Renia's Diary

Renia’s Diary: A Holocaust Journal (2016) is the diary of Jewish-Polish Holocaust victim Renia Spiegel, translated into English by Anna Blasiak and Marta Dziurosz. Written during the years 1939-42, when Spiegel was in her late teens, the diary describes the ordinary tribulations of adolescence against a backdrop of horrors: the war in Europe, invasion by both Soviets and Nazis, the confinement of the Jewish population to ghettos, and finally their deportation to concentration camps. A New York Times Best Seller, Renia’s Diary was hailed by critics as a “terribly poignant work that conveys the brutal reality of the time through intimate connection with a young person” (Kirkus Reviews).

The diary opens with a foreword and an introduction. The foreword is written by Renia’s younger sister, Elizabeth (born Ariana), who survived the Holocaust and fled to America, describing her memories of her beloved sister.

The introduction is by Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, who places the three years covered by Renia’s diary into the context of Renia’s earlier life and of European history. Renia, we learn, was born in 1924 in a part of Poland which is now Ukraine. She grew up on her father’s idyllic country estate with her younger sister, Ariana, who was a child star in Polish cinema.



In 1938, the girls were sent to live with their grandparents in PrzemyÅ›l, so that their mother could have free rein to further Ariana’s career in Warsaw. It was in this context of dislocation and loneliness that Renia first started keeping her diary, which would eventually run to 700 pages, written in school exercise books.

After Renia’s execution by the Nazis in 1942, the diary was preserved by her boyfriend, Zygmunt Schwarzer, who survived internment in Auschwitz and after the war delivered Renia’s diary to Renia’s mother in the US. Unable to read it, Renia’s family kept the diary in a bank vault until Ariana—now Elizabeth’s—daughter had it translated in 2012.

The diary begins with Renia addressing its pages, explaining that she has decided to keep a journal because “I just want a friend.” She introduces herself before turning to the topic that is clearly most on her mind: She misses her mother and longs for her old life on the family estate. She explores her nostalgia for that life in a sequence of lyric poems.



While this current of longing and nostalgia remains strong, Renia also discusses the minutiae of her life in amusing anecdotes about her sister, Ariana, her school friends—and enemies, especially the irksome Irka—her favorite teachers (one of whom she has a crush on), and parties. She dreams of fame but feels sure she will not achieve it. Instead, she will settle for happiness.

From time to time, Renia’s mother visits, leaving Renia sadder than ever.

The first hint of impending disaster comes when Renia notes that France has pledged to defend Poland from Nazi invasion. She dreams of moving to France, although she notes that it will be difficult due to Hitler’s invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia: “In a way, he’s affecting my life, too.”



When the Nazis invade Poland in September 1939, Renia and Ariana are cut off from both their parents. With their grandfather, they flee Przemyśl for Lwow, leaving their grandmother behind because she cannot travel.

The Soviet counter-invasion later in the month allows the girls to return to Przemyśl, where they find their grandmother alive. However, they have had no word from their father or from their mother, who is still in surrounded Warsaw.

Now Renia begins life under occupation. For a few weeks, she takes satisfaction in the Soviets’ suppression of Polish anti-Semitism and enjoys the attentions of a few “cute boys” in the Red Army. In November, however, Stalin orders PrzemyÅ›l’s Jews to be stripped of their business permits. More troublingly for Renia, single-sex education is abolished, and she is sent to a boys’ school.



There, Renia begins to explore her sexuality, struggling with her desire and the shame it engenders. Meanwhile, people are being rounded up and sent to Russia for crimes unknown. Many of PrzemyÅ›l’s Jews are sent to a Jewish homeland in the far East.

In September 1940, Renia meets Zygmunt Schwarzer, the son of a well-known local Jewish doctor. The two teenagers begin a passionate courtship, falling out and reuniting. Renia writes many poems for “Zygus,” as she calls her boyfriend, and worries with her friends about his true feelings and intentions.

In 1941, war breaks out again between Russia and Germany and this time the Nazis prevail. In Nazi-occupied PrzemyÅ›l, Renia becomes “someone inferior: a girl wearing a white armband with a blue star.”



Renia’s parents return, separately, and contemplate divorce, as rumors circulate of forced labor camps. These rumors prove true: after a series of pogroms in which many Jews are killed, still more Jews are rounded up and taken away.

In July 1942, the PrzemyÅ›l ghetto is established. Renia and her family cannot leave. In her last entry, Renia petitions God to “save us, help us.”

The journal is finished by Zygmunt. He recounts that Renia, along with his own parents, were denied work permits, meaning that the camps would be their fate. Working with the local resistance, he smuggled all three to his uncle’s house. Their whereabouts were betrayed, and they were shot in the street.



In an epilogue, Renia’s sister, Elizabeth explains how she managed to survive the Nazi occupation.