“I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.”

This is the first entry in The Dairy of Anne Frank. She wrote it on June 12, 1942 – her 13th birthday. At that moment, she was a normal teenager living with her family in the Netherlands, where they moved from Frankfurt after Hitler’s rise to power. This was one of Anne’s last diary entries as a carefree teenager. Less than a month later, on July 5, 1942, her family was summoned for deportation to the Westerbork concentration camp.  

“The entry that Anne made in the diary exactly 75 years ago, and what she wrote in the duration of that entire week – that is the last proof of normal life. Friends, plans, prosperity,” said Edna Friedberg, curator of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington. “Instantly, Anne will be in a nightmare world. She will have to literally disappear, physically disappear.”

She did just that, vanishing into an Amsterdam rowhouse. The canal-facing Opekta Building became a shelter for Anne’s family and a few more Jews. They hid in a 46 square meter room behind a door masked as a bookcase. Here, Anne wrote letters to her imaginary friend Kitty about everything that worried her: her relationship with her parents, her first love, arguments over food, violence in the streets below.

The Holocaust survivor Primo Levi wrote that there is a duty not to understand the Holocaust, “because to understand is to justify.” But, he maintained, “If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again.” Anne Frank’s account remains a terrifying part of truly “knowing” the Holocaust.

“Often in the evening, in the darkness, I see columns of innocent people walking, driven by a pair of scoundrels, who beat them and torture them until they fall to the ground,” wrote Frank. “They don’t spare anybody: the elderly, children, infants, the sick, pregnant women – everyone goes to face death …It’s a terrible feeling to suddenly be an excess.”

Frank’s diary became one of 35 objects included in the Memory of the World Register, a UNESCO World Heritage List. Currently, the book is translated into 67 languages. Every modern schoolchild knows the Jewish girl’s name.

“This is proof that history isn’t statistics and facts, it’s always the fates of people,” said Friedberg.

Anne wrote her last entry in the diary on August 1, 1944. Everybody who was hiding in the building was found, arrested and sent to a death camp. Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March of 1945.

“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”’ Friedman stopped reading and looked up. “That’s my favorite quote from her diary. It’s painful to think that the girl believed in humanity until her last days.”

The 15-year-old girl’s 7-month stay at the camp, punctuated by slave labor, hunger and finally death, hardly confirm her optimistic words. Anne’s father Otto was the only member of the family to survive the Holocaust. He decided to publish the diary as proof that his daughter lived, loved and hoped. Anne became the voice of 6 million Jews – the victims of the Holocaust.

“Just think about how many talented and smart children like that were destroyed,” said Friedman.

One-point-five million Jewish children died during the years of the Holocaust. “Multiply this number by a million,” they say at the Memorial Museum in Washington. The lost life of a child is lost generations. Proof of that is the fate of a girl named Louisa, who was in hiding on the same street as Anne Frank. She survived. Today, 75-year-old Louisa Lawrence lives in Bethesda, Maryland and has three daughters and six grandchildren. Most often today, she has to answer the question: How does she feel about the thought that she was able to survive, but Anne, the girl who lived next door, didn’t?

“I am truly sorry for her,” said Lawrence. “But at the same time I’m thankful that my family was able to survive. I remember when The Diary of Anne Frank was published, everyone was uncomfortable. They didn’t want to talk about it, because it was painful, and embarrassing for others. This diary, written with the truthful words of a young girl, forced the world to hear about the horrors of that time.”
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Police in Russia have detained hundreds of protesters and some journalists at anti-corruption demonstrations in cities across the country on Russia’s national day.  The protests were organized by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was detained in Moscow as he left his home to try to join a demonstration in the capital.  VOA’s Moscow Correspondent Daniel Schearf reports that the White House condemned the detentions and said it is monitoring the situation.
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European Union and Turkish officials are scheduled to meet in Brussels Tuesday to try and put Turkey’s decades-long, on-again, off-again bid to join the EU back on track.

Turkish-EU relations recently hit one of their lowest ebbs following a bitter war of words between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brussels over his controversial referendum to extend his powers. The latest effort to reset ties was the fruit of Erdogan’s visit to Brussels after his April referendum victory.

