Rutka Laskier: Difference between revisions

Laskier describes how her faith in God "has been completely shattered" in the concentration camp. Laskier wrote: "The little faith I used to have has been completely shattered. If God existed, He would have certainly not permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with gun butts or shoved into sacks and gassed to death."<ref>Aron Heller, "New Pages of Past Horror: Writings depict the innocence of a Jewish teen coming of age—and Nazi brutality", Associated Press, 6 June 2006.</ref>

 

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.<ref name=YV2007/>

 

The diary, which has been authenticated by Holocaust scholars and survivors, has been compared to the [[The Diary of a Young Girl|diary]] of [[Anne Frank]], the best known Holocaust-era diary. Coincidentally, Rutka Laskier was born the same day as Anne Frank,<ref name="AutoTZ-1"/> and, in both cases, of their entire families, only their fathers survived the war.<ref name="McCarthy">{{cite journal|title=Polish girl's Holocaust diary unveiled after 60 years|at= Diary reveals horror of life in Polish ghetto|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/05/israel.secondworldwar|journal=The Journal of Rutka Laskier, the 'Polish Anne Frank'|quote=Rutka Laskier wrote the 60-page diary over a four-month period in Bedzin, Poland.|author=Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem|date=5 June 2007}}</ref>

 

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 language|English]] and [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] translations of the diary, entitled ''Rutka's Notebook: January–April 1943''.<ref name=YV2007/>