1 october- 29 october 1942
Anne opens her entry for October 1 by saying that she was terrified when the doorbell rang--she thought it was the Gestapo. It was not, but there are other fears. One of the employees, an older Jewish chemist, knows the building very well and they are always afraid that he might take a notion to look in the annexe. Anne is also frightened by the news she has heard from the outside: the Franks' Jewish friends are being hauled away by the dozens. News of the German concentration camps filters down to them, along with other atrocious German misdeeds.
On the night of October 20, all the residents have a scare. A carpenter comes to fill the fire extinguishers and is hammering on the landing opposite their cupboard door entrance. They settle down and try to be quiet as soon as they hear him, but then he starts to knock on their door. Everyone goes white as he begins pushing at the door to their secret annexe.
Anne's fear that their hiding place will be discovered, her overwhelming sense of loneliness, her concern that no one will ever understand her, and her struggle to respond constructively to news from the outside. Locked inside the annex, unable to go outside, Anne's cocoon of childhood innocence continues in some ways. Although she is learning a bit about the harder side of living, she does not have to see the terror that is going on outside. As such, she resolves to go about her life as cheerfully as she can, and not to focus too much on misery that she cannot change. As the diary progresses, Anne will gain a fuller understanding of genocide and struggle heroically to come to terms with it.
