Rutka's Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust

Product Information

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] From to time to time, a Dutch publisher will ask me to write a preface or an afterword to a book he plans to publish. I have written prefaces for authors as different as Machiavelli, Stendhal and Boris Vian.

The little faith I used to have has been completely shattered. If G-d existed, he would certainly not permit that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces and the heads of little toddlers be smashed by the butt of guns." Rutka's father was the only member of the family who survived the Holocaust. Following World War II, he emigrated to Israel, where he remarried and had another daughter, Zahava Scherz. He died in 1986. [10] According to Zahava Scherz, interviewed in the BBC documentary The Secret Diary of the Holocaust (broadcast in January 2009), [11] he never told Scherz about Rutka until she discovered a photo album when she herself was 14, which contained a picture of Rutka with her younger brother. Scherz asked her father who they were, and he answered her truthfully, but never spoke of it again. She went on to explain that she only learned of the existence of Rutka's diary in 2006, and she expressed how much it has meant to her to be able to get to know her half-sister through Rutka’s words. [12] Diary [ edit ] Apart from these things, I was thankful for the reminder of what a horrible atrocity happened. We must educate ourselves and never forget, so history doesn’t repeat itself. As humans, we must understand our frailty, the potential pros and cons to our emotions, motifs, and the power we can hold over one another. It is also important to recognize the roles that diversity and religion play in society, discrimination, hate, and genuine kindness. We cannot lump some all of one party together as at fault, we can’t group all people together because they belong to the same race, religion, social status, etc. And we cannot blame those alive now for what they’re ancestors did. Rutka Laskier’s notebook, including an introduction by a family member, contains no more than than one thousand words. The comparison with Anne Frank seemed to me slightly unfair to Anne Frank. Besides the fact that Anne Frank has become a cliché—sometimes an unpleasant cliché: I’m not sure what to think about Anne Frank, the Musical, which will open in Spain in the near future—Anne’s diary is not only powerful from a historical point of view, but also from a literary point of view.Rutka's Notebook is one of the many diaries & journals written during a dark period in history, the Holocaust, and rediscovered many years later thanks to a former friend coming forth with the notebook. Her book covers the 4 month period she spent in the ghettos of Bedzin before her deportation to Auschwitz, which she did not survive. But her writing lends another voice that has awoken from the genocide, cementing her legacy in both literature and Jewish culture. Rutka has been dubbed as the "Polish Anne Frank", which I can see the similarities when reading her journal. She was one of the millions of children who had to learn to grow up fast as her freedoms were stripped and forced into captivity by the Nazis. She details both her budding womanhood: her physical and emotional changes, confusion on love; while noting her fears and hatred going on outside. She mentions the violence and sadism the Nazis acted on the civilians, her poor working conditions in the shops, her questioning of God's existence during the crisis and her yearn to be freed from the terror. 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.

For four months in 1943, Rutka Laskier kept a diary. She lived in the Polish town of Bedzin, which had fallen under German occupation at the beginning of World War II. She was 14 years old at the time and recorded mostly her feelings regarding her friends and the daily details of her personal life. Her self-image was in a constant state of flux, as is common for teens, and this colored the way she interpreted all of her relationships. The focus of her writing was so intensely introspective that it might seem at first as if she didn’t realize that she was living in the shadow of Auschwitz during the depths of the Final Solution. Although she may have appeared at times to ignore the larger context of her situation, she was probably much more aware than she let on. Hélène Berr started writing at the age of 21. She wrote about her everyday life in Paris, her studies, her friends, and her growing affection for one young man. Gradually, she began to write about the Nazi occupation and the growing restrictions imposed by the occupiers. Because the Final Solution was never made explicit to the public, Berr was initially unaware of the gas chambers and the mass killings that were taking place. She wondered naively why women and especially children were included in the deportations to the camps. People have such old-fashioned ideas about friendship between adolescent boys and girls. They are incapable of grasping the new world.”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. [12] Printings [ edit ] 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. The last entry is dated April 24 1943, at which point she hid the notebook in the basement of the house her family were living in, a building that had been confiscated by the Nazis to be part of the Bedzin ghetto. In August that year, the teenager and her family were transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp and it is thought she was killed immediately. Etty Hillesum– wrote a diary in Amsterdam and Camp Westerbork ( Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis)