Rutka's Notebook : A Voice from the Holocaust
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, History
Book Type: Hardcover
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, History
Book Type: Hardcover
Helpful Score: 2
This is a diary from an approximate four month period from a teenage girl. The notebook she was writing in was hidden beneath her stairs when her and her family was sent from the ghetto where they were living to a Nazi camp. It's believed that Rutka and her entire family, with the exception of her father, died in that camp soon after.
Rutka's friend went back to the house where Rutka's family lived after the war and retrieved the notebook as she had promised Rutka before they were seperated. Rutka's friend then held on the notebook, in secret, for over 60 years. After her nephew presuaded her that the notebook needed to be shared she decided started the process. This is the first edition published in the U.S. and the notebook was only first discovered in Rutka's friends hand in 2006.
The photos are nothing short of amazing, I was in total awe as I flipped through the pages. The book also includes footnotes for a few things that were unclear. For example, a sentence where some words were left off because of humidity, etc. There is a decent bibliography included in the end as well. There are afterwords also, one by Zahava Laskier, who is Rutka's half-sister from a marriage after the war and one from Menachem Lior, who knew Rutka as a teenager. There is a copy of the actual Page of Testimony filed with Yad Vashem by Rutka's father after the war, this testimony states the family members of Yaacov Laskier that were murdered in the Holocaust.
Rutka's Notebook is very slim, all of 90 pages if I remember correctly, with the afterwords included, and is still something everyone interested in the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors should read.
Rutka's friend went back to the house where Rutka's family lived after the war and retrieved the notebook as she had promised Rutka before they were seperated. Rutka's friend then held on the notebook, in secret, for over 60 years. After her nephew presuaded her that the notebook needed to be shared she decided started the process. This is the first edition published in the U.S. and the notebook was only first discovered in Rutka's friends hand in 2006.
The photos are nothing short of amazing, I was in total awe as I flipped through the pages. The book also includes footnotes for a few things that were unclear. For example, a sentence where some words were left off because of humidity, etc. There is a decent bibliography included in the end as well. There are afterwords also, one by Zahava Laskier, who is Rutka's half-sister from a marriage after the war and one from Menachem Lior, who knew Rutka as a teenager. There is a copy of the actual Page of Testimony filed with Yad Vashem by Rutka's father after the war, this testimony states the family members of Yaacov Laskier that were murdered in the Holocaust.
Rutka's Notebook is very slim, all of 90 pages if I remember correctly, with the afterwords included, and is still something everyone interested in the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors should read.
