First published 2020
Renia Spiegel dreams of becoming a poet when Germany and Russia invade Poland in 1939. The teenage girl finds herself separated from her mother as her family flees their hometown of Przemyśl. She watches Jewish families disappear around her. The authorities force her into the newly created ghetto at eight in the morning on a day she vows future generations will remember. The world cuts itself off from her, and she from it. Even as war transforms everything she knows, Renia discovers beauty in her first love with a boy named Zygmunt. They share their first kiss just hours before German forces occupy her hometown. Renia continues writing in her diary through the terror, capturing both the horror surrounding her and the life that persists beyond the darkness. Her boyfriend Zygmunt makes the final entry in her diary. The diary remained hidden for seventy years before its discovery revealed this witness to both war's brutality and the resilience of the human spirit.
Genres: holocaust, historical-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, resilience
Setting: Przemyśl, Poland
Period: 1939
356 pages · Paperback · Stilus knjiga d.o.o.
Content warnings: death, violence, war