became scarcer and scarcer. It was only the efforts of their helpers that kept the members of the annexe alive. Every day, Miep went out on her bicycle to find food for them all, often queuing for hours just to get a loaf of bread, while Bep smuggled in milk from the office supply. And every Saturday, Miep brought five books from the library. "You have no idea how we long for Saturdays," Anne told Miep. "Books mean everything when you're cooped up. We couldn't do without your visits, either," she added. Anne knew that the office staff risked their lives to help them. For the sake of their helpers, and for the others in hiding, Anne tried to stay cheerful and brave. But at times she felt as if her personality were splitting in two. When she was with the others she laughed and joked and chatted away. Only when she was on her own, writing her diary, did she feel free to reveal her serious side. Sometimes she would flood her diary with her despair.