“Riches, prestige, everything can be lost, but the happiness in your own heart can only be dimmed; it will always be there as long as you live to make you happy again.” – Anne Frank, February 23, 1944, 1 year 7 months into hiding and 6 months before capture.

I was given a Kobo for Christmas. For a long time, I had watched people download books that I would wait days to arrive from online purchases or spend time at the local bookstore, often leaving with nothing in hand. A bonus about a Kobo is the ease of downloading books and the ability to rent copies from the local library for free.

My first selection was The Diary of Anne Frank. Six hundred-plus pages of journaling that miraculously survived her ultimate capture and demise. She was only 13 when she, her sister, her parents, another family of 3, and a local dentist went into hiding from the Germans in Amsterdam. It would be just over two years before they were discovered, with only her father making it out of the subsequent concentration camp internment.

Hitler took power, promising the German people prosperity and stability. He demolished the democratic institutions, spread misinformation, controlled media messaging, and finally created a war state set on conquering Europe. This, of course, included the people who were to die. Those who were “life unworthy of life”—among them Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. He turned “others” into the enemy, repeating his negative views until people began to believe them to be true. This New Order was characterized by an authoritarian political system based on a leadership structure in which authority flowed downward from a supreme national leader. I find it interesting and troubling how history tends to repeat itself.

The book describes the dynamic between the group and their daily life rituals. Anne was deeply insightful and detailed about her observations. The picture she painted gave me a sense of the misery they had been subjected to and their coping tactics. Even my worst days’ events are not a fraction of the hardships they incurred. Fortunately, some locals enabled them to survive by providing food, encouragement, books, and medicines, among other essential items. Ultimately that kindness would be discovered as times were desperate, and the Nazis would pay for each Jew captured—unimaginable horror.

Anne died just 20 years before I was born. Her last years in hiding meant she rarely experienced the warmth of the sun, the wind against her face, or the sound of raindrops splashing on the rooftop. She was systematically robbed of all liberties until there were none.

I can’t think of anything positive I have achieved when my thoughts have been unkind or when I have tried to label others as different from me. It seems logical that if I were kind and thought of them as kindred, the outcome would have to be better. I will concentrate on this; hopefully, others will have the same idea. Who knows, maybe the time is ripe for a worldwide revolution of loving kindness.