saturday, may 1, 1943

dearest kitty,

yesterday was dussel's birthday. at first he acted as if he didn't want to celebrate it, but when miep arrived with a large shopping bag overflowing with gifts, he was as excited as a little kid. his darling' 'lotje" has sent him eggs, butter, cookies, lemonade, bread, cognac, spice cake, flowers, oranges, chocolate, books and writing paper. he piled his presents on a table and displayed them for no fewer than three days, the silly old goat!

you mustn't get the idea that he's starving. we found bread, cheese, jam and eggs in his cupboard. it's absolutely disgraceful that dussel, whom we've treated with such kindness and whom we took in to save from destruction, should stuff himself behind our backs and not give us anything. after all, we've shared all we had with him! but what's worse, in our opinion, is that he's so stingy with respect to mr. kleiman, mr. voskuijl and bep. he doesn't give them a thing. in dussel's view the oranges that kleiman so badly needs for his sick stomach will benefit his own stomach even more.

tonight the guns have been banging away so much that i've already had to gather up my belongings four times. today i packed a suitcase wl f;the stuff i'd need in case we had to flee, but as mather correctly noted,

"where would you go?"

all of holland is being punishe or the workers' strikes. martial law has been declared, and everyone is going to get one less butter coupon. what naughty children.

i washed mother's hair this evening, which is no easy task these days. we have to use a very sticky liquid cleanser because there's no more shampoo. besides that, moms had a hard time combing her hair because the family comb has only ten teeth left.

yours, anne