As the Nazis and Adolescence Took Hold(exerpts from Rutka Laskier diary)

[maddezmom]

By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA
Published: June 10, 2007
MORE than 60 years ago, as she awaited the final horrors of the Holocaust in the Bedzin ghetto of Poland, a 14-year-old Jewish girl named Rutka Laskier committed her thoughts to a diary. Although the journal covers only a few months in 1943, its arresting combination of detail — from Nazi atrocities to adolescent infatuation — has drawn comparisons to the celebrated diary of Anne Frank.


SNAPSHOT Rutka Laskier, far right, with her family in 1939. Her recently published diary lasts three months and ends just before she was taken to Auschwitz in 1943.


Recovered after the war by a childhood friend of Rutka’s, the document was publicly unveiled last week at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum. It has been published in English as “Rutka’s Notebook,” by Yad Vashem Publications. More information is available at www.yadvashem.org. Excerpts follow.

The 60-page diary’s first entry.

Jan. 19, 1943

I cannot grasp that it is already 1943, four years since this hell began. The days pass by quickly; each day looks just like the previous one. Every day it’s the same frozen and oppressive boredom. There is great excitement in town. A lot of people are about to leave for “the land of our forefathers,” to Palestine. Among these happy people are Syma, Bomek and Ran. I don’t know how to explain the feeling that overcame me when I learned about it. It must have been mixed feelings of joy and jealousy. We too live in the hope of getting papers.

more:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/weekinreview/10word.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

[David__77]

1. We must never forget the brutality of the Nazis.

Greatest criminals in modern history, unrivaled.

[Karenina]

2. The American MIC not only rivals the nazis

it has left them in the dust. Those with eyes to see are just waiting for the rest of you, waving your flags of atrocities past, to WAKE UP and smell the coffee. Never again MEANS NEVER AGAIN. The DENIAL while it's HAPPENING AGAIN is HORRIFYING.

[epppie]

3. What I keep wondering:

the right wing evangelicals seem to be more and more brazen about their intent to take over America. What would they stop at to accomplish that? I don't care how well they evangelize or brainwash, there is still going to be a large chunk of population left saying no to America being a Christian theocracy. What happens to them?

[Karenina]

4. Can you rephrase your gobbledegook

that more might understand your point?