I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. But, and that is the great question, will I ever be able to write anything great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, for I can recapture everything when I write, my thoughts, my ideals and my fantasies.
Anne Frank (1929–1945), Dutch Jewish diarist; born in Germany. Diary of a Young Girl, entry dated April 4, 1944 (1947).
Frank and her family were in hiding in Holland when she wrote this. Exactly four months later, their hiding place would be raided by the police, and they would be sent to German and Dutch concentration camps. All of them except Otto Frank, the father, would perish; Anne died in Bergen-Belsen, a German camp, just two months before the liberation of Holland. Although she did not live to know that she had fulfilled her ambition, she did so through the posthumous publication of her diary.