A friend who read my anthology of diary entries in Advent and Epiphany recommends The Secret Annexe. The title references Anne Frank’s, The Secret Annex, a collection of fiction and non-fiction written while she was in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Holland.
The Secret Annexe is an anthology of war diaries with multiple entries for every day of the year. I thought it would be interesting to look at the entries for Epiphany, 6th January, to see what overlap there is with my choices. There is none.
6th January, 1777, Virginia
News that Washington has taken 760 Hessian prisoners at Trenton in the Jerseys. Hope it is a lie.
Nicholas Cresswell
6th January, 1853, Caucasus
A stupid parade. Everyone drinks – especially my brother – and it’s very unpleasant for me. War is such an unjust and evil thing that those who wage it try to stifle the voice of conscience within them. Am I doing right? Oh God, teach me and forgive me if I’m doing wrong.
Leo Tolstoy
6th January, 1942, Jersey
RAF dropped leaflets early this morning. We found one in our garden near the bee-hive! They were all written in French. They were not addressed specially to Channel Islanders. German officers were searching the countryside for them but our eyes are sharper than theirs! It is nice to think that our British friends were close to us today. We are not forgotten after all!
Nan Le Ruez
6th January, 1943, Berlin
Yesterday Eva* spent all day in bed, only got up of necessity towards seven o’clock to make our main meal. Today, although snow is lying and she is only half recovered, she has gone into town and to the dentist. I am worried whether it will do her any good, my conscience is suffering because her getting up and going out – which she has not done since midday on Saturday – takes much of the burden off my shoulders. I myself am extremely handicapped if I do the shopping. In a bakery I was refused bread, even though the ban only refers to wheat products – obviously because of the salesgirl’s fear and stupidity, not because of malice – but it was nevertheless painful for me. I was completely unable to come by any matches; once Reichenbach gave me a dozen loose as a present, once Frau Eisenmann gave me a box. Here I gave an onion in return. On the other hand I was very touched when, in a shop on Blumenstrasse, I found Kone, the same sales assistant who had been my friend at Plauen station by Dölzschen. A theatrical figure, young face, hair brushed stiffly upwards, slim, he greeted me with a handshake (a deed, a profession not without risk) and immediately let me have a pound of minced fish and meat with real fishtails. It remains to be seen whether today’s trip did Eva’s nerves good or makes them worse again. I always reproach myself for not showing her enough sympathy. Things are wretched for both of us – but so much worse for people in the camp, which is a solamen miserrimum** however. My hands, my feet too, are covered in small cuts because of the frost; exhaustion makes me fall asleep without fail for ten to thirty minutes every morning and afternoon. Certainly I am already reading aloud in the very early morning; but then I am also asleep by eleven o’clock at the latest.
Victor Klemperer
* Eva Klemperer, née Schlemmer, a Protestant, whom the Jewish Klemperer had married, much against the wishes of both families, in 1906.
** cold comfort