this month, a 15-year-old girl and her sister died of typhus just weeks before their concentration camp was liberated by the British. The exact date is unknown, but it is estimated to have been sometime in early March. The girl was, of course, Anne Frank, the famous Holocaust diarist, whose family hid in a secret part of an office building for just over two years with the help of Dutch Gentiles before being arrested by the Germans for the crime of being Jewish.
If she had lived, Anne would be 80 years old today, probably someone's grandmother. Instead her life was cut short by hate, but her voice continues to teach new generations about the importance of tolerance. Who knows what impact she might have had on others had she lived, but the truth is that in her martyrdom, she impacted millions.
And so for Anne, and her sister Margot, their mother, and the millions of others, Jews and non-Jews alike, who died at the hands of the Nazis, I say, I will remember you. I will recognise that each of you had a unique life that was cut short by the actions of others. Rest in peace.
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