Anne Frank wasnt the only teenager who lost her childhood to war.
Probably hundreds of them kept diaries where they documented their everyday lives, their sufferings, their hopes.
But it would be unfair to forget the rest.
Rutka Laskier
Rutka Laskier was 14 years old when she began writing her diary.
She was able to write for only three months, before she was whisked away to Auschwitz.
Rutkas story has many parallels with that of Anne Frank.
Both were fourteen years old when they died, and both were survived by only their fathers.
TheNew York Timeshas an extract from her short diary.
You canread it here.
For the full diary,get a copy from Amazon.
It happened last night at 10:30 p.m.
Fate decided to take my dearest ones away from me.
My life is over.
Zygmunt survived the war and moved to United States where he gave the diary to Renias mother.
The diary was first published in Polish only in 2016.
The English translation will be published next month.
You canpre-order the book on Amazon.
Eva Heyman
Eva Heyman was a Jewish Hungarian born in Nagyvarad, in present day Romania.
Her parents got divorced and her mothermoved awayto Paris.
So Eva lived with her grandparents in Budapest where her grandfather owned a pharmacy.
The Germans reached Budapest on March 19, 1944.
A month later, Eva and her grandparents were ordered to pack and move to the ghetto.
In June 1944, Eva was deported to Auschwitz, where she died four months later.
She was 13 years old.
Eva’s mother, Agnes Zsolt, was almost killed when she came to Budapest looking for her daughter.
She was imprisoned at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp but was rescued by Allied troops in 1945.
She came back again to search for her daughter but found her diary instead.
Upon reading her diary, her mother was so swaddled with grief that she committed suicide.
Heyman’s diary was published first in Hungarian.
It was translated into Hebrew in 1964, then into English in 1974.
Petr Ginz
Petr Ginz was born in 1928 in Prague.
His father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic, which made him a Mischlingechildren of a mixed marriage.
Petr was transferred to a concentration camp in October 1942, once he attained 14.
Two years later, he was deported to Auschwitz and was murdered in the gas chambers.
Petr Ginz and his sister Eva Ginz.
Petr was a child prodigy.
Before he was even fourteen, he had already written five short novels where he made his own illustrations.
He was interested in literature, history, paintings, geography, sociology and also in the technical fields.
Petr was the editor-in-chief.
Before Petr was deported to the camp, he kept a diary about his life.
Had we the right to save ourselves?
Here everything smells of sun and flowers and therethere is only blood, the blood of my own people.
Her diary waspublished as a bookthe following year.
Tanya was the youngest of five children in the Savicheva family.
She had two sisters, Nina and Zhenya, and two brothers, Mikhail and Leka.
Only Mikhial left earlier to join the partisans while the rest of family stayed in Leningrad.
They all worked hard to support the army.
Tanya, then 11 years old, dug trenches and put out firebombs.
Tanyas diary, as short as her life.
Sometime later, Tanya was given a small notebook.
Tanya used her notebook to record each death.
Tanya didnt survive the siege.
She died of intestinal tuberculosis in July 1944 at age 14.
Her short diary was presented as evidence of Nazi atrocities during the Nuremberg Trials.
Tanyas diary is now displayed at the Museum of Leningrad History.
Helene Berr
Helene Berr started writing at the age of 21.
Gradually, she began to write about the Nazi occupation and the growing restrictions imposed by the occupiers.
She wondered naively why women and especially children were included in the deportations to the camps.
She was 23 years old.
Her diarywas published in 2008.
Ruth Maier
Ruth Maier was born in Austria in 1920.
The Germans came to Norway in 1940.
Two years later, Ruth was arrested and deported to Auschwitz.
On arrival she was led straight to the gas chambers.
Gunvor Hofmo kept Ruth’s diaries and much of her correspondence.
She originally tried to get her diary published, and approached a publisher but was rejected.
The book wastranslated to English in 2009.
Philip Slier
Philip Slier was born in Amsterdam in 1923.
He was seventeen when the Germans occupied Netherland.
Philip was initially sent to work at a labor camp located just north of Hardenberg.
Philip wrote his last letter on 14 September 1942, and then escaped from the camp.
He returned to Amsterdam where he remained in hiding for some time moving from one location to another.
86 letters, including postcards and a telegram were found hidden in the ceiling of the third floor bathroom.
She was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in August 1944, along with her sisters and cousins.
She survived the camp.
She also survived a death march to Bergen-Belsen, and lived to see her liberation there in April 1945.
She was 16 years old.
Half a century later, Zinaida’s granddaughter spotted the manuscript and took it with her.
Another decade passed before the diary fell into the hands of the Holocaust Center in San Francisco.
The diary waspublished in Englishin early 2014.
