A Goodbye Written in Secret
On September 25, 1942, in the quiet of the Secret Annex, Anne Frank penned a letter to her best friend, Jacqueline van Maarsen. It was a letter she could never send, a final farewell written in the pages of her diary. Her words are a mix of love and regret, a quiet confession of the secret she had to keep.
Anne explained the mystery behind her sudden disappearance. When Jacqueline called on Sunday, Anne couldn’t say anything. The whole house was in a state of chaos, and she had been instructed by her mother to remain silent. The front door was locked, and a family was preparing to vanish. Anne’s letter is a way to finally tell her friend the truth. “I am writing this letter in order to bid you good-bye,” she wrote. “Fate has decreed that I must leave /…/ with my family, for reason you will know.”
The letter is a beautiful, heartbreaking testament to the friendship she cherished. She explained that she couldn’t write to everyone, which is why she was writing to Jacqueline—a sign of how special their bond was. Her hope for the future is fragile but present. “I hope we’ll meet again soon,” she wrote, with the sad realization that it “probably won’t be before the end of the war.”
This diary entry is a powerful piece of her story. It shows her as a loyal friend, burdened by a terrible secret, who still found a way to say goodbye. The letter, a silent farewell, became a monument to a friendship that was tragically cut short, a symbol of the millions of relationships that were torn apart by the war.
