Read Annexed for Free Online Page B

kestrel?"
    "What?"
    But he doesn't answer. He's looking out at the sky, over the rooftops at the horizon and all the way to the sea. He's looking at it like he wonders sometimes, too, if it's all really still there.
    "They're full of hate, Peter! So full of it that they turn it into hating us—into hating anything that's different—and then they try to kill it. They're trying to wipe us out: country by country, city by city, like pestilence. But one day, someday, maybe even after we've all gone, they'll have to look at themselves—and the hate will still be there. What then? I
wonder. But until then..." He breathes out. Shakes his head. "This is nothing new. Our job is not to fight, not now. Our job is to survive it. Especially the young. Especially you. How else will the world know what's happened? If youth goes, where is our future?"
    I step back. I've never heard him rant like this. He's a bit frightening.
    "Stay alive. That's your job, Peter. There will be others out there, fighting."
    "Jews?" I ask.
    He smiles. "Of course!" he says. "What? Do you think there are none of us resisting?"
    "I don't know," I whisper.
    "Well, even by the law of averages it's probable that there are, wouldn't you say?"
    I shrug. "I don't know."
    "No," he says quietly, "we can't know, Peter. We can't know. But we can believe."
    "Believe what? That God will save us?"
    "Well, that would be a help, yes—but is there only blind faith to save us? Isn't there something else that we can do, even cooped up in here?"
    "I don't know," I whisper, because I don't. They are so clever, the Franks, it's hard to know what they mean sometimes.
    Mr. Frank sighs. "We have to try, Peter. We have to try and believe that
our
love can be greater than
their
hate."
    "You want me to
love
them! But I
hate
them. I hate them. If I could I'd..."
    He holds up his hand. "No, of course I don't want you to love them. What they're doing is ... is ... evil, but if you hate back, Peter, then will you be any better than them?"
    "It doesn't feel right," is all I can say. And it doesn't. "I
want
the people who did this to suffer. I want them to die. I wish I was ... I wish I was fighting them instead of stuck in here just..." I stop. I don't want to sound ungrateful to be here, but Mr. Frank just smiles.
    "At your age, I'd rather have been fighting too. We need to fight them. They leave us no other choice."
    "But you said we had to
love
them!"
    "No! I said that you mustn't let their hate become
your
hate."
    "I just want them to die!"
    "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," he says, sighing.
    "Yes!" I say.
    He puts his hand on my shoulder. "And when we're all blind and toothless, what then, Peter?"
    "I don't know," I mutter.
    I hate Mr. Frank sometimes.
    "And hating them is so much easier than not knowing why they hate us, isn't it?" he asks, gently.
    I nod, because it's true. It is.
    I wonder aloud what terrible thing it is that they avoid by hating us all so much. Mr. Frank mutters, "Yes, sometimes I wonder just what terrible thing it must be!" And then he turns and walks out of the room, still muttering, until he gets to the steps, where he turns and smiles at me. "Don't forget to do that English homework, Peter!"
    That's Mr. Frank!
Otto Frank. Even in Auschwitz he was himself. "They can't kill our dreams, Peter," he said.
    But he's wrong, because we all have the same dreams here. We all grind our teeth as we dream of food. Food that our teeth could bite on. Food that our bodies could grow on.
    I always have the same dream: of garden peas, still green and fresh and a little hard. They're poached in Mutti's chicken stock with just a little lettuce. In my dream it's spring and she brings a great steaming tureen of them to the table—more than I could possibly ever eat. I raise the spoon to my lips. I breathe in the smell, relish the color, my mouth waters at the taste to come. I put the spoon to my lips, open my mouth and close it ... on nothing.
    My bunkmate