Polish and Hungarian Anne Frank Diaries

Just like Anne Frank, whose diary is known to the whole world, Rutke Lasker and Eva Heiman had 13 years in the terrible time of the Holocaust, which left them no chance to survive, like Anne Frank. Their diaries, still little known, amazing documents of the time when the world around these Jewish girls collapsed.

Photo: Shutterstock

Rutka Lasker's diary, which she led from 19 in January to 24 in April 1943 r, describing life in the ghetto, was published only in 2005 in 63, it was kept by a Polish woman Stanislaw Sapinska, who was friends with the Lasker family. The first entry in the diary: “Is it really already 1943 a year, and 4 of this hell year has passed”. One of the last: “If I could only say to myself: let it all end, and you will die only once. But I can't, because despite all these atrocities, I want to live and wait for the next day. ”“ And one of the last tragic diary entries she kept in her school notebook: “The rope around us is getting stronger and stronger . I turn into an animal in anticipation of death. ”

Rutka was born in Danzig (Gdansk), which then had the status of a free city and was populated mainly by Germans. Her father Yakov worked in a bank, her grandfather was a co-owner of a mill. In the early 30s, the family moved to the Polish city of Bedzin, which became a Jewish ghetto under the Nazis. In February 1943, Rutka writes in her diary: “I simply cannot believe that one fine day I will be able to leave home without a yellow star. Or even that this war will suddenly end. If this happens, I'll probably go crazy with joy." Rutka knew what was happening to the Jews in Europe. “My faith in G-d is completely destroyed,” she writes. “If G-d existed, he would not allow human beings to be thrown alive into ovens or gas chambers, and the heads of babies to be smashed with rifle butts.”

But life in the ghetto was still going on, and Rutka talks about his admirer, the boy Janika, and the expectation of the first kiss. '' I think my femininity has awakened in me. Yesterday, when I was taking a bath and the water stroked my body, I so wanted someone's hands to stroke me. I don't know what it was for me, I never had such a feeling until now. '' She writes: `` The Germans are retreating in Russia, and maybe the end of the war is already close, but they will end us Jews, of course, before that. '' Here is the entry in the diary when the arrests of Jews began in the city: `` I feel that soon I will not be able to write. As a prisoner, I sit in my house, which has become my prison, and go crazy. The city is holding its breath in anticipation, and that waiting is the worst. I feel the end is near. This is torture and this is hell. '' She tries not to succumb to fear, despair and hopelessness and turns to herself: `` Well, Rutka, you are becoming completely crazy. What's going on with you? You have ceased to control yourself. ''

The parents did not know about the existence of the diary. She told her friend Stanislav Sapinskaya about him, whom she met when the Lasker family settled in the house that belonged to the Sapinsky family. This house was confiscated by the Nazis for the Jewish ghetto. Rutka told her friend: “I don’t know if I’ll survive, but I want my diary to be preserved so that everyone can find out what happened to the Jews.” Stanislava suggested hiding the diary in the basement under the floorboards. In August 1943, Rutka with her grandmother, grandfather, mother and brother ended up in Auschwitz, where, according to the testimony of one woman, a neighbor in the barracks, she died of cholera in December 1943. According to another version, she, along with her entire family, died in the gas chamber.

After the war, Stanislava Sapinskaya returned to take the diary from hiding, and then kept it in her library for over 60 years. She believed that the diary was very personal and did not need to be read by others. Her young nephew, who knew about the existence of the diary, nevertheless convinced Sapinskaya that this was an important historical document that could not be hidden from society. On June 4, 2007, at a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, Sapinskaya presented the original of the diary to the museum. Rutka's father, Jacob, is the only survivor of the Lasker family.

After the war, he left for Israel, where he had a new family and a daughter, Zakhava, who knew nothing about the terrible stage in the life of her father and his former family. She was shocked to read her half-sister's diary and talked about her feelings at the Yad Vashem ceremony. She also wrote about how Jacob escaped. He was deported to Auschwitz along with the entire Lasker family. Everyone except him was sent to the gas chamber. Jacob, a strong and healthy man, was sent to work. One day he learned that the Germans needed people familiar with finance and money. Jacob, who had previously worked at a bank, was needed due to the fact that the Germans created a secret Bernhard operation in the Sachsenhausen camp to destabilize the economies of the countries that fought with Germany.

The prisoners, among whom were artists, graphic designers, printers and printers, were engaged in the issue of counterfeit money: pounds, dollars and rubles. At the end of the war, the entire group with printing equipment was sent to the Austrian camp Zement, where everyone was to be destroyed. The prisoners were saved by the rapidly advancing units of the American army, which liberated the camp.

Eva Heyman was born into a secular family in a city on the border of Hungary and Romania. Hungarian name for the city of Nagy Varad, Romanian Oradea. She lived with her grandparents, who owned a pharmacy. Her parents divorced and her mother married a famous writer and publicist, Hungarian Jew Bela Zsolt, who lived in Budapest. Eva made the first entry in her diary on February 13, 1944: “I turned 13 on the 13th and I was born on Friday”. The last entry was May 30, 1944. The fate of the Jews of the city in which she lived was decided for only 3 months. In October 1944, Eve died at Auschwitz. She was 13 years old.

This number 13 became terrible for Eve. On February 14, 1944, on a still calm day, she describes how her birthday went, her plans to take up the art of photography, discusses which radio tells the truth about the war, and that mother Eva (she called her Eiji) congratulated her on the phone from Budapest, said there was no reason to worry about anything. But already on March 19, she writes in her diary: `` My little diary, you are the happiest of us all, because you cannot feel the terrible misfortune that happened to us. The Germans are already here ... I heard Uncle Sandor say: “We're finished. Germans in Budapest. " Eve's diary contains the atmosphere of those tragic days: despair, hopelessness, illusory hopes for salvation.

