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Anne Frank

June 19, 2009

 

To commemorate what would have been Anne Frank's 80th birthday, we ran a competition with the Anne Frank Trust UK to write Anne a letter, telling her all about your world today compared to her life in the 1930s/1940s.

We received hundreds of letters from across the UK. Some of you wished you could have been friends with Anne. Most asked her the immediate questions: Were you afraid? Were you angry? Were you sad? Almost every letter spoke proudly of the amazing technological advances since Anne's time - and sadly of the fact that children are still trapped in war-torn areas across the world.

Here’s the winning letter: 

Dear Anne,

My name is Michael, I am 10 years old and live with my Mum, and Dad, two sisters called Victoria and Rebekah and a little brother Christopher. Victoria is seven, Rebekah is five and Christopher is only three. Unfortunately we do not have any pets. Victoria would really like a puppy but Mum says we do not have room for a dog in this house. So we will have to wait until we have a bigger house.

I would like to have a bigger house so that I could have my own bedroom. At the moment I share with Victoria which is lots of fun but sometimes it would be great to be able to get away from everyone else and be on my own. I guess you would have liked to be able to be by yourself sometimes when you were hiding from the Germans. Were you very scared? I think that I would have been.

The country that I live in is called England, which is part of the United Kingdom. We are across the English channel from France and Spain. I think that because we are on an island it stopped the Germans from invading our country in the war. The Germans dropped lots of bombs on us in the war. We have been learning about the 2nd World War at school. A few weeks ago we made models of air raid shelters. This was fun but I would not have liked to go in one. My Grandad Terry told me more about the shelters and how he was evacuated during the war. Did you miss school when you were hiding? I guess no school was good, except that you could not go out and see your friends.

Do you know that the rationing has stopped now? We can eat lots more yummy things like chocolate and sweets, we are never hungry. We have lots of different fruits and vegetables, some from different countries and some we have grown at home. We can have as much sugar, butter, eggs and meat as we like. No one tells us how much we can eat and we can go to the supermarket as many times as we like. We don’t have to save up ration coupons for our clothes so we can buy new clothes when we need new ones.

We still live a lot like you did but at least Hitler’s dead. We have the right to say our opinions on things that the government says in the newspapers now. The government cannot take you away and lock you up or kill you because you don’t agree with what they say. Everyone no matter what religion, nationality or colour they are can live safely in this country. We are also free to visit different countries for holidays or we can go and live in a different country if we want to and would not be hurt because we are different. Well almost any country.

The electricity actually works most of the time. We can cook when we want and keep warm with the heating when it’s cold. At home we have television and computer games to play and we can watch or play whenever we want to.

Global warming is something we have today. Global warming is the world getting warmer because of too much gas being produced by humans. It’s good sometimes and other times it’s not because it kills animals and plants, that’s the bad thing. The good thing is that the sun can now power cars, vans, lorries, motor bikes, heaters and radiators.

I am glad that things have changed and that the war ended long before I was born.

Yours Sincerely,

Michael

The winner, Michael, aged 10, receives a set of Puffin WWII classics, a DVD of the powerful BBC mini series broadcast in January based on The Diary of a Young Girl and a signed copy of The Promise by Eva Schloss, step-daughter of Otto Frank. Ten runners-up receive the set of WWII books and DVDs.

Find out more about how you can get involved with marking the anniversary at the Anne Frank Trust’s website.
www.annefrank.org.uk/80

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