Diary of 14-year-old girl living in Lodz ghetto. 1943–1944.
Holocaust Center of Northern California

In 2008 we photographed a diary found among the ruins of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematorium by Russian army Doctor Zinaida Berezovskaya; she died in 1983 and the diary was was found by her granddaughter while visiting Russia, and taken back to the USA. In 2008, she contacted the Northern California Holocaust Center about translating and publishing it. The diary is currently at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Israel.

Written in a school notebook by 14-year old Rywka Lipszyc, the diary chronicles life in the Lodz ghetto from October 1943 to April 1944. Her entries descriptions life in a Nazi-occupied ghetto: the constant hunger, illness, and 12-hour days she worked sewing German uniforms. Rywka was deported to Auschwitz in August 1944, along with her three cousins. She was force-marched to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, and liberated in April of that year. The last record of her is in September where she is identified as a displaced person. Her fate is not known, although her cousin states she died at the age of 16 shortly after the war ended in the fall of 1945. The diary was published in 2015. Friedman, A. (Ed.). Rywka’s diary: The writings of a Jewish girl from the Lodz Ghetto, found at Auschwitz in 1945 and published seventy years later. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2015. http://jfcsholocaustcenter.org/diary-rywka-lipszyc/.