ANOTHER ANNE FRANK

In the Dutch city Tilburg a diary of a Jewish 18 year old girl is found. Helga Deen wrote the diary during the last month of her captivity in the concentration camp Vught in 1943. The resemblance with Anne Frank is striking.

Helga Deen describes the life in the camp very precisely. According top the archivist the manuscript consisting of 21 pages of text and pencil sketches is unique. There is only one other Dutch diary that is written in a Second World War camp.

Helga Daan lived in Tilburg and was picked up with her entire family on the 1 of April 1943 and was transported to Camp Vught . From the 1 of June she kept a secret diary. From some letters that were smuggled out of the Camp it it turns out that she agreed upon writing the diary with a friend of hers.

One of the most striking parts of the diary is the description of the transport of 1300 children to the concentration camps Sobibor and Auschwitz : ‘Transport. It is too much. I am broken with grief. But I want, want, .. because if my happiness ..(…) and my desire dies, than I will die as well. This is something I will never forget.''

Helga hopes she can find a temporary job in a nearby town so she can escape the transport to a extermination camp, but on the day before she gets the job she is told that she will be deported; ‘One month now, an anniversary, and a special one (…). I have to pack This morning I saw a child die, and I was in a mess. But everything is relative because of the latest. Again a transport, and this time we have to go too.'

On the 2 of July 1943 Helga Deen writes her last letter, addressed to her ‘lovely three' friends: ‘Vagabonds we are, emigrants, so we have to adept to their lifestyle. What we all went through these months is indescribable and for somebody that did not experience this, it is unimaginable.'

Saturday the 30 th of October the diary is officially presented during the Dutch national archive day. more features

October 21, 2004