LI: To write a description of life with the Frank family in the annex in 1942

By 1942, the world outside had turned into a nightmare. We lived under the thumb of German decrees, trapped by a hatred we couldn’t escape. The rules were simple and deadly: if we were caught out past 8:00 PM, it was over—either a one-way trip to a camp or a bullet on the spot. We had one choice: vanish into the Annex or face the end.

Most families didn’t have a choice, but we did. I watched as Anne’s father, Otto, transformed a simple bookcase into a gateway to our hidden world. Inside, the air felt heavy. The wallpaper was peeling and jaundiced from the sun, and the stairs were so steep they felt like a mountain climb every day.

Life was measured in rations. We’d get a single can of food meant to last a month; you either learned the discipline of hunger or you starved before the next shipment arrived. When the Van Pels family moved in, things got crowded. Anne initially found their son, Peter, unremarkable, but as the months turned into years, I saw something shift between them. I watched them slip away to the attic, finding a sliver of peace in their first kiss.

There were rare moments of luck, too. I remember the day we were gifted 24 crates of strawberries from an auction. For a moment, the smell of fresh fruit masked the scent of dust and fear.

I stood by Anne in the attic when she looked out at that massive chestnut tree. It was 170 years old, reaching toward a sky we weren’t allowed to touch. She wrote about it three times—the last entry being May 13, 1944. That tree still stands today, a beautiful witness to what we lost.

The end didn’t come with a bang, but with the sound of a door being forced. We were in the kitchen, still tasting the sweetness of those strawberries, when the Germans broke in. We scrambled for the bookcase, desperate to trigger the secret latch, but it wouldn’t budge. It failed us when we needed it most.

As the soldiers gripped our arms to drag us out, Anne reached back one last time, snatching her diary from the table. We were thrown onto trucks, then packed into trains, watching the Annex disappear. Once we arrived at the camps, the world went dark. We were never seen again.

We are reading the book ‘Diary of Anne Frank’. Mrs Anderson created a Gemini Gem to prompt us to think more deeply about what life would have been like in the annex, what we felt and why we felt that way. I enjoyed using the Gem because it helped me improve my story about The Anne Family , how life was like in it , and it helped me use strong words , in the story . It gives hints for you , if you are stuck , or don’t know what to write .