Holocaust diary of young girl emerges after 60 yrs

[maddezmom]

Source: Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A Polish woman who for 60 years had been holding onto the diary of a young Jewish girl killed by the Nazis in 1943, presented the journal to Israel's Holocaust memorial on Monday.

"I have a feeling that I'm writing for the last time. There is a (round-up) in town. I'm not allowed to go out and I'm going crazy, imprisoned in my own house," 14-year-old Rutka Laskier wrote while living in a Jewish ghetto in Bedzin, Poland on February 20, 1943.

Laskier hid her diary under the floorboards of her house before her family was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp.

It was later found by Stanislawa Sapinska, a Bedzin native, who lived in the house before the German occupation and had befriended Laskier.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070604/wl_nm/israel_holocaust_diary_dc;_ylt=Aj_Ygw0uax4xx2AryijZOYlm.3QA

[THUNDER HANDS]

1. wow

I'm surprised it took this long to get uncovered. I wonder why the woman was holding onto it for so long.

[Donnachaidh]

2. they said she was her friend

Considering the girl died in the camps she might have wanted to keep something of her near.

[SteppingRazor]

7. She says why she kept it right in the story...

Sapinska said she did not regret keeping the diary hidden.

"(I kept it to myself) because it was a precious souvenir that I read many times," she said.

Two years ago Sapinska told her nephew about the book and he convinced her to make it public.

"He said I can't hold on to it. It's history. It's the history of a nation," Sapinska said.

[ck4829]

3. K&R

[benh57]

40. K&R what?

What?

Kernighan and Ritchie ?
Kidnap & Ransom?

Appears to be a DU specific term.. Never seen 'K&R' used on web forums before, and i read quite a lot of them.

[XemaSab]

43. Kicked (to the top of the forum) and Recommended (for the Greatest Page)

Welcome to DU! :D

[zonkers]

4. Holocaust? What Holocaust?

[barb162]

28. The deliberate extermination of 6 million Jews during World War II

Holocaust (from the Greek holókauston from olon "completely" and kauston "burnt")... also known as Ha-Shoah is the term generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist regime in Germany led by Adolf Hitler.<1>


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

[Tiberius]

37. Um...

I think the poster you're replying to forgot the SARCASM tag!

[heliarc]

49. Or...

At least we hope they forgot to.

[Gregorian]

5. How many Iraqi children are writing diaries of fear?

And it's ever more so painful and angering to think that regardless of the reason why, children are in fear of death right now.

Is that not what we were to learn? Those who cause these wars are to be the lowest among us.

[GrumpyGreg]

8. Ridiculous---there is no comparison.

[EFerrari]

14. So explain how one human life is worth more than another human life. nt

[LeftishBrit]

31. One human life isn't worth more than another life...

but there is a difference between war and genocide.

War is one of the greatest evils, and might well mean the end of the world one of these days. But I think that the deliberate and systematic targeting of one ethnic group for extinction is in its own category.

There actually is the danger right now of something comparable to the Holocaust, and that's in Darfur if nothing is done about it. But I think that comparing *all* wars to the Holocaust cheapens the impact of the Holocaust, and also interferes with our ability to oppose war effectively.

[EFerrari]

36. I understand your concern. But as I've said in another post

the term "genocide" has been politicized. It isn't genocide unless my corporate-controlled government says it is.

And that is wrong.

[SayWhatYo]

48. Wrong, It isn't genocide because it doesn't fit the accepted definition of genocide.

We can change attempt to change the definition of words to fit whatever agenda or standpoint we have, but I don't think I want to go down that road.

*btw, this doesn't take away the horrors that the Iraqi children are going through. I'm just saying that it isn't genocide and we need to be careful when redefining definition of words to our views.

[spotbird]

50. A person is just as dead either

way, the child is just as afraid, and in this case the war is equally wrong. That's just talking about Iraq.

Then there is Sudan, recently in Rwanda etc.

The point isn't to minimize the suffering of the Holocaust victims, only to remind that this sort of tragedy has, and is, repeated, even at this moment.

[Gregorian]

15. True. They aren't being targeted. We aren't rounding them up. But it IS war.

But children are dying. And from their perspective there is little difference.

I certainly would be fearful being there. I guarantee children are terrified. After all, it is war.

[ngant17]

17. Iraq is not much different than being occupied by Nazis

Iraqi children are being rounded up, but not on the level of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Iraqi civilians are being interred in concentration camps like Abu Ghraib. Torture and rape are rampant in Iraq prisons. There are over 50 known prisons and detention centers in Iraq.

[mitchum]

18. There are indeed genocidal plans afoot in Iraq

[Onlooker]

27. It can be compared to Darfur, not Iraq

Iraq is a war, a wrong war, with all the crimes of war, but it's not genocide. Darfur is a better analogy.

[mitchum]

30. The occupation of Iraq is softening up the ground for genocide, but...

not by US forces

[ima_sinnic]

19. "ridiculous"? living in fear for your life was somehow more acute then?

having a childhood filled with terror has got to be a nightmare of the highest magnitude, whether one is a Jewish child in Poland in 1943 or an Iraqi child in 2007.

