Polish Teen's Holocaust Diary Revealed

Chronicle By "Polish Anne Frank" Was Safeguarded By Friend For More Than 60 Years

(AP)  The diary of a 14-year-old Jewish girl, dubbed the "Polish Anne Frank," unveiled by Israel's Holocaust museum more than 60 years after the teenager wrote it, vividly describes the world crumbling around her as she came of age in a Jewish ghetto.

"The rope around us is getting tighter and tighter," Rutka Laskier wrote in 1943 shortly before she was deported to Auschwitz, her words read aloud Monday at the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem. "I'm turning into an animal waiting to die."

Within a few months Rutka did die and, it seemed, so did her diary. But last year, a Polish friend who had safeguarded the notebook finally came forth, exposing a riveting historical document.

"Rutka's Notebook" is both a daily account of the horrors of the Holocaust in Bedzin, Poland, and a scrapbook detailing the life of a typical teenager in extraordinary circumstances. The 60-page memoir includes innocent adolescent banter, concerns and first loves — combined with a cold analysis of the fate of European Jewry.

Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II, after European Jews were herded into ghettos, banned from most jobs and forced to wear yellow stars to identify them.

"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," she wrote on Feb. 5, 1943. "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 butt of guns or be shoved into sacks and gassed to death."

Reports of the gassing of Jews, which were not common knowledge in the West by then, apparently filtered into the Bedzin ghetto, which was near Auschwitz, Yad Vashem experts said.

The following day she opened her entry with a heated description of her hatred toward her Nazi tormentors, but then, in an effortless transition, she speaks about her crush on a boy named Janek and the anticipation of a first kiss.

"I think my womanhood has awoken in me. That means, yesterday when I was taking a bath and the water stroked my body, I longed for someone's hands to stroke me," she wrote. "I didn't know what it was, I have never had such sensations until now."

Later that day, she shifted back to her harsh reality, casually describing watching a Nazi soldier tearing a Jewish baby away from its mother and killing it with his bare hands.

In addition to chronicling her life in the diary, between January and April 1943, Rutka also shared it with her friend Stanislawa Sapinska. The two met after Rutka's family moved into a home owned by Sapinska's family, which had been confiscated by the Nazis to be included in the Bedzin ghetto. Sapinska randomly came to inspect the home and the young girls — one Jewish, one Christian — formed a deep bond.

[gunnerv1]

JOHNJO6-Native Americans were armed with bows and arrows and spears, We had guns and more of them, ya ninny.

[sound_fury]

OK...this is getting a little out of hand. This started out being about this poor child's diary, but it is proving to be a good example of arrogant condescension.

neocon and pwrslm, you are both bickering like little school girls, and you are completely off topic. We all know both nations have attacked eachother in both provoked and seemingly unprovoked circumstances. Both of you just get off your high horses, because no one else cares what you think of eachother.

As for people who claim they don't believe in the Holocaust, I believe they are like the KKK. They say these things because they provoke a reaction. If they choose not to believe it, let them...we know the truth. They aren't going to change their minds if you shout at them.

The world will never be a safe place with people dogmatically attacking others beliefs. I am personally a Christian. I believe in sharing my beliefs with others, but there is a difference between sharing and attacking. I have found that no one respects people who claim to be right. People respect those who act decently towards everyone, because it is they who really stand out. I urge everyone to try to live in a way that is respectful of others beliefs...maybe then people will listen to eachother and such catastropic injustices will be avoided...utopian beliefs, I know.

[neoconrcrazy]

Id say there should be a prison for ignorance like yours neocon.
Posted by pwrslm

the prison for ignorance is the one in which has been created by lies and half-truths by bushit and his merry neocon band. It's your prison, not mine.

I prefer to look at historical facts.

You can have another beer and forment your islamofacist hate fantasies.....

[johnjo6]

An unarmed population is defenseless. Why allow onself to be a sitting duck?
Posted by rhs648 at 08:00 PM : Jun 05, 2007

Native Americans were armed but you managed to do a pretty good job on them.
If the Jews had a right to bear arms or were armed it would not have stopped the atrocities!

[pwrslm]

Oh you mean when the biggoted fascist arab muslims from 6 Islamic countries tried to "drive the Jews into the sea" Posted by prowest210

it's postings like these that are the norm today -all bluster, no fact.
Posted by neoconRcrazy

Id say there should be a prison for ignorance like yours neocon. I mean, what you posted is soooo stupid, you have to chose to be ignorant to think like that.

[pwrslm]

You can tell the disrespect that some people have for the truth. I really dont care if it were 1 or 6 million people slaughtered by Nazi's. Just the fact that it happened, and was organized and orchestrated by a competent government responsible for the care of a nation makes it a disgrace.

When stupid people diminist the importance of the holocaust, then we should anticipate another, more outrageous event to occur in our future, because we have not learned enough to prevent it from recurring.

Now, before the world, is another call by a competent governing authority to exterminate the Jewish race once again.

Yet, the small minded people bicker about protecting the rights of men who are very much like Hitler was. Yes, we are looking into a bleak future indeed, with massive violence and destruction never before seen on this planet.

[gunnerv1]

rdfuerle-What are you going to say when the actual records that were kept by the Nazi Germands are released the year and confirm that over 6 million of my releatives were murdered by someone you admire. The Germans may have been stupid at times but one thing, they were excellent record keepers, what's known is that are set to release the records of over 17 million people.

[radiob-2009]

Also there is a museum in Michigan, I believe it is in Farmington Hills that has a Jewish museum and yes there are lampshades there made from the skin of Jews.
Posted by ampsanne

Thank you for reminding me of how morbid and tasteless we can be in remembering the greatest injustice to mankind.

[neoconrcrazy]

Oh you mean when the biggoted fascist arab muslims from 6 Islamic countries tried to "drive the Jews into the sea"
You people are no different than the Nazis who tried to wipe out the Jewish race

Posted by prowest210

it's postings like these that are the norm today -all bluster, no fact.

my post referred to 1948, not 1967, when israeli terror groups fanned out throughout the west bank and jerusalem ( like begins' stern gang and others) and began to ethnically cleanse vast tracks of land coveted by the newly formed jewish state. Whole villages were driven out, threats of, and actual murder of innocent palestinian civilians was committed. Hundreds of thousands of palestinians were exiled to Lebanon and neighboring countries where they formed their ghettos and where Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, were born.

[ampsanne]

I guess everyone has a right to their opinion. My opinion on this that it was the greatest injustice ever to mankind. We are all the perfect race created by God. For those who don't believe, how do you explain the pictures, the survivors with numbers on their arms and being able to tell that they survived the concentration camps? And recently the 28,000 graves of Jews found in the Ukraine. Also there is a museum in Michigan, I believe it is in Farmington Hills that has a Jewish museum and yes there are lampshades there made from the skin of Jews. I haven't been there personally, but my brother was. He was a school bus driver who took a class of children there. He had to hide his face so the children coouldn't see his tears. He just couldn't believe what he was seeing. I can't believe how people say it never happened when all the pictures and survivors are in front of our faces.