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A Long-Forgotten Holocaust Diary
(Washington Post) Rick Noack - As the Nazis strengthened their grip on Europe in 1939, Renia Spiegel, a 14-year-old Jewish girl in Poland, began to keep a diary. For more than three years, Renia documented her life in more than 650 handwritten and densely filled pages. On July 30, 1942, Renia, then 18, was executed by the Nazis after they discovered her hideout in the city of Przemysl. Her translated diary - long kept locked in a vault - is to be published in the U.S. on Tuesday as Renia's Diary: A Holocaust Diary. "Przemysl was attacked. We had to flee. The three of us escaped: me, [my sister Elizabeth] and Grandpa," she wrote. "Granny stayed behind." In the subsequent three years, Renia documented their family's transfer into a ghetto, along with thousands of other Jews who were given only 24 hours to move. As the Nazis were preparing to transfer thousands of Jews to a death camp, Renia's boyfriend, Zygmunt Schwarzer, arranged a desperate attempt to rescue the sisters. He survived and preserved Renia's diary.