This composition is dedicated to Anne Frank's father, Otto, the only member of the Frank family to survive the Nazi death camps. These moving, courageous and hopeful words about suffering and faith were written by the 15-year-old Anne Frank after the most frightening night of two years in hiding when burglars broke in and the family believed that they had been denounced.

The première of this composition took place at the Temple Sinai in Toronto under the direction of Ben Steinberg. Morawetz invited Victor Kugler, the man who hid the Frank family in Amsterdam during World War II, to this performance. This work has been performed many times since and was highly praised by the New York critic of the Saturday Review, Irving Kolodin, after the performance in Detroit, June 13, 1981 by the Elmer Iseler Singers.

The work starts with the question which was so strongly on Anne Frank's mind: "Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now?" The other voices join and the tenors follow in another passage asking: "Who made us Jews so different from all other people?"

The atmosphere during the two years of hiding is expressed by the words "We are in chains, chained to one spot, without any rights, but with a thousand duties."

The next sentence is treated antiphonally between the basses and the upper three voices: "We Jews must not show our feelings, we must be brave, we must be strong and accept all inconveniences." The music grows in excitement until it reaches its dynamic climax with the words "we must trust in God." Here the music changes suddenly from its previous slow tempo into an animated Allegro with the exclamation: "Sometime this terrible war will be over" and "surely the time will come when we are people again and not just Jews."

The nervous contrapuntal treatment of this Allegro section ends with a slow, dramatic fortissimo statement of the opening question "Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now?"

A very tender phrase in the basses, answered by the other voices, expresses Anne's hope for survival and her strong religious feelings: "It is God that made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us again."

After a short fast section ("When this war, this terrible war will be over") the slow pensive mood returns with the hopeful words: "Then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example."

The last, particularly expressive and moving part of this work is based on Anne Frank's belief that all the suffering during the inhuman and barbaric persecution of Jews by the Nazis will not have happened in vain. She writes: "Who knows, it might be our religion from which the world and all people learn good and for that reason - and that reason only - we have to suffer now."