Rutka's Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust

As with THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, RUTKA'S NOTEBOOK told of childhood innocence lost in growing up to the horrors of the time! She lived a lifetime in a short span of years!

Great book, makes you realize how bad things got for the Jewish people during second world war. A sad but poignant reminder that 'bad' people use war as an excuse to commit horrific crimes against humanity.

This journal is short, but valuable for history telling of a young Polish girl during World War II. The narrations are important for perspective.

There are some stories that need no adornment. This is one. Rutka Laskier was 14 and she knew she was going to die. Likely, contacts from the underground told her family of the death camps. She wrote in a diary. She sees an old man beaten to death. A soldier bludgeoning a child. She does not believe there is a God. "if only I could say, it's over, you die only once...but I can't, despite all these atrocties I want to live, and wait for the following day. That means, waiting for Auschwitz or labor camp." She tells a friend where she is hiding the diary and asks her to find it when the war is over. Rutka then leaves for a camp and is killed. The friend, two years later, finds the diary, hidden under a house's floorboards. The impulse to live and to be remembered and to bear witness survived. The book is short, has excerpts from the diary(it was kept over a short period of time), commentary and photos. It deserves to be read.