Here are some more excerpts from Eve's diary. March 26, 1944 '' The radio announced the rules for the Jews, everything that they are not allowed to do. Agee called Budapest today. All her friends, including children, have already been captured and killed by the Germans. Since the Germans are here, all I think about is Martha. She was also a child, and yet the Germans killed her. But I don't want them to kill me. I would like to become a photojournalist and marry an Englishman at 24 ”. March 29. “Almost every day, the Germans demand to give something away: a typewriter, carpets, bed linen.” March 27.

'' Jazi (Eva's Hungarian friend) came. She cried terribly and said that Miss Porozhlai was ready to hide me on her farm, but Mr. Porozhlai, her husband, does not even want to hear about it. I am ready to live even in a stable or a pigsty and do whatever I want, just so as not to be killed by the Germans. '' March 29. Martha came again. Her eyes were red with tears, as if she herself were Jewish. She says she will die because she cannot save me, whom she loves more than anything else. '' May 1. '' My little diary, everything that happens to us seems to me like a dream ... I know that this is not a dream, but I cannot believe it. No one among us can utter a word. My little diary, I have never experienced such horror. '' May 10 (written by Eva already in the ghetto, which the Germans organized in Nagy Varad).

'' We have been here for 5 days, which seems to me like 5 years. I don't even know how to start writing. When I think whether it could be worse than what is now, I come to the conclusion that yes, it can. There is no food, there is nothing ... At night I dreamed of Jazi, and in the morning I woke up sobbing. '' May 18. '' My little diary, I have no secrets from you. I heard my grandfather say that many in the ghetto commit suicide by taking poison, and that he and grandmother wanted to do the same. '' May 29. '' My little diary, now it's coming to an end. The ghetto was divided into parts, and they are ready to deport us. ''

Twice the Hungarians, who were friends with the Laskers, offered to secretly take Eva out of the ghetto and save her, but her grandmother, fearing for her fate, refused them. Eve never escaped, but she saved her diary with the help of Mariska Szabo, a Hungarian woman who used to help Eve's grandmother with the housework. Once one, as Eva writes about him in his diary, “a kind gendarme,” allowed Mariska to go to the Laskers in the ghetto for a few minutes, where Eva handed her the diary and asked to hide it. Together with Eve, her grandparents perished in Auschwitz, but her mother Eva and her stepfather Bela Zsolt were saved.

Their rescue from the ghetto of Nagy Varad requires a separate story based on Zsolt's stunning memoir, 9 Suitcases, first published in a magazine version in 1946-1947 and becoming one of the first books about the Holocaust.

Zsolt and Eiji, who was recovering from surgery, were in a hospital located in the ghetto when the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz began, where another train was sent every week. Hospital patients were to be sent there as well. One of the doctors, who knew Zsolt's books, proposed a plan to temporarily rescue him, Eiji and several other Jews by creating a supposedly typhoid barrack in the hospital, where the Germans would be afraid to go. Judging by the diary, she knew about this, and Eva, whom Bela also included in this plan.

However, due to a number of circumstances, it was not possible to do this, and in the next echelon Eve and her grandparents went to the gas chamber of Auschwitz. Zsolt and Eiji were rescued from the ghetto by one of their close Budapest friends, who, having arrived in Nagy Varad, bribed the Hungarian gendarmes, the guards of the hospital's “typhoid” barrack, and with fake passports took them by train to Budapest, where their odyssey of salvation was still continuing thanks to the activities of Rudolph Kastner, one of the leaders of the Hungarian Relief and Rescue Committee.

Kastner negotiated with the Nazis about the ransom of the Jews, first with Eichmann, and then with Himmler's confidant Kurt Becher. The Nazis agreed to give permission to leave for Switzerland to 1686 Hungarian Jews for 8,6 million Swiss francs. The first group reached Switzerland by train in June 1944. The second group of Jews, in which Zsolt and Eiji were, were taken to the Bergen Belsen camp, from where they were sent to Switzerland only a few months later.

After the war, Mariska Sabo handed over the diary of Eva Eiji, who thought about publishing it for 2 years or not and finally published it under her editorial staff. Was there anything in the diary that she might not like? And did Eve write that her mother promised to save her, but did nothing for this? And one more thing: she told Eve that if she had to, she would be with her in the same carriage of the train leaving for Auschwitz. As soon as the diary (possibly, as many believe, with the cuts made by Agee during editing) was published in 1948, when Agee, suffering from a terrible moral conflict, committed suicide by taking poison.

Bela Zsolt in 1945 founded the Radical Bourgeois Party in Hungary, was elected to parliament and died in 1949, even before the communists seized power. Rudolf Kastner worked in Israel after the war, holding a major ministerial post. In 1953, journalist Grunwald accused him of hiding information he knew about the Nazis' intention to exterminate hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews in exchange for the departure of mainly rich and famous people.

In the political climate surrounding the case, Kastner was killed in 1957 by three extremist Israeli youths. In 1958, the Israeli Supreme Court found Grunwald guilty of libel and dropped most of the charges against Kastner.

Without a doubt, the diaries written by the talented thirteen-year-old girls Rutka Lasker, Eva Heiman and, of course, Anne Frank, became invaluable documents of the Holocaust, startling evidence of the tragedy of millions of European Jews.

Source