“I didn’t Know Anne Could Be So Violent”: A Grandfather’s Words Discovered By A Granddaughter

My grandpa left some journal entries, but they are on looseleaf paper, and some are in journals. My grandpa was not a diarist by anyway means. He didn’t write down in journals regularly, but he started apparently keeping “notes” of my wellbeing and my own gift, that we had in common.

My grandpa had a secret, about dead folks, that I am sure if I told anyone, or tried to explain it, people would think he’s nuts.

He wrote down his “stories” as I do with mine ( a lot of them, I have published here), but for him, he never told me about what he saw or who he met. He met more people than I did, but for him, they weren’t really “Saving” him, as they do for me. For him, they were trying to guide him and to be a better man. The man I knew, was always a kind, generous and not a hateful person at all. He knew what was wrong and what was right. He knew how to treat people. He understood that for me, I would be different, and he needed to help me in any way he could.

He loved me, there was no doubt. I was his only granddaughter. He only had two grandchildren, that was it. He had my brother (who he really no interest in) and then, there was me, who he really had an interest in.

He taught me everything I know- in order to be a good woman.

When I came across his writings, I had no idea that he felt the way he did. He wasn’t racist or prejudice in his writings, he was concerned over me, for my health and well-being. Or some of his writings, had different meanings to them. I have to translate them (they’re in English, but try to figure out what he was talking about). He was not nuts, or autistic, I’ll put that out there right now. He was one of the most brillant men that I ever knew. Though only having a G-E-D (for my overseas friends who are not sure what that is- let me explain: You basically take a test saying you have a High School Diploma, without really going to High School all four years), my grandpa was a man who was very well read, and he studied a great deal on different subjects.

One thing that about my grandpa, is that he could see..-well, how do I put this? Dead people..

He always said they looked like normal people, and in turn, I would ask, how he could tell if they were dead or not. He told me, I had to look at their eyes and if they were really bloodshot, or just red in general, they were dead. With the way that our brains were, we could both be visited by dead people when we slept, but he saw more than I did.

I don’t usually tell people about this, because people will start saying that he was nuts, and he wasn’t, he was special and I think people like him are a dime or dozen.

With him, he never told anyone, but me, so when I got a chance to read some of his writings, I was even more surprised, he wrote down his entries, as I called them, some of them didn’t make sense.

One entry was “I didn’t know Anne could be so violent.” At first, I didn’t know what Anne he was referring to, but I think I might have a general idea. He once told me about Anne Frank’s teeth. He told me “She has very sharp teeth and she’ll bite!” Not something you’re accustomed to when hearing about Anne Frank. But, I know what he meant, because I had finally seen what he was talking about.

He was saying, at the time, Anne Frank was very angry and she is ready to bite, and she is even more angered than before. She wants to bite, but she does it in a way that people will not know they’ve been bitten. I know, it’s odd, but he wrote:

“I think she is angry at the world. I didn’t know Anne could be so violent. There is a fire in her eyes, one that I hope I’ll be able to see in my lifetime.”

I think that my grandpa had all these amazing entires, and in another book, all his stories that he would sometimes pass to me. I want to learn about his gift- the same gift that I had.

One story, that he told me was that he saw a woman, who had red hair and red eyes. She wasn’t the devil, as he put it, but she told him that if a dead person ever asked him to do something, to decline, and he told me the same thing. I asked him why he’d say that?

He told me, “It never ends well and you don’t know how people are going to take it.”

I am the kind of Jewish woman that will want to know that they can about their own family’s legacy.

Sometimes, when I look at his writing, I wonder if I could ever publish them, knowing my dad would never understand his context. Luckily, I can read between the lines and read them.