368
PARTISAN REVIEW
than I have in months. Even after the break-in I didn't feel so utterly broken, in–
side and out. On the one hand, there's the news about Mr. van Hoeven, the
Jewish question (which is discussed in detail by everyone in the house), the inva–
sion (which is so long in coming), the awful food, the tension, the miserable
atmosphere, my disappointment in Peter. On the other hand .. .
And she goes on to write about what Miep has been telling her about her
own life outside. On June 6, 1944, she writes at length about D-Day,
putting down every bit of infonnation she heard over the clandestine ra–
dio. She ends:
Oh, Kitty, the best part about the invasion is that I have the feeling that friends
are on the way. Those terrible Germans have oppressed and threatened us for so
long that the thought of friends and salvation means everything to us! Now it's
not just the Jews, but Holland and
all
of occupied Europe. Maybe, Margot [her
sister] says, I can even go back to school in October or September.
Anne made her last (and very long) entry on August 1, 1944. Three
days later, Miep found the diary after the Franks and the van Daans were
taken away - having been betrayed by one of the workers in the shop.
After the war, she gave it to Otto Frank, Anne's father, the only survivor
of the attic's eight inhabitants.
Victor Klemperer was born in 1881 and died in 1960. He managed
to survive the Holocaust, thanks to his courageous, non-Jewish wife, Eva.
In the first entry of this diary, in January 1933, he already notes the politi–
cal polarization at the university of Dresden, where he was permitted to
continue lecturing (mostly pro fonna) until the middle of 1934. He kept
his diary, which he calls his heroics, in order to bear witness. It is a bril–
liant, unique chronicle of everyday life under the Nazis. Historians agree
that such an authentic document is more reliable than any reconstruction
of the period, because it does away with the biases even the best memoirs
and historical inquiries inevitably contain. He writes:
I note a catchword. On the following day it seems unimportant, overtaken in fact
and feeling. But the changing details of everyday life are after
all
the most im–
portant." [my translation]