[Divine Discontent]

20. once again..

someone here paints a broad brush stroke by saying something absolute, when they don't think about the obvious travesty,(children are dying needlessly in a hostile situation is the easiest but there's other smaller similarities like the B*sh family is involved in both situations) and instead say "NO comparison"...

www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable <<-- check it out, top '08 stuff

[David__77]

21. There is for those being killed and maimed and deported.

Masses of people are de facto being deported into ethno-religious ghettoes. But the truly unlucky are those killed and injured. The fact is that a nation is being destroyed.

For various reasons, "Nazi analogies" can be unhelpful and so I would say to avoid them generally, but sometimes the similarities are real. And we should recognize it when we see it, because it must never be allowed to happen again.

[ixat]

29. I'd go with a Bosnia analogy.

There have always been wars, and there will be wars for a long time to come, but Holocaust comparisons are not to be bandied about lightly. There are similarities between a pileup on I-91 and the Battle of Stalingrad, but...

[spotbird]

51. An accident is not an act of war. nt

[bobbolink]

25. You get to choose whether you learn from it or not.

You can be grumpy, but choosing to be in the 30% is just......

[Occulus]

38. .

:spray:

[FlaGranny]

41. The kids don't know

about genocide. The kids just fear they're going to die or their parents are going to die. It makes no difference to the kids what the root causes are. They're just afraid. Their fear cannot be compartmentalized into the underlying reasons for it. Their fear is just as acute, no matter the source.

[0007]

42. According to who?

All men are created equal, 'eh? Or is it that some are more equal?

[Recursion]

9. Who knows... lots of blogging though

And thanks to the distributed nature of the Net it will be much, much more difficult for the authors of these dark times to hide their work from history

[Enrique]

10. excellent point

Iraqi children are just as human as this girl was.

Some find it difficult to relate to the Iraqi children in the same way they can relate to European children, or their own children, but kudos to you for reminding us of our common humanity.

[anitar1]

22. Children in the West Bank have suffered terribly , too. War mongers .

hav no thought for children, ever.I wonder if any of these children even know how to write. Schooling is difficult for these kids to obtain.

[EFerrari]

13. Junior called Darfur genocide. Silence on Iraq and Palestine. n/t

/oops

[LeftishBrit]

32. What's happening in Darfur is genocide; what's happening in Iraq and Palestine is war

All war is terrible, but genocide is the most extreme

[EFerrari]

35. The term "genocide" has become politicized.

And the US, the world's bully, now decides when it applies. I take no pleasure in saying this about my government.

[bobbolink]

24. I'm of the age when we used to talk about "how could the Germans have let that happen?"

Yet, here we are.....

:cry:

[TankLV]

44. Me too. I no longer ask myself such questions. I is strikiningly illustrated every day for me...

here in the "good" ol USA...

[JI7]

34. it seems to be a case of lessons learned, but ignored time and time again

in which case it's worse since we know it's happening but don't care enough to do anything about it.

[David Zephyr]

6. K&R.

I would hope that everyone who has the opportunity could visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.

K&R

[Scairp]

11. Here is another link

The story is fleshed out a little more and includes photos.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/tacoma/24hour/world/story/78235.html

Edited to include another link, even better.

http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/site/en/weizman.asp?pi=422&doc_id=4592&interID=4578&sq=4578

[EFerrari]

12. K&R. Thank you, brave soul.

[sakabatou]

16. Wow

[Name removed]

23. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pansypoo53219]

26. i just read anne franks diary

it was quite moving. i just hope i can read this new one.

[LeftishBrit]

33. k&r

[maddezmom]

39. As the Nazis and Adolescence Took Hold (exerpts)

By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA
Published: June 10, 2007
MORE than 60 years ago, as she awaited the final horrors of the Holocaust in the Bedzin ghetto of Poland, a 14-year-old Jewish girl named Rutka Laskier committed her thoughts to a diary. Although the journal covers only a few months in 1943, its arresting combination of detail — from Nazi atrocities to adolescent infatuation — has drawn comparisons to the celebrated diary of Anne Frank.

Recovered after the war by a childhood friend of Rutka’s, the document was publicly unveiled last week at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum. It has been published in English as “Rutka’s Notebook,” by Yad Vashem Publications. More information is available at www.yadvashem.org. Excerpts follow.

THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

•

The 60-page diary’s first entry.

Jan. 19, 1943

I cannot grasp that it is already 1943, four years since this hell began. The days pass by quickly; each day looks just like the previous one. Every day it’s the same frozen and oppressive boredom. There is great excitement in town. A lot of people are about to leave for “the land of our forefathers,” to Palestine. Among these happy people are Syma, Bomek and Ran. I don’t know how to explain the feeling that overcame me when I learned about it. It must have been mixed feelings of joy and jealousy. We too live in the hope of getting papers.

more:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/weekinreview/10word.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

[Raine]

45. I would love to read this

I hope someday the whole thing is published.

[maddezmom]

46. I think you can get it here

http://www1.yadvashem.org/research_publications/temp_publications/temp_index_Rutkas_Notebook.html

[Raine]

47. THANKS so much

it's a heartbreaker. :cry: