Diary of a Young Girl

This piece originally appeared in Folkways Press "Right to Life" Anthology, published in April 2024. Learn more or purchase a copy here.

[Writer’s note: Some of the italicized phrases in this piece were taken from The Diary of Anne Frank.]

I.

Dear Kitty,

It began the way it always begins: An open book

the pages blank, a gift. How we thrill at the possibility,

Anne Frank and I, twins separated by five decades

confessing our newly teenage dramas.

Only I am still here. Unhidden, alive.

She spent 761 days in the attic,

quietly  scratching away at the shifting

voices, the fears jutting up, her dreams

swelling like a prayer over her narrow shoulders.

I think of my grandmother: her name is Olga.

Imprisoned in the same concentration camps

at the same time: Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Sinister on the tongue, their names

an infection that won’t die.

II.

Dear Kitty,

Can I tell you a secret?

I play a game, where I pretend

Anne and Olga

become friends. Dark-eyed and nameless,

they find each other somehow

in the gray sea of broken

women. They could almost be sisters.

It’s an impossibility that exists

somewhere in the realm of possible. 

Olga Jakabovitz is 25, a decade older

than Annalise Frank. But both love books;

both adore their fathers; both are tethered

by dreams too heavy for this place, still cradling

the frail hope that people are really good at heart.

Even here, even now.

They have no common language. They are from different

countries. But what does that matter, in this endless death

factory? You don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty

that still remains. You remember:

You are still human.

You hold onto this.

You don’t let go.

III.

Dear Kitty,

This is how it goes:

At night in the barracks,

Olga tells Anne stories of make believe. They huddle

together for warmth and memory, imagining

themselves children in some dystopian Hansel

 and Gretel nightmare that they can survive

if they push the Nazis into their own ovens.

They almost laugh at the absurd accuracy

And then they do—soundlessly, hands-over-mouths,

gasping, their frail bodies aching from effort.

Unsure if it’s joy or grief or something else,

eyes closed to blot out the dead rolling up

in great waves of smoke.

IV.

Dear Kitty,

In Bergen-Belsen it is February, and bitterly cold.

The girls are so thirsty they want to drink sewage.

If only they knew the British were on their way,

the Russians closing in—soon they will be liberated.

It is fifty years later, and I am 13,

holding onto this truth, willing Anne to know it—

to survive. 

The whole world is waiting, and many are waiting

for death, she writes. I want to erase it,

as though she won’t die inside

the black letters of her own words.

Anne. Annalise. Annaleh,

Olga calls softly,

her name, their names, any name

an act of defiance, a refusal

to be some forgettable number.

Erased.

Just hold on, Olga whispers in every language she knows:

Hungarian. Romanian. Yiddish. German. English. 

Don’t let go.

V.

Dear Kitty,

It is 1995, and I’ve sung my haftorah.

I am chosen, exulted; it is my bat-mitzvah.

I wear a black-and-white dress. I know that I am beautiful.

I know that I am a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.

Someone lets me sip champagne. I dance shoeless,

until I can no longer feel my swollen feet.

Everything glows.

My grandmother watches me from a solitary corner,

alone at the table, her food untouched. Still she smiles,

an extraordinary thing, like the moon in daylight.

I watch as light swells around her in an embrace, like wings

closing over and over. The numbers on her forearm

bleed into one another with age.

Never again.

And again

and again and again.

VI.

Dear Kitty,

I am 25 and living in Europe, my boots hollow

on the silent cobblestone streets of a Jewish Quarter

empty of Jews. I hear it chanted like an incantation,

like the mournful sounds of davening, an echo of a question:

Live or Die, Live or Die…

It floats above my dark hair like a crown. As though

there are only two options. I know it before I hear it.

A voice breaking a silent window in protest:

Just hold on.

I stand at the edge of Charles Bridge,

considering the Vltava River. It is black and cold

and ancient. Lovers leave locks hooked to its sides,

an act of devotion. A promise.

I had to find a reason, my grandmother tells me. 

I had to find something to live for.

I walk away from the bridge alone. O, shooting star….

I am hoping I will be able to confide in you

as I have never been able to confide in anyone.