“It’s very encouraging because it shows both sides are willing to maintain dialogue,” said Unal Cevikoz, a retired Turkish ambassador to London who now heads the Ankara Policy Forum research group.

“If the dialogue is interrupted, then it will be very difficult to start that kind of contact again. They [Erdogan and EU leaders] have also agreed on a road map which will continue for one year and, in this road map, that certain steps … have to be taken, step by step.”

Shared interests in dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis and regional security concerns have provided a powerful incentive to reset relations. Brussels hopes that will give it new leverage to press Ankara over its ongoing crackdown following a coup attempt last July. The crackdown has resulted in more than 100,000 people losing their jobs and the arrests of more than 50,000 others, including many presidential critics.

“There is a serious attempt in Turkey by pro-democratic forces to keep the democratic flag flying, and support from democrats and democratic regimes around the world, including the EU, is needed,” said Al-Monitor columnist Semih Idiz “But pressure from Europe on this score, unless accompanied by some tangible carrot, will not have many results and could aggravate the situation further.”

Erdogan is pressing for the opening of new EU membership chapters (i.e., statutes). Currently, 16 out of the 35 membership chapters required to join the EU have been opened and only one has been completed.

“The priority should be Chapters 23 and 24 because these are very much in relation to justice and judiciary, the rule of law, fundamental rights and freedoms,” said Cevikoz.

The call to open Chapters 23 and 24 is backed by Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, along with human rights groups. Opening those chapters is opposed by the Greek Cypriot government in connection with its ongoing dispute with Ankara over the divided Mediterranean island. Other EU members, however, privately say not opening those chapters would be exploited by Erdogan.

There are growing doubts over Brussels’ commitment to confronting Ankara over its human rights record. “The role of appeasement is not going to work with Turkey,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher for the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

“It’s no good for the EU to turn a blind eye to the head of Amnesty International in Turkey being jailed, to the crackdown in civil society in Turkey, the way the media has been decimated in Turkey,” she said.

Last week, Taner Kilic, the head of Amnesty International in Turkey, was charged with supporting terrorism in connection with July’s failed coup and jailed.

Sinclair-Webb added that “the EU is much more focused on keeping refugees and migrants out of EU and on counterterrorism cooperation, and all of that has put human rights very much on the back burner for the EU.”

Last March, Ankara signed an agreement with Brussels to stem the flow of millions of migrants and refugees entering the EU. Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to end the deal, accusing Brussels of failing to honor its commitment to grant visa-free travel for Turks to the EU. Keeping the deal alive is widely seen as a priority for Brussels.

EU members are also courting Ankara for greater security cooperation in the war against Islamic State. Turkey, which borders Syria and Iraq, is the main route for jihadists seeking to enter Europe. According to Turkish authorities, the suicide bomber responsible for last month’s blast outside of a concert in Manchester entered the UK via Istanbul, while one of the assailants in this month’s attack in London tried last year to enter Syria by traveling to Istanbul.

Analysts say Turkey’s role in counterterrorism will grow with Islamic State facing defeat in Iraq and Syria. Many European jihadists are expected to try and return home.

Cengiz Aktar, a political scientist and expert on European affairs, said “EU-Turkish relations will be revised completely in coming months.”

“Turkey’s relationship will be limited to the refugee deal and an enhanced free trade agreement,” he added. “Not only will the Turkish regime not let the EU meddle in Turkish politics, but the Europeans are not interested in saving Turkish democracy. They [Ankara and Brussels] both agree on that.”
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President Emmanuel Macron and his supporters will seek to “restore the trust” of the French people after a record low turnout in the first round of the parliamentary election, Macron’s government spokesman said on Monday.

Fewer than half of all registered voters cast a ballot on Sunday, unprecedented in France’s post-war Fifth Republic, prompting some of Macron’s opponents to cast doubt on the strength of the likely mandate of the president, who wants to quickly introduce economic reforms.

Pollsters blamed voter fatigue, disillusion with politicians and projections that Macron would secure a commanding majority for the high abstention rate.

Macron’s party is still poised to win comfortably in the second round.

“It is a failure of this election,” government spokesman Christophe Castaner, who is also minister for parliamentary relations, told France 2 television. “We have to take note, we have to restore trust.”

