The Longing for an End
On May 26, 1944, as her two-year ordeal in the Secret Annex dragged on, Anne Frank wrote an entry that revealed the immense psychological toll of her confinement. She asked herself a question that was at once terrifying and profoundly honest: “whether it wouldn’t have been better if we hadn’t gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn’t have to go through this misery.” The constant anxiety and the burden she felt for her helpers and family were almost too much to bear.
Yet, even in her deepest despair, Anne found a way to hold on. “But we all shrink from this thought,” she wrote. “We still love life, we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for… everything.” This is the voice of a girl who, despite everything, still clung to a fierce love for life itself. She found hope not in a specific outcome, but in the sheer act of hoping.
The entry ends with a desperate plea for a resolution. She longed for something to happen, even “an air raid,” because “nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety.” She was so consumed by the fear of the unknown that she was willing to face “the end,” no matter how cruel, just to know “whether we are to be the victors or the vanquished.”
This diary entry is a powerful testament to the fact that the suffering of the people in the Secret Annex was not just physical, but also profoundly emotional. It shows us that Anne Frank, in all her vulnerability and strength, was a girl who, in a world of endless waiting, longed for a future, any future, where she could finally be free.