“What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again.”

— Anne Frank

April 14th has the unhappy distinction of being the anniversary of Anne Frank’s death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

I’d always been moved by Frank’s insight, and by her overwhelming normal-ness in such an abnormal time.

I’ve always liked this quote, in particular, because the idealist in me wants to believe it.

Growing up in the post-war baby boom, WWII was still too raw a nerve in my youth – it wasn’t yet left to the history books. I read Diary of a Young Girl when I was young, and just wished that there could have been a different ending. Anne Frank and my mother were born only two months, and an entire world, apart, so there always seemed something a bit surreal to me when I was younger. In later years…