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Holocaust Diary

Discussion in 'Massacres and Atrocities of the Second World War' started by Kelly War44, Jul 7, 2007.

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  1. Kelly War44

    Kelly War44 New Member

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    ECHOES OF ANNE FRANK IN JOURNAL OF GIRL WHO DIED IN GAS CHAMBERS
    RUTKA Laskier was 14 years old when she was murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. In the months before her death, Rutka, like Anne Frank in Amsterdam, kept a detailed diary documenting her deepest thoughts and fears. When she and her family - younger brother Henius, mother Dorka and father Yaakov - were moved by the Nazis from their home in the Polish town of Bedzin to a closed ghetto, she believed she would not survive and hid the notebook under a floorboard, telling only her friend Stanislawa Sapinska of its existence.
    Her last entry is for April 24, 1943, the day before the Laskiers were forced out.
    On August 1, 1943, the Jews of the Bedzin ghetto, including the Laskier family were deported to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in southern Poland. Rutka, Dorka and Henius, aged six, were gassed immediately. Yaakov, strong enough for hard labour, was spared death. He went on to marry again and fathered a daughter. He died in 1986. After the war, Stanislawa Sapinska returned in secret to the Laskiers' old home, now empty and plundered, and recovered Rutka's 60-page handwritten diary. Recently Stanislawa decided to make it available to the public and the English translation was published last month. As well as the atrocities she and her community endured since their town was occupied by the Nazis in September 1939, Rutka, like Anne Frank, wrote of the tribulations of an ordinary teen, about her romance with a boy called Janek and her insecurities over her appearance. This is Rutka's story.
    January 19, 1943...
    I CANNOT grasp that it is four years since this hell began. The days pass by quickly; every day the same frozen and oppressive boredom.
    January 25, 1943...
    NOTHING. As usual. Every day is the same, except that Mom gets upset and screams at me. Tomorrow I will have to settle things with Janek. I'll tell him that if he wants to be my friend, he has to be on time, or else adios!
    January 27, 1943...
    I HAD my photo taken. Although usually I don't look pretty in photographs, in reality I am very beautiful. I'm tall, thin, with nice legs, a thin waist, elongated hands but ugly fingernails. I have big black eyes, thick brown eyebrows and long eyelashes. Black hair, trimmed short and combed back, a pug nose, nicely outlined lips, snow-white teeth. I would like to pour out all the turmoil I am feeling inside, but I'm incapable. Sometimes I'm so depressed, that when I open my mouth it's only to sting someone.
    February 5, 1943...
    THE rope around us is getting tighter. Next month there should be a ghetto, a real one, surrounded by walls. In the summer it will be unbearable. To sit in a grey locked cage, without being able to see fields and flowers. I can't believe that one day I'll be able to leave the house without the yellow star. The little faith I had has been shattered. If God existed, He would not have permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with butt of guns or be shoved into sacks and gassed to death... Those who haven't seen this would never believe it. But it's the truth.
    February 6, 1943...
    SOMETHING has broken in me. When I pass by a German, everything shrinks in me. I don't know whether it's out of fear or hatred. Today, I recalled in detail the day of August 12, 1942 the mass round-up of Bedzin's Jews for deportation. We got up at 4am. There were thousands of people on the road. I looked beyond the fence and saw soldiers with machine guns aimed at the square in case someone tried to escape. People fainted, children cried. Judgment Day. It was terribly hot. Then, all of a sudden, it started pouring. The rain didn't stop. At 3pm the selection started. 1. meant returning home, 1a. going to labour, 2. meant going for further inspection and 3. deportation, in other words death. Mom, Dad and my brother were sent to group 1. I was sent to 1a. I was stunned. Salek, Linka and Niania already sat there. The weirdest thing was that we didn't cry AT ALL. Little children were lying on the wet grass. The policemen beat them ferociously and shot them. I sat there until 1am. Then I ran away. I jumped out of a window from the first floor of a small building, and nothing happened to me. My lips were bitten so bad that they bled. Oh, I forgot the most important thing. I saw how a soldier tore a baby, who was only a few months old, out of its mother's hands and bashed his head against an electric pylon. The baby's brain splashed on the wood. The mother went crazy. I'm 14, and I haven't seen much in my life, and I'm already so indifferent. Janek came by this afternoon. He blurted out he'd like it very much if he could kiss me. I said "maybe". But I won't let him. I'm afraid it would destroy something beautiful, pure. I'm also afraid that I'll be very disappointed.
    February 20, 1943...
    I HAVE a feeling that I'm writing for the last time. There is an Aktion "resettlement" of Jews. This is hell. I try to escape from thoughts of the next day, but they haunt me like nagging flies. I was foolish about Janek. My eyes have been opened. The only thing that matters to him is that his pants are ironed, how many cakes he ate at Frontag's coffee house and girls' legs.
    March 8, 1943...
    I MUST pull myself together and not wet my pillow with tears. I am sick and tired of the steady fear seen in everybody's faces. This fear clutches on to everyone and doesn't let go.
    April 24, 1943...
    THE sun is shining so brightly. Outside the windows apple trees and lilacs are blooming, and you have to sit in this suffocating and stinking room. The entire day I'm walking around the room, I have nothing to do.
    Rutka's Notebook has been published in English by Yad Vashem Publications. www.yadvashem.org
    If God existed, He would not have permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of toddlers be smashed with butts of guns or be shoved into sacks and gassed to death - RUTKA LASKIER, 14

    Beth Neil 07/07/2007
     
  2. brandon05

    brandon05 New Member

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    This was the first book that I ever read about the Holocaust. I think I have read it five or six times now. I would love to someday go see where she hid out. I believe that there is a museum now there? Has anyone ever went there?
     

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