Introduction by Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denial July 15, 1942, Wednesday Remember this day; remember it well. You will tell generations to come. Since 8 o'clock today we have been shut away in the ghetto. I live here now. The world is separated from me and I'm separated from the world. Renia is a young girl who dreams of becoming a poet. But Renia is Jewish, she lives in Poland and the year is 1939. When Russia and Germany invade her country, Renia's world shatters. Separated from her mother, her life takes on a new urgency as she flees Przemysl to escape night bombing raids, observes the disappearances of other Jewish families and, finally, witnesses the creation of the ghetto. But alongside the terror of war, there is also great beauty, as she begins to find her voice as a writer and falls in love for the first time. She and the boy she falls in love with, Zygmunt, share their first kiss a few hours before the Nazis reach her hometown. And it is Zygmunt who writes the final, heartbreaking entry in Renia's diary. Recently rediscovered after seventy years, Renia's Diary is already being described as a classic of Holocaust literature. Written with a clarity and skill that is reminiscent of Anne Frank, it is an extraordinary testament to both the horrors of war, and to the life that can exist even in the darkest times.
About the Author
Renia Spiegel was born in Uhryńkowce in Tarnopol province on June 18, 1924, the daughter of Rose and Bernard Spiegel. Bernard Spiegel was a land owner of an estate during this time. Renia’s younger sister by six years, Ariana, was a child star and by the age of 8 was performing on the famous stage of "Cyrulik Warszawski". She was featured in numerous films shot before the outbreak of the Second World War, including a part in director, Michael Waszyński’s film,Gehenna(1938).Renia starts her diary in January 1939. At the outbreak of war, Renia is 15 years old. Together with her sister, Ariana, she stays in Przemyśl with their grandparents. Renia writes moving poems which are sometimes featured in the school newspaper. She also writes a series of poems in a hand-illustrated and beautifully bound booklet. Her diary mainly describes her loneliness living in war-torn Poland without a mother, her first love (she kisses her boyfriend for the first time four hours before the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union), and everyday life during the Soviet and then German occupations.The diary describes her fears and terror during the creation of the ghetto in Przemyśl. She writes of the humiliation she experiences first-hand and witnesses on the streets of Przemyśl. She writes up until the last day of her short life. She is shot on the street of the ghetto a week after her 18th birthday.This nearly seven hundred-page journal by Renia Spiegel, which spans the years 1939 to the summer of 1942, presents a powerful insight into the life of a young woman, whose life was tragically cut short shy of her eighteenth birthday. The diary is an eyewitness account of the horrors of day-to-day life during the Nazi occupation. There is incredible maturity in her observations and insights. Her account of her personal life is poignant, heart breaking, and often amusing with her expression of adolescent infatuation exposing the raw emotion of a teenager. This powerful diary is not only a primary historical source of the Holocaust, but also a true and outstanding work of literature.
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