Rutka's Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust

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Laskier, Rutka (2007). Rutka's Notebook: January–April 1943. Foreword by Dr Zahava Sherz; historical introduction by Dr Bella Gutterman. Jerusalem, Israel: Yad Vashem Publications. [12] Rutka Laskier was fourteen years old during the period when she kept her diary. For the most part, her entries covered a three month period between January 19th and April 24th, 1943. During this time, her family lived in the open ghetto of Bedzin, but would soon be forced to move into a closed ghetto nearby. Rutka’s diary ended at that point. THE INESCAPABLE FINAL SOLUTION This article does not have any sources. You can help Wikipedia by finding good sources, and adding them. ( August 2023) Epstein, Catherine (2010). Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. Oxford University Press. p.103. ISBN 978-0-19-954641-1. By December 1941, deportations from Prague to the Theresienstadt ghetto had begun, and the Ginz family was gradually broken up. Petr was transferred to a concentration camp in October 1942, once he attained 14. Two years later, he was deported to Auschwitz and was murdered in the gas chambers.

Later she wrote: "The rope around us is getting tighter and tighter. I'm turning into an animal waiting to die." Her final entry is brief: "I'm very bored. The entire day I'm walking around the room. I have nothing to do." The Germans came to Norway in 1940. Two years later, Ruth was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. On arrival she was led straight to the gas chambers.

Walking in the footsteps of Jewish Będzin means constantly taking steps between what may or must be imagined and what has been saved, or restored, or recreated.

a b c d e " 'Polish Anne Frank' diary revealed. 14-year-old's memoirs given to Yad Vashem by victim's friend after 64 years - Jerusalem Post | HighBeam Research". 2016-05-05. Archived from the original on 2016-05-05 . Retrieved 2023-07-25. With help from Sapińska's nephew, he obtained a photocopy of the diary and was instrumental in the publishing of its Polish-language edition. Its publication by Yad Vashem Publications was commemorated with a ceremony in Jerusalem by Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority), Israel's Holocaust museum, on 4 June 2007, in which Zahava Scherz took part. At this ceremony, Sapińska also donated the original diary to Yad Vashem. [16] Tanya was the youngest of five children in the Savicheva family. She had two sisters, Nina and Zhenya, and two brothers, Mikhail and Leka. The family was going to spend the summer of 1941 in the countryside but the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union ruined their plans. Only Mikhial left earlier to join the partisans while the rest of family stayed in Leningrad. They all worked hard to support the army. Her mother sewed uniforms, Leka worked as a plane operator at the Admiralty Plant, Zhenya worked at the munitions factory, Nina worked at the construction of city defenses, and Uncle Vasya and Uncle Lesha served in the anti-aircraft defense. Tanya, then 11 years old, dug trenches and put out firebombs. The diary of Rutka Laskier, a 14-year-old Jewish girl writing in 1943 just before her deportation to Auschwitz, was released by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, in cooperation with Rutka’s family. More than 60 years later, her words provide a rare and authentic perspective of history and tragedy, offering both a daily account of life in the Polish ghetto of Bedzin and the memoir of a teenager trapped in the the Holocaust.

It must have been difficult for Rutka to come to grips with the fact that her childhood was over and that she was in a struggle for her life. She realized that precarious nature of her situation when she wrote, “The town is already empty. Almost everyone lives in Kamionka. We will probably move there this week.” A few days later, her fears came true. Her family was moved into the closed ghetto. She gave her diary to a Christian friend for safe-keeping. A few months later, she was deported to Auschwitz to her death. Rutka’s reflections from April 24th turned out to be the last of her words to be preserved. Hailed in the international press as the ”Polish Anne Frank,” RUTKA’S NOTEBOOK was unveiled in Jerusalem in spring 2007. The diary chronicles the horrors Rutka witnesses in Bedzin, juxtaposed and intertwined with the private, everyday thoughts and dreams of a young girl growing up – anywhere.

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Publication of diary[edit] The manuscript, as edited by Stanisław Bubin, was published in the Polish language by a Polish publisher in early 2006. In June 2007, Yad Vashem Publications published English and Hebrew translations of the diary, entitled Rutka's Notebook: January–April 1943. Her diary was recovered by her sister Nina, who had survived, unknown to Tanya and her family, when she returned to Leningrad after the war ended. Her short diary was presented as evidence of Nazi atrocities during the Nuremberg Trials. Tanya’s diary is now displayed at the Museum of Leningrad History. Hélène Berr Time passed and I forgot about Rutka Laskier. A few days ago, I found a message in my mailbox with the question: íDid you have time to read the diary of the Polish Anne Frank?ë After wit­ness­ing the beat­ing and humil­i­a­tion of a dig­ni­fied Jew­ish man, Berr joins a secret net­work to save Jew­ish chil­dren from depor­ta­tion. Berr was caught in 1944 and was sent to Bergen-Belsen where she died days before the British liberated the camps. She was 23 years old.

Miriam was born in Poland in 1924 but her mother was an American, which gave her family a privilege, because Jews with American citizenship could be exchanged for German prisoners of war. While hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported to their deaths, Miriam and her family were held at an internment camp in France, waiting for the transfer that would eventually bring them to the US. Diaries like Ruska's take on added significance as Holocaust survivors are aging. One day, there will be no survivors left to give first-person accounts of life during the Holocaust.The rope around is getting tighter and tighter, Rutka wrote in 1943, shortly before her deportation. ”I’m turning into an animal waiting to die.” The diary begins on 19 January with the entry "I cannot grasp that it is already 1943, four years since this hell began."[1] One of the final entries says "If only I could say, it's over, you die only once... But I can't, because despite all these atrocities, I want to live, and wait for the following day."[1] Rutka, en cambio, sabe bien cuál es su destino, sabe bien dónde acabará. Por ello, no merece la pena malgastar el tiempo escribiendo sobre lo que desea hacer cuando el conflicto cese. Es este contexto en el que las palabras de Rutka se amontonan. Al contrario que Frank, entra y sale constantemente de su domicilio; discute con sus padres por su insistencia y control constantes; también viaja para ver a los amigos; cree en el amor, aunque no sabe con certeza qué se siente al estar enamorada. En definitiva: se entrega de lleno al poco tiempo que le queda de vida. — In this excerpt dated Feb. 5, 1943, Rutka describes how all of the Jews in her town were being forced to move to a ghetto. Also, Jews were not allowed to leave their homes without a yellow star sewn to their clothing:

The diary was authenticated by Yad Vashem, which has now published it as Rutka's Notebook, in Hebrew and English. Rutka's father, Yaakov, was the only member of the family to survive the camp. He moved to Israel and had a new family. He died in 1986.

Historical records matching Rutka Laskier

Writing on February 5 1943, she said: "I simply can't believe that one day I will be allowed to leave this house without the yellow star. Or even that this war will end one day. If this happens I will probably lose my mind from joy. And I really did enjoy the diary, as much as you can enjoy something that breaks your heart. It doesn't matter how many times I read about it, I still cannot wrap my brain around the Holocaust. Rutka's story is, in some senses, harder to read than Anne's. While Anne had to stay hidden from the Nazi's, Rutka had to interact with them first hand, and her diary tells of some incredibly disturbing incidents as her family is forced to move to a ghetto and go through "selections" where you don't know if you will end up going home or being sent to a concentration camp. Anne Frank wasn’t the only teenager who lost her childhood to war. Thousands of children and teenagers across Europe found their freedoms curtailed, their innocence lost, and their lives torn apart when the Second World War broke out. Probably hundreds of them kept diaries where they documented their everyday lives, their sufferings, their hopes. Only a few dozens of these secret diaries have been discovered after the war ended, and fewer still actually got published. The Dairy of Anne Frank is the most famous and the most widely read of all holocaust diaries. But it would be unfair to forget the rest. Rutka Laskier