RT. HON. SIR WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
ANNE FRANK
ROUND TABLE OF NEBRASKA
The Bookworm 2501 S. 90th St
Omaha Nebraska, 68124
Omaha Chapter of the International Churchill Society
https://churchillsocietyomaha.org/
August 23rd
Sunday 1:30 pm at the Bookworm
http://wrldhstry.com/WinstonChurchill_AnneFrank_Online_Resources.htm
Martin Gilbert’s
Winston S. Churchill Volume 6 Finest Hour 1939-1941
Chapter 25 “Briare: ‘the break-up’ (1983, pages 495-521)
Andrew Roberts’
Churchill Walking With Destiny
Chapter 21 ‘The Fall of France: May-June 1940 (2018, pages 553-557)
Hannah Pick-Goslar’s
My Friend Anne Frank Chapter 16 ‘Switzerland’ (2023, pages 252-264)
June 11 1940
‘Why don’t we fly direct over France?’
Excerpt from Martin Gilbert’s Winston S. Churchill Volume 6 Finest Hour 1939-1941
(1983, pages 498-499)
Churchill now prepared to leave for France, for the meeting upon which so much depended, and yet from which only the imminent surrender of France, and Britain finding herself alone against Germany, was the likely outcome. He was accompanied by Eden, Dill, Brigadier Lund, General Spears, and an interpreter, Captain Berkeley. It was a day, as Eden later recalled, of ‘unbroken sunshine’. Setting off from Hendon airport at 2.30 that afternoon, they flew by Flamingo, escorted by twelve Hurricanes. Also on board was Ismay, who later recalled:
Early in the morning the Prime Minister had told me that I had better stay behind and ‘mind the shop’. Presumably some well-meaning friend had said that I was worn out and needed a rest. Since this was untrue, I did not take the instructions too seriously, but to be on the safe side I got to Hendon well ahead of Churchill and hid behind the aeroplane.
As soon as he embarked, I followed close on his heels, and sat in the seat immediately behind him. I felt like a stowaway, and it was a relief when we took off. After we had been flying for about five minutes, Churchill turned round and barked out, ‘You’re here, are you?’ There was not much that I could say, so I remained silent.
He turned his back on me and continued reading. After a further pause he turned round again and, with an expression of fury, said, ‘I knew you’d come.’ Another pause, and he was handing me papers to read and comment upon. I was forgiven.
But we were not yet out of the wood. The Prime Minister suddenly realised that we were heading west instead of south. He protested that he wanted to get to Briare as quickly as possible. ‘Why don’t we fly direct over France?’
I suspect that he had a faint hope of being able to see something of the battle! However, the pilot was able to convince him that both he and the fighter escort had had precise instructions from the Air Ministry, and that it was impossible to change the route.
1946 Switzerland
Mr Frank broke the news that for the whole time they were in hiding, Anne had carried on writing in her diary
Excerpt from Hannah Pick-Goslar’s
My Friend Anne Frank (2023, Pages 257-258)
While I was living in Switzerland, Mr Frank broke the news that for the whole time they were in hiding, Anne had carried on writing in her diary – the one we were all so curious about and that Jacque and I had looked for in her bedroom when the family suddenly vanished – and it had been saved.
….
They were a revelation. I lost my best friend Anne when she had just turned 13 and began keeping her diary. In those pages, I felt I was reunited with her. It was such a strange sensation to witness her evolve and mature, all while having a window into her internal life and her life in hiding. The Anne I met in the most terrible of circumstances at Bergen-Belsen was starving and desperate, hardly the vivacious girl I knew. These precious pages allowed me to see her between those two moments. The writing was so rich and vivid I felt like I was right next to her again. It felt both euphoric and heart-shattering.
I ached knowing she had written many of those words while still living so close to me – but all the time I was thinking she was hundreds of miles away, safe. I imagined her trying to mute her coughs when she was sick and her footsteps during the day, always living with the backdrop of fear they might get caught. I was profoundly moved not only by her talent for describing the events and dynamics among the eight in hiding, but her rich inner world – her thoughts and feelings, her observations of others hiding in the attic on Prinsengracht. For all of her maturity, she was a teenager still very much at the beginning of her life. I related to her desire to feel true love, to feel truly understood by someone else and her longing ‘to have a good time for once and to laugh so hard it hurts’. She was so vibrant, so alive. I felt scrubbed raw reading her words. I missed my friend more than I could have ever expressed.