Objects

A hardbound diary with a ribbon marker; inside, among other things, dried flowers and photographs; 190 pages.

This extraordinary diary was fortunately preserved in the attic of one of the houses inhabited by the author’s family during the displacements they endured throughout the war. At the outbreak of the war, the author, Irena Glück — then a teenager and the daughter of a doctor from Kraków — was thrust into a life marked by loss, flight, and the successive stages of the Holocaust.

The diary reflects the key events of the years 1939–1943: the family’s escape to Przemyśl in 1939, their return to Kraków in 1940, the move to Niepołomice after losing their home, and later the successive phases of anti-Jewish persecution, most likely ending with the author’s death.