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| Diarist Renia Spiegel, who was murdered by the Nazis at the age of 18 in Przemysl, Poland (Courtesy: Renia Spiegel Foundation) |
Portions of the diary of a Jewish girl living in Poland during the Holocaust were published in English for the first time this week, over 76 years after she was murdered by the Nazis.
Renia Spiegel was 15 years old when she began the journal in January 1939, living in the small southeastern Polish city of Przemysl with her grandparents. The Nazis invaded Poland in September of that year, after agreeing to divide up the country with the Soviets.
Spiegel’s 8-year-old sister, Ariana, who lived with their mother in Warsaw, was visiting Renia in Przemysl when the war began and the city came under Soviet control, with thousands of its Jews deported to labor camps in Siberia and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia’s Far East
“Heard the jangling of keys, a gate being opened. They went in. I waited some more. Then they came out, taking loads of people with them, children, old people… The whole night was horrific. I couldn’t wait for the dawn to come,” Spiegel wrote on July 6, 1940, about the Soviet roundup of Jews.










