Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Journal

ISBN-13: 9781250258120 / Angielski

Renia Spiegel

Opis

The long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's last days during the Holocaust, translated for the first time into English, with an introduction from American Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt.Renia Spiegel was a young girl from an upper-middle class Jewish family living on an estate in Stawki, Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. In the summer of 1939, Renia and her sister Elizabeth (née Ariana) were visiting their grandparents in Przemysl, right before the Germans invaded Poland. Like Anne Frank, Renia recorded her days in her beloved diary. She also filled it with beautiful poetry she composed herself. She grew up, fell in love, and survived until 1942, when she was rounded up by the invading Nazis and forced to move to the ghetto in Przemysl with all other Jews. Renia was in the ghetto for two weeks, where she documented the horrors she faced in her diary. On July 28, 1942, her boyfriend, Zygmunt found a hiding place for Renia and his parents in the attic of a three-story tenement house. A day later, Zygmunt took Elizabeth out of the ghetto to stay with the Polish Leszczynski family, where she remained safe. The next day, Renia and Zygmunt's parents were discovered hiding in the tenement house. They were murdered in front of the building by Nazis. Zygmunt survived to write the account of their death in her diary, and to finish Renia's story.Elizabeth, a child actress once called "the Polish Shirley Temple," was brought by the father of the family to reunite with her mother in Warsaw. They lived under the Nazis, only to flee again during the Warsaw uprising in 1944. Eventually they escaped to Austria and got an affidavit of support to come to America, thus Elizabeth lived to tell the tale of their family in Poland who suffered unspeakable tragedy.Elizabeth Bellak now lives in New York City. In Renia's Diary, parts of Elizabeth's own dramatic tale of survival are intertwined with her sister's heartbreaking story. It contextualizes the more lyrical unfolding of the diary itself and rounds out the story of the diary's survival. Renia's Diary is a significant historical and psychological document. The raw, yet beautiful account depicts Renia's angst through recordings of her daily life, and through her original poetry. It has been translated from the original Polish so the world can hear the story of her life and tragic death.

Recenzje

"[A] touching, poetic chronicle" -Los Angeles Times

"The publication of Renia's Diary offers a reminder of the power of bearing witness." -The New York Times

"A must-read." -Addison Independent

"A terribly poignant work that conveys the brutal reality of the time through intimate connection with a young person."-Kirkus Review

"Moving [and] riveting... this epic, layered story of survival serves as an important Holocaust document."-Publishers Weekly

"The diary is a lens into a life cut tragically short, and because the experience of her youth was all she had, her teenage angst takes on a poignancy it otherwise wouldn't have." -Jewish Book Council

"Renia Spiegel, a young girl so filled with a zest for life and possessed of an ability to describe in prose and in poetry the beauty of the world around her, was denied with one bullet what she so wanted: a future...Those who saved the diary and those who worked to bring it to print, have "rescued" her. They could not save her from a cruel fate. Nor could they give her that future she so desired. But they have rescued her from the added pain of having been forgotten."-from the Introduction by Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Holocaust History at Emory University and the author of Antisemitism: Here and Now

"Readers will naturally contrast Renia's diary with Anne Frank's. Renia was a little older and more sophisticated, writing frequently in poetry as well as in prose...Reading such different firsthand accounts reminds us that each of the Holocaust's millions of victims had a unique and dramatic experience."-Robin Shulman, Smithsonian magazine

O autorze

Spiegel, ReniaRENIA SPIEGEL was born to a Jewish family in Poland in 1924. She began her diary at the start of 1939, right before the invasion of Poland by the German and Soviet armies. In 1942, she was forced to move to a ghetto, but was smuggled out by her boyfriend and went into hiding with his parents. She was discovered by the Gestapo and murdered on July 30, 1942. Bellak, ElizabethELIZABETH BELLAK (née Ariana Spiegel), born in 1930, was a child actress once called "the Polish Shirley Temple." In 1942 she and her mother fled to Warsaw, and then to Austria, finally arriving in New York City, where she lives today.