Other senior Republic on the Move (LREM) officials echoed Castaner, in an apparent bid to draw the sting out of criticism that might later complicate or tarnish the social and labor reforms that Macron wants to enact.

LREM president Catherine Barbaroux said the weak turnout would be a “key challenge for the government in the weeks to come”. She said that as encouraging as Sunday’s result was, more voters needed to get out in the second round.

Pollsters project LREM and its center-right Modem ally are on course to win as many as three quarters of 577 seats in the lower house next week.

Some Macron rivals are calling his future lawmakers “godillots,” or yes men, a label given to President Charles De Gaulle’s parliamentarians who were viewed as rubber-stamping his policies.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the hard-left’s failed presidential candidate, has warned voters against concentrating power in the hands of a single party loyal to a president who received less than one in every four votes in the opening round of the presidential election.

“The huge abstention rate shows that there is no majority in this country in favor of destroying the labor code, nor for reducing liberties … nor to pander to the rich, all things that feature in the president’s program,” Melenchon said late on Sunday night.

Investor confidence

If forecasts that LREM and Modem win 390-445 seats prove correct, it would be France’s biggest majority in decades, and would effectively leave only the powerful trade union movement as a potential obstacle to the former banker’s reforms.

“If there is no debate in parliament it will take place in the street,” said conservative candidate Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet who faces a run-off in her constituency against a LREM candidate. “If there is no debate, parliament is reduced to being a chamber of record.

Investors shrugged off any concerns over turnout, buoyed by the scale of Macron’s projected win and implications for reforms, in particular the relaxing of France’s stringent labor code.

The thrust of the reforms is to allow a wider range of conditions to be set in the workplace rather than at sectoral level. Another goal is to set minimum/maximum compensation awards in unfair dismissal cases and speed up labor tribunal processing of such cases.

The vote delivered a further painful blow to the Socialist and conservative parties that had alternated in power for decades until Macron’s election in May blew apart the left-right divide.

It was also a poor result for the far-right National Front, which just a month ago was dreaming of its anti-establishment leader Marine Le Pen holding the keys to the Elysee.

In a sign of the mood in the Socialist Party, Benoit Hamon, its failed presidential candidate, also ejected from the parliamentary race, tweeted a picture of Sisyphus the Greek mythological king embodying eternal work, and punishment.
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A powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the western coast of Turkey and the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday, killing one woman and rattling buildings from the Aegean Turkish province of Izmir to the Greek capital Athens.

The epicentre of the quake was about 84 km (52 miles) northwest of the Turkish coastal city of Izmir and 15 km south of Lesbos, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) said on its website. The National Observatory of Athens put it slightly lower at 6.1.

Extensive damage was reported at a village on Lesbos, which was at the forefront of a migration crisis two years ago when hundreds of thousands of war refugees landed there seeking a gateway into Europe.

TV footage showed collapsed buildings and debris blocking narrow streets at Vrisa, a community of around 600 people to the south of the island.

“Tens of buildings have collapsed and roads are blocked off,” said Marios Apostolides, the divisional commander of the fire brigade.

A woman, believed to be about 60, was crushed by the roof of her home and died, the island’s mayor said. Local officials said at least 10 people were injured.

The quake was felt as far away as the Greek capital of Athens, some 367 km (228 miles) southwest of the island.

Major geological fault lines cross the region and small earthquakes are common, though anything higher than 5.5 is rare.

Anything exceeding that is capable of causing extensive damage.

“The trembling was really bad. Everything in my clinic started shaking wildly, we all ran outside with the patients,” said Didem Eris, a 50-year-old dentist in Izmir’s Karsiyaka district. “We are very used to earthquakes as people of Izmir but this one was different. I thought to myself that this time we were going to die.”

Social media users who said they were in western Turkey reported a strong and sustained tremor.

“We will be seeing the aftershocks of this in the coming hours, days and weeks,” said Haluk Ozener, head of Turkey’s Kandilli Observatory, adding that the aftershocks could have magnitudes of up to 5.5.

More than 600 people died in October 2011 in Turkey’s eastern province of Van after a quake of 7.2 magnitude and powerful aftershocks. In 1999, two massive earthquakes killed about 20,000 people in the densely populated northwest of the country.
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