Over the weekend I heard on National Public Radio that this week marks the 70th anniversary of Anne Frank's death at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany ("Seven Decades On, Anne Frank's Words Still Comfort," March 14).
No one knows the exact day. I was surprised we even know what week. Yet Anne Frank's diary is one of the books, if not the book, that affected me the most in my life. While she and her entire family were just a hidden staircase and a thin floor away from annihilation, she never stopped believing that "people are basically good."
In the Holocaust that claimed Anne's life and millions of people of her faith (or race, as some called it) others were judged inferior too. The sad truth of human history is that it's only one of many holocausts, which to me only amplifies Anne and her message.
"Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it," my father taught me long ago. He also said that education was the one thing he could give me that no one could take away.
Thinking about Anne, I suppose it is faith, not learning, that endures. People can lose their faith, but no one can take it from you.
I like thinking of America as a melting pot because it explains me. In Europe, the people who made me don't mix. I like living in a country where not everyone traces their roots back to a single continent or language. Our strength is in the mixture — and the more ingredients the better.
Elizabeth Carmody