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Renia's Diary
Cover of Renia's Diary
Renia's Diary
A Young Girl's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust
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Brought to you by Penguin.

Introduction by Deborah E. 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, Renia's Diary also includes a prologue and epilogue by Renia's sister Elizabeth, as well as an introduction by Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of Denial. It is an extraordinary testament to both the horrors of war, and to the life that can exist even in the darkest times.

Brought to you by Penguin.

Introduction by Deborah E. 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, Renia's Diary also includes a prologue and epilogue by Renia's sister Elizabeth, as well as an introduction by Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of Denial. It is an extraordinary testament to both the horrors of war, and to the life that can exist even in the darkest times.

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About the Author-
  • Renia Spiegel was born in eastern Poland in 1924. In January 1939 she began to write a diary. When war broke out she and her sister were living in Przemysl with her grandparents. Separated from her mother by the war, the next few years saw her living under first Soviet, then Nazi occupation, and the creation of the ghetto. In the summer of 1942, Renia was forced into hiding to escape the liquidation of the ghetto. A few days later, her hiding place was discovered and she was shot; she was just eighteen.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    June 24, 2019
    This moving diary by Spiegel (1924–1942), who was killed in the Holocaust, chronicles her life in Poland from January 31, 1939, before the German-Soviet occupation, to July 25, 1942, when she went into hiding from the Nazis. Spiegel composed most of the diary while living with her grandparents in the city of Przemysl
    , while her parents worked elsewhere in Poland. Spiegel comes off as a typical teenager in many of these pages, concerned with friends and parties. Her entries include a mix of poetry and detailed narrative in which she writes of missing her mother and loving her boyfriend Zygmund, whom she calls “my beating heart.” (Zygmund, readers later learn, kept her diary safe after the war and, in the 1950s, delivered it to her mother in New York.) As the war advances, Spiegel’s anxiety becomes palpable. She writes about wearing an armband with a blue star, fearing deportation, and moving into a ghetto. “Terrible times are coming,” she predicts in the diary’s final entry. The book concludes with a riveting epilogue and commentary by Spiegel’s younger sister, Elizabeth, about the help she and her mother received after Spiegel’s death from Catholic Poles who facilitated their escape. This family’s epic, layered story of survival serves as an important Holocaust document.

  • New York Times At a moment when basic agreement over simple truths has become a political battleground and history a weapon, the publication of the book, Renia's Diary, offers a reminder of the power of bearing witness
  • Daily Telegraph Extraordinary... It is a privilege to read these pages, and an impertinence to review them. Renia Spiegel was an astonishingly brave girl who developed into a remarkable young woman. (5* review)
  • Smithsonian Magazine Astonishing... A new invaluable contribution to Holocaust literature
  • Irish Independent It is as though the murderous machine of Hitler's vision and the barbarity being brought upon her people couldn't silence the integrity of her voice... Renia emerges as a poet of real lyricism and emotional heft, which makes her demise all the more tragic
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