Last summer, as a 20-year-old, I found myself living in a suburb of Tel Aviv, on a street named Anne Frank Street. It’s funny how your mind works, especially in the vibrant haze of summer and young adulthood. Life just flows, and you tend to overlook the everyday, the familiar. Your senses are geared towards the novel, the unexpected. Imagine if you scrutinized every tree and flower you passed – you’d miss the subtle rustle of danger approaching.
And so, I lived on Anne Frank Street. The address became a casual part of my daily interactions. I’d mention it to taxi drivers, give it to grocery delivery services, and even repeat it after the automated bus announcements – Rechov Anne Frank – enjoying the way the Hebrew words felt in my mouth.
Night after night, I rested my head in my Anne Frank Street apartment. Mornings began with boiling water for coffee in my Anne Frank Street kitchen. The sounds of traffic drifted in through the windows of my apartment on Anne Frank Street. Life unfolded – laughter, tears, sneezes, countless ordinary moments – all within the walls of my second-floor apartment, on this unassuming residential street in Israel named Anne Frank Street.
Then, reality would intrude. Moments that snapped me out of the autopilot, jolting me into a stark awareness of my surroundings. Suddenly, I was in the jungle, the tiger was no longer silent, and the taste of blood felt imminent.
These moments arrived in the form of urgent dashes to bomb shelters, seeking refuge from rockets launched from Gaza by Palestinian militants. These frantic scrambles for safety occurred in the makeshift shelter of stairwell Anne Frank.
Alt: Makeshift bomb shelter in stairwell, Anne Frank Street, Tel Aviv suburb
The collective prayers for the three kidnapped boys echoed outside apartment Anne Frank.
Then came the devastating news: Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali had been murdered. I heard this news while sitting with my roommates in our apartment on Frank Street.
Dear God, how much more conscious could I possibly be?
Anne Frank: a passionate, talented, beautiful young girl. Murdered for being Jewish before her sixteenth birthday.
Nearly seventy years later, Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali. Separated from Anne by time and place, yet murdered for the same reason – because they were Jews.
Oh God, the awareness is overwhelming. To be conscious of the Jewish fate is to understand that the threat never truly disappears, the pursuit never ends. As certain as the sunrise each morning, the Jew remains a target. And so, I float. I drift through daily life.
But then, consciousness seizes me, and I remember who I am.
I am twenty years old, four years older than Anne Frank ever lived to be. I am spending my summer in an apartment bearing her name, in a sovereign Jewish state – a nation that was only a dream in Anne’s time. Had Israel existed then, perhaps her life, and the lives of six million others, could have been saved. The enemies may change their names and faces, but the hatred persists. Once, it was the Nazis hunting Anne. Today, it is radical Islamists who pose a threat. But even before them, it was the Spaniards, the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, and the Egyptians. Nation after nation expelled us, oppressed us, murdered our children, and extinguished our dreams.
Alt: Young woman in apartment reflecting on history and identity on Frank Street
And yet, I am alive. I am here. The true protector will not allow the threat to prevail. Despite the fear, the uncertainty, and the questions, this I know to be true.
Sitting in my apartment on Frank Street, I contemplate Anne’s life, the history that is lost and the history that is preserved, the destiny of the Jewish people – both as individuals and as a collective. Can the words of a fifteen-year-old girl transcend death? Can the scratching of a pen on paper truly capture the beating of a human heart? Anne had an older sister, Margot, who also kept a diary. It was never found. With the scratching of one sister’s pen, words are etched into eternity. But what became of the other sister? Anne wrote in her diary that Margot dreamed of immigrating to Israel and becoming a midwife. Was Margot’s dream ever realized?
Margot Frank never had the chance to deliver a single baby. She died at nineteen, in an unmarked grave in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, on the blood-soaked soil of Europe.
And yet, God has delivered us, the Jewish people. Hundreds of Jewish babies are born every day in the Jewish homeland. Even as our tears fall and nourish the ground where Eyal, Naftali, and Gilad are buried, there is a sense of solace. These boys are buried in Israel, on our own land. We, their Jewish brothers and sisters, continue to live as a free people in our ancestral homeland – in Jerusalem, in Netanya, in Be’er Sheva, in Eilat, in Ariel, and even on a street in Bat Yam called Anne Frank Street.
And so, Margot’s dream lives on, and the Jewish people live on, and I remain conscious.
Paper burns, people burn. But when the dream is ignited by an eternal flame, the bush is never consumed.
