I’ve reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can’t do anything to change events anyway. I’ll just let matters take their course and concentrate on studying and hope that everything will be all right in the end.

Anne writes this excerpt after recounting the endless conversations she hears about the war, from worries about bombs to more mundane subjects such as their food supply. She writes that she doesn’t concern herself with these things and that she doesn’t care if she lives or dies, which seems like something any melodramatic teenager might write. Yet Anne’s situation is far from ordinary. At this point, Anne has had to live for years with the fact that she could be caught at any moment, and she seems to have made peace with her situation.

That night I really thought I was going to die. I waited for the police and I was ready for death, like a soldier on a battlefield. I’d gladly have given my life for my country.

Here, Anne recounts a night when the people in the Annex heard someone enter the building and thought the Gestapo had found them. They’d experienced scares like that before, but Anne describes how close to death she felt in those moments. Rather than talk about how scared she felt, here she admits that she feels ready for death at any point as getting caught and killed has been hanging over her head for years.

Previous section Family Next section June 12, 1942–June 24, 1942

Popular pages: The Diary of Anne Frank

Take a Study Break