The Answer to a Question
The journey to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was a brutal one, but for a moment, the first few days were deceptively peaceful. The prisoners, exhausted beyond measure, “slept a lot.” But this was a cruel illusion. The camp’s true nature was soon revealed by a relentless rain that left them shivering and unable to find warmth.
As the weather worsened, so did their living conditions. Heavy storms tore through the camp, ripping apart the tents and leaving them exposed to the elements. They were herded into a shed, a dark, filthy space filled with “rags an old shoes and other things like that.” It was a place designed to strip them of their dignity.
It was in this moment that Anne Frank, a girl who had once lived in the quiet safety of a secret room, asked a question that spoke to the heart of their suffering: “Why do they want us to live like animals?”
Her question was a desperate attempt to find meaning in a senseless cruelty. But her friend, Jannie Brilleslijper, had an answer that was as brutal as it was honest: “Because they are man-eating wild animals themselves.”
This conversation, recalled by Jannie’s sister Lien, reveals the raw, unfiltered reality of their existence. It shows two girls, stripped of everything but their humanity, trying to make sense of a world that had abandoned them. Anne’s question was a cry for dignity, and Jannie’s answer was a stark, unsparing truth. Their story in Bergen-Belsen is a testament to the fact that even in the most dehumanizing of places, the human spirit continues to question, to mourn, and to search for answers.