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"I Am So Longing . . ." Anne became a young woman. "Each time I have a period—and that has only been three times—I have a feeling that in spite of all the pain, unpleasantness and nastiness, I have a sweet secret . . ." By her 15th birthday she had fallen in love with Peter van Daan. In the evenings she would visit him in his tiny attic, and the two adolescents would talk for hours, hold hands and occasionally kiss goodnight. Anne was not sure how to behave ("I am so longing for a kiss, the kiss that is so long in coming"), and was relieved when her father counseled restraint; In the last entries of her diary, amid careful reports of what the fugitives ate and striking sketches of how they lived, there rises a shy peal of ecstasy at the discovery of love.
But for Anne and Peter there was no time. In August 1944, the Gestapo raided the Annex. All its occupants were sent to concentration camps, and of the eight, only Mr. Frank returned. In March 1945, two months before the liberation of The Netherlands, Anne Frank, 15, died in Belsen of malnutrition.