Renia Spiegel's first diary entry - January 31, 1939

On this day in 1939, Jewish Polish teenager Renia Spiegel wrote the first entry in her diary. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm Eves
and you're listening to This Day in History Class, a
podcast that really takes to heart the phrase you learned
something new every day. Today is January thirty one. The

(00:24):
day was January thirty one, nineteen thirty nine. Jewish teenager
Rena Spiegel was living in Poland months before the outbreak
of World War Two when she wrote the first entry
in her now published diary. Spiegel died in the Holocaust,
but her diary has since shed light on her life
under Soviet and Nazi rule. Spiegel was born in a

(00:47):
village in Poland in nine. Her parents were Russa and
Bernard Spiegel, and she had a younger sister named Arianna.
In nineteen thirty eight, Arianna, a child actress, went to
live in Warsaw with Russa. In pursuit of her career,
Arena went to live with her grandparents in Semischl, a
town in Poland. Arianna went back to Simischal that summer,

(01:09):
returning without her mother. On January one, nineteen thirty nine,
when she was fifteen years old, Spiegel began writing in
her diary. In her first diary entry, Spiegel wrote the
following in part, why did I decide to start a
diary today? Has something important happened? Have I discovered that
my friends are keeping diaries of their own? No? I

(01:31):
just want a friend, somebody I can talk to about
my everyday worries and joys. Somebody who will feel what
I feel, believe what I say, and never reveal my secrets.
No human being could ever be that kind of friend.
She wrote about how her life used to be in Warsaw,
how she missed her mother, and how she felt like
she had no real home. She also wrote about her

(01:52):
school and classmates. As the start of World War Two loomed,
Spiegel continued to write in her diary about her friends, family, boys, sadness, nostalgia,
and war. She also wrote poems and drew in the diary.
But by September of nineteen thirty nine, Nazi Germany and
the Soviet Union occupied Poland, and the country was divided

(02:15):
between the two invaders, with the Nazis in the west
and the Soviets in the east. Rusa was stuck in
Nazi controlled territory, while Arena and Ariana were on the
Soviet side. The two children and their grandfather left town,
while their grandmothers stayed behind. Their father disappeared during the
war and was presumed killed. As World War Two steadily intensified,

(02:39):
Spiegel kept attending school in Simashal and fell in love
with a boy named Zigmu Schwarzer. In nineteen forty one,
days after her first kiss with Sparser, the Third Reich
declared war on the Soviet Union. Arena and other Jewish
people began having to wear a white arm band with
a blue star of David on it. The jar Men's

(03:00):
began establishing ghettos in Poland in July of nineteen forty two,
as the Nazis murdered thousands of Jewish and Polish people,
they set up a sealed ghetto in Simischal. Arena and
her friends and relatives were ordered to stay