Children of the Holocaust - Diarist Rutka Laskier, 'The Polish Anne Frank"

World War II Diarists
Rutka's Notebook

"Holocaust Diary of a Fourteen Year Old," see Rutka Laskier's diary entries reviewed at ://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,277875,00.html/ See another review of Rutka's Notebook, A Voice from the Holocaust, copyright 2008 reserved to Yad Vashem et al., at ://www.jewishmag.com/119mag/rutka/rutka.htm

1. Rutka Laskier - Hers is another valiant name to add to the list of those children who memorialized their experiences in WWII in diaries. See ://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2007/06/05/2007-06-05_moving_diary_of_polish_anne_frank_unveil.html
The diary had been known, but is now just released. The author or compiler of this work, "Rutka's Notebook," is Aron Heller. Not sure which role best describes.

2. Background. Rutka was the same age as Anne Frank. Rutka lived in a middle sized town, Bedzin, Poland, northwest of Krakow, not far from Auschwitz. Most of the Jewish population of Bedzin had lived there since the middle ages. Jews comprised about half the total population. She wrote in her diary beginning in 1943. The Germans had conquered Poland in 1940.

Auschwitz PL, fence with rose memorial

Deportations to labor and death camps had begun. As in other towns, a preliminary step was to move the Jews to another section of the town, or its outskirts. Rutka agreed with a friend, Stanislawa Sapinska, that Rutka would hide the book under the apartment's stairs where Stanislawa could find it, as Stanislawa did, after the war. Stanislawa kept the book for 60 years, only then revealing its existence.

3. Adults only. Our regret is the editorial choices of layout and color - the book is not appealing visually or as laid out for children to read. It already looks old, dated. This edition is well done, but for grown-ups. It cries out for a companion version that would be true to the original in content, but one that a child could not pass by without opening, and once open, reading.

4. Need a companion volume for children, young teens. The photographs, the layout: all are the dingy tan-sepias that an adult appreciates as conveying age and reverence. There are similarly toned photographs from the period that show pre-war Poland, Bedzin, and the families, as well as others, but will a child want to stay with it. Still, particularly memorable are the children of Auschwitz photographs, the town, the "JUDE" patch.

5. Meet Rutka: Here she is at 14. Like any bright, deeply feeling, attractive young person, "regular" family, like your neighbor, but more perceptive than most. She loved reading, interest in faith, witness her increasing fear of Germans, exuberance and mood changes with normal life, becoming more intense with maturing, boys, then despair with the "selections" taking place, people herded, separated, families divided as to destination - work, death, unknown, or even home again to await another selection.

Auschwitz, barracks, guard tower

Beatings, shootings, a baby bashed in as she watched, an escape and run back home, and her family also there, labor camps for adults 16-50, more people moving into their apartment so her family has just one room, grayness, steady stream of fear on faces, more people pushed into the ghetto, food rations reducing, then the human boredom of nothing to do on a particular day in her room, then, last entry April 24, and Rutka subsequently gassed and burned at Birkenau, a section of the larger complex at Auschwitz. Auschwitz also had ovens.

6. Additional writings by Rutka. Keep these in the young person's volume.

Poland, High Tatras Mountains, near Zakopane

Rutka visited this lovely area, and wrote about it. There are also undated fragments of stories found with the diary, one about Zakopane, the area long a vacation-ski resort in the High Tatra mountains (lovely black and white photo, whose?); and one about winter season, the ghetto, brutality, and then a wedding with a bride in tears. After that, a section on the lives of the father, Yaacov Laskier, 1900-? He survived the holocaust. All other family members were killed.

Do note the listing of other child diarists from WWII, pages 86-89.

7. Bifurcate, bifurcate. Back on edition: For children, present just Rutka. Add some details in the back, but do an edition that is intended for children. Those are the ones who may well know nothing of the holocaust. Please do not dilute Rutka with everyone else, or all the other historical details. A child with an interest can go to this full edition and find out all that. We finished the book, and still thought, where is Rutka?

Background on the holocaust from other diarist children's perspective - see

• Auschwitz, Poland, Poland Road Ways, Auschwitz, Petr Ginz;
  
• Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Anne Frank ("The Diary of Anne Frank"), Netherlands Road Ways, Anne Frank; and
  
• Prague, Petr Ginz, Czech Republic Road Ways, Petr Ginz. He also died at Auschwitz.
  

How better to teach our own children about these events, except through the eyes of other children who lived it. History, hope, hopelessness in our failings to the death. Then again to hope.