| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 22945 |
| QUOTATION: | ... we often ask ourselves here despairingly: “What, oh, what is the use of the war? Why can’t people live peacefully together? Why all this destruction?” The question is very understandable, but no one has found a satisfactory answer to it so far. Yes, why do they make still more gigantic planes, still heavier bombs and, at the same time, prefabricated houses for reconstruction? Why should millions be spent daily on the war and yet there’s not a penny available for medical services, artists, or for poor people?... Oh, why are people so crazy? |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Anne Frank (1929–1945), Dutch Jewish diarist; born in Germany. Diary of a Young Girl, entry dated May 3, 1944 (1947).
Frank and her family were in hiding in Holland when she wrote this. On August 4, 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. |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia. |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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