Last November I received a letter from a publisher, asking if I was interested in writing a preface to Rutka Laskier’s diary. I had no clue who exactly Rutka Laskier was, but since I knew the translator of the diary personally, I didn’t want to say no right away. Her diary was recovered by her sister Nina, who had survived, unknown to Tanya and her family, when she returned to Leningrad after the war ended. Her short diary was presented as evidence of Nazi atrocities during the Nuremberg Trials. Tanya’s diary is now displayed at the Museum of Leningrad History. Hélène Berr Anne Frank wasn’t the only teenager who lost her childhood to war. Thousands of children and teenagers across Europe found their freedoms curtailed, their innocence lost, and their lives torn apart when the Second World War broke out. Probably hundreds of them kept diaries where they documented their everyday lives, their sufferings, their hopes. Only a few dozens of these secret diaries have been discovered after the war ended, and fewer still actually got published. The Dairy of Anne Frank is the most famous and the most widely read of all holocaust diaries. But it would be unfair to forget the rest. Rutka Laskier

Discovery of Laskier's diary[edit] In 1943, while writing the diary, Laskier shared it with Stanisława Sapińska (21 years old, at that time), whom she had befriended after Laskier's family moved into a home owned by Sapińska's Roman Catholic family, which had been confiscated by the Nazis so that it could be included in the ghetto. Si Dios existiera no permitiría que seres humanos fuesen arrojados vivos a hornos crematorios ni que aplastaran las cabezas de niños pequeños a golpes de culata o que los metieran en sacos para que murieran gaseados. Al final, esto se parece a un cuento de abuela: quienes no lo hayan visto no lo van a creer, pero no es ningún cuento, es la verdad.» News of the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and the brutal killings of Jews, filtered through to her.

Gunvor Hofmo kept Ruth's diaries and much of her correspondence. She originally tried to get her diary published, and approached a publisher but was rejected. It wasn’t until after the death of Gunvor Hofmo, in 1995, when a Norwegian author and poet discovered the diary, and impressed by the journal’s literary values, got it published in 2007. The book was translated to English in 2009. Philip Slier Writing on February 5 1943, she said: "I simply can't believe that one day I will be allowed to leave this house without the yellow star. Or even that this war will end one day. If this happens I will probably lose my mind from joy.

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. I related to her so much as a teen - much of her diary is the daily ins and outs of friendships at that age - worries about boys and your parents. And then mixed in are some incredibly deep thoughts about happiness and freedom and life itself. She felt so real to me, as if I was secretly listening in on her telling someone about her life. I have a feeling that I am writing for the last time,” Rutka wrote on February 20, 1943, as Nazi soldiers began gathering Jews outside her home for deportation. ”I wish it would end already! This torment, this is hell. I try to escape from these thoughts of the next day, but they keep haunting me like nagging flies. If only I could say, it’s over, you only die once…but I can’t, because despite all these atrocities, I want to live, and wait for the following day.”The diary, which has been authenticated by Holocaust scholars and survivors, has been compared to the diary of Anne Frank, the best known Holocaust-era diary. Coincidentally, Rutka Laskier was born the same day as Anne Frank, [3] and, in both cases, of their entire families, only their fathers survived the war. [17] Publication of the diary [ edit ] After wit­ness­ing the beat­ing and humil­i­a­tion of a dig­ni­fied Jew­ish man, Berr joins a secret net­work to save Jew­ish chil­dren from depor­ta­tion. Berr was caught in 1944 and was sent to Bergen-Belsen where she died days before the British liberated the camps. She was 23 years old. And I really did enjoy the diary, as much as you can enjoy something that breaks your heart. It doesn't matter how many times I read about it, I still cannot wrap my brain around the Holocaust. Rutka's story is, in some senses, harder to read than Anne's. While Anne had to stay hidden from the Nazi's, Rutka had to interact with them first hand, and her diary tells of some incredibly disturbing incidents as her family is forced to move to a ghetto and go through "selections" where you don't know if you will end up going home or being sent to a concentration camp. In this excerpt dated Feb. 5, 1943, Rutka describes how all of the Jews in her town were being forced to move to a ghetto. Also, Jews were not allowed to leave their homes without a yellow star sewn to their clothing: Diaries like Ruska's take on added significance as Holocaust survivors are aging. One day, there will be no survivors left to give first-person accounts of life during the Holocaust.