Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Journal

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2019 | Biography | History & Politics

Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Journal by Renia Spiegel, with her sister Elizabeth Bellak

This is the first time it has been translated into English. It covers 2 years in the life of a 16-year-old Jewish girl living in Poland before and during the German occupation. In it, she records her life, falling in love, and life in a Jewish ghetto, before she was cruelly executed.

She had given the diary to her boyfriend for safekeeping. He recorded the events of her death at the hands of the Nazis. He gave the diary to a friend before he was sent away to a concentration camp and it was returned to him after the war when he was living in the United States. He eventually gave it to her mother in the early 1950s.

Renia's sister, Elizabeth, was unaware of its existence until after her mother passed away in 1969. Elizabeth put it in a safety deposit box for many years because she couldn't bear to read it. However, knowing the significance of it, she eventually had it published and includes her remarks and memories of the events in an epilogue.

(I received an advanced reader copy from www.goodreads.com. it will not be released to the public until September 2019.)

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Published by

St Martin's Press

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Jewish Holocaust Diary Poland Polish Nazi History WWII World War 2 World War II Poetry Journal Teen