The Diary of a Young Girl: Rev. Beatrice Hitchcock

From Anne Frank's diary entry of July 15, 1944:

"Anyone who claims that the older ones have a more difficult time here certainly doesn't realize to what extent our problems weigh down on us, problems for which we are probably much too young, but which thrust themselves upon us continually.... That's the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered.

It's a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

Anne was to have only two more entries before the Gestapo found the Annex on August 4, 1944 and sent her to Auschwitz, then Bergen-Belsen, where she died in March 1945. She was not yet sixteen.