By Lauren Burgess

Seventy years after the tragedy that was the Holocaust, the secret diary of Renia Spiegel, a Polish Jewish teenager, is set to be published after spending decades in a vault of a New York Bank.

Renia, born June 18, 1924, lived in Przemysl, south-east Poland while it was still under Soviet rule. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and established the Przemyśl ghetto a year later, Renia was one of 24,000 Jews forced into the ghetto. 

Zygmunt Schwarzer, Renia’s lover, worked for the resistance in secret and managed to smuggle Renia and his parents into the attic of his uncle’s house. However, an informant told Nazi police where they were hiding, resulting in Renia and Schwarzer’s parents being dragged into the street and executed, and Schwarzer being sent to Auschwitz. Renia was only 18 years old. 

Her diary of over 700 pages begins when she is 15, detailing the horrors that students read about in their textbooks, as well as hundreds of her own poems, such as this one:

June 7, 1942

Wherever I look, there is bloodshed. Such terrible pogroms. There is killing, murdering. God Almighty, for the umpteenth time I humble myself in front of you, help us, save us! Lord God, let us live, I beg You, I want to live! I’ve experienced so little of life. I don’t want to die. I’m scared of death. It’s all so stupid, so petty, so unimportant, so small. Today I’m worried about being ugly; tomorrow I might stop thinking forever.

Think, tomorrow we might not be

A cold, steel knife

Will slide between us, you see

But today there is still time for life

Tomorrow sun might eclipse

Gun bullets might crack and rip

And howl — pavements awash

With blood, with dirty, stinking slag

Pigwash

Today you are alive

There is still time to survive

Let’s blend our blood

When the song still moves ahead

The song of the wild and furious flood

Brought by the living dead

Listen, my every muscle trembles

My body fumbles for your closeness

It’s supposed to be a choking game, this is

Not enough eternity for all the kisses.

The last few entries of Renia’s diary are written by Schwarzer, detailing the events after her death. The last entry of the diary, written by Schwarzer, reads “Three shots! Three lives lost! All I can hear are shots, shots.”

When Schwarzer was able to escape the concentration camp and emigrate to the United States, he reunited with Renia’s mother Róża and sister Elizabeth, handing over the diary he had given to a friend for safekeeping. Neither could bring themselves to read it, choosing instead to put it in a bank vault. 

That would change in 2012 when Alexandra Bellak, Elizabeth’s daughter, fought to have the diary published to give others a chance to hear Renia’s story. 

Thanks to her efforts, Renia’s Diary: A Young Girl’s Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust is set to be released later this week, on September 19. 

Her words are chilling and speak of wisdom beyond her years. Renia’s last entry in her diary reads:

“My dear diary, my good, beloved friend! We’ve gone through such terrible times together and now the worst moment is upon us. I could be afraid now. But the One who didn’t leave us then will help us today too. He’ll save us. Hear, O, Israel, save us, help us. You’ve kept me safe from bullets and bombs, from grenades. Help me survive! And you, my dear mamma, pray for us today, pray hard. Think about us and may your thoughts be blessed.”