Forever Sixteen

"I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains."
-Anne Frank

Emerson Marianne "Ella" Frank was often found in the shadow of her twin sister, Anneliese Marie (formally known as "Anne"). Like Anne, Ella received a diary for her thirteenth birthday, recalling events as described in Anne's actual diary, and giving more detail as to what was happening in the annex, her mutual relationship with Peter, and the arguments between her and her sister. But as life goes on in the annex, things get harder and food becomes scarce. Soon, believed that they were tipped off by Lena Hartog, Tonny Ahlers, Bep's sister Nelly, or the Gestapo checking for ration card fraud and happened to find the nine in hiding by coincidence, Ella and the rest in hiding are arrested and sent to Westorbork transit camp. Thereafter, the true horrors set in and Ella is forced to learn how to survive with her two sisters, Margot and Anne, and their mother, Edith. But in late October, the three girls were then selected to go to Bergen-Belsen.
What happens to Ella?

(Some scenes in this story are from Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl. But what comes after their capture and life in the camps are my own with the help of articles and the 2001 Anne Frank movie about what had happened in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Those mentioned in this story are real except for Ella and the boy in her dreams, Edward.)

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