Boat Builders

REMEMBER

BOAT BUILDERS By: Melissa B. Carrasco

Egerton, McAfee, Armistead & Davis, P.C.

On the Jewish calendar, Tisha B’Av is an annual day of fasting. It is named for the ninth day (Tisha) of the month of Av, and it commemorates the destruction of the First Temple and the Second Temple in Jerusalem—destruction that occurred on the same day, 655 years apart.1 It marks the end of a three-week period of mourning and introspection following the 17th of Tammuz, the day the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem in 70 AD.2

It occurs in either July or August, and in 1942, it was commemorated on July 22nd and 23rd,3 one month after young Anne turned thirteen. Thirteen is a hard year for everyone. Everything is a confusing contradiction: your body, your brain, your hormones, your emotions, your crush, your best friend, your worst enemy, the list goes on and on. But, summers are the best . . . and the worst . . . because, while school has its own issues, at least it provides the certainty of a routine. Summertime is the transition period within the transition period.

Anne turned thirteen in the middle of a difficult summer. A few years earlier, her family had relocated from Frankfurt to Amsterdam, and Anne found herself trying to make new friends and find a way to fit into a new culture while trying to learn a new language. It was hard to fit in, but it was about to get worse. When she was twelve, she was required to change schools, from the public school she was attending to a school for Jewish children.

Anne had no way of knowing that, on August 2, 1941—which happened to be Tish B’Av that year, SS Commander Heinrich Himmler formally received approval to implement “The Final Solution.” All Anne knew was that, in Amsterdam 1941, being Jewish meant being methodically and deliberately pushed to the margins of society, unable to participate for no reason other than your heritage.4

But, when Anne turned thirteen in 1942, her parents did what most parents try to do—shield their children from the ugliness around them. Her mom made cookies for Anne to take to school, and she made a strawberry pie for the family to share at home. Her parents decorated the house in flowers and took her to pick out her birthday present, a small, red and white autograph book with a tiny lock—the perfect place for a thirteen-year-old to keep her most secret thoughts, feelings, and observations about the terrifying world around her.5

A month later, Anne’s older sister, Margot, was summoned to a Nazi work camp. Anne and her family went into hiding.

For the next two years and thirty-five days, Anne, Margot, their parents Otto and Edith, and four other people lived in a tiny, concealed space in the house behind Otto’s office. For the next two years and thirty-five days, Anne could not see the sky, feel the warmth of the sun or move about during the day lest she be discovered by the employees who worked just a few inches away on the other side of the concealed entrance. For the next two years and thirty-five days, Anne dreamed of wearing lipstick, going to school, and seeing women dance about in beautiful dresses. Anne’s dreams made their way into that little, red and white autograph book which became Anne’s diary, her story of her days spent in hiding.6

Anne also wrote about what she could see and hear, what she experienced while she was in hiding. In the spring of 1944, Anne and her family heard a radio broadcast by Radio Oranje, the exiled Dutch government, calling to people to keep a record of what they were experiencing. These eye-witness accounts would be used to expose the crimes of the German occupation and help bring its perpetrators to justice. Anne took this message to heart and began rewriting her diary, focusing less on her private thoughts and feelings and more on the stories of the daily life of a family in hiding.7

On June 6, 1944, Anne and her family heard that the U.S. armed forces had landed in Normandy and were starting the deadly fight to take back Europe.8 Freedom was so close that they could almost taste it. On July 30, 1944, the family observed Tisha B’Av, then, on August 1, 1944, Anne wrote her last entry in the notebook she was now using since the little diary was quite full after two years. Here last words were about living in a state of contradiction, and she ended with “As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two.”9

Three days later, someone betrayed them to the Nazi officials, and the entire Frank family was arrested and sent to Auschwitz.10 Then, as the Allied troops were closing in, Anne and her sister were transferred to Bergen-Belsen where they died only weeks before Allied troops liberated the camp in the spring of 1945.11 Anne and Margot were two of the more than fifty thousand people who died at Bergen-Belsen. Over thirteen thousand more would die in the following weeks because they were too sick to recover.12

Anne Frank may have died, but her words survived. After the arrests, Anne’s diary and notebooks were found by Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, two Dutch citizens who helped the Frank family survive during their two years in hiding, who smuggled them to Anne’s father, Otto, the only member of the family who survived the concentration camps.13

This year, Tisha B’Av was commemorated on July 17th and July 18th. Today, it is a day of remembering Anne Frank and the 6,000,000 other victims of the Holocaust. But, it is also a day of remembering that nothing—not even the worst circumstances—can stop a person determined to make a difference. As Anne would write, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world,”14. . . because boat builders build boats and memory-keepers last forever.

1 Hebcal, Tish’a B’Av 2021, https://www.hebcal.com/holidays/tisha-bav-2021, last visited July 9, 2021. 2 Rabbi Shraga Simmons, What are Tisha B’Av & the Three Weeks?, https://www. aish.com/h/9av/oal/96779149.html?s=lb, last visited July 9, 2021. 3 Hebcal, Tish’a B’Av 1942, https://www.hebcal.com/holidays/tisha-bav-1942, last visited July 9, 2021. 4 Michael Berenbaum, Britannica, Anne Frank, https://www.britannica.com/ biography/Anne-Frank last visited July 8, 2021. 5 Zoe Waxman, Oxford Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies, 12 Things You Need to Know about Anne Frank and Her Diary, HistoryExtra (Mar. 9, 2020), https://www. historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/facts-anne-frank-diary-when-founddied-amsterdam-hiding-how-long/#:~:text=Anne%20Frank%20received%20 her%20diary%20as%20a%2013th%20birthday%20present&text=This%20 birthday%2C%20on%20Friday%2012,with%20her%20friends%20at%20school, last visited July 8, 2021. 6 Id. 7 Id. 8 Id. 9 International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Anne Frank’s Last Diary Entry (Aug. 1, 2017), https://www.ifcj.org/news/fellowship-blog/anne-frank-s-last-diaryentry-2, last visited July 9, 2021. 10 Berenbaum, supra n. 4. 11 Id. 12 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Bergen-Belsen, https://encyclopedia. ushmm.org/content/en/article/bergen-belsen, last visited July 9, 2021. 13 Anne Frank House, The Complete Works of Anne Frank, https://www.annefrank. org/en/anne-frank/diary/complete-works-anne-frank/#:~:text=How%20was%20 the%20diary%20preserved,a%20drawer%20of%20her%20desk., last visited July 9, 2021. 14 Anne Frank, Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short

Stories, Fables, and Lesser Known Writings (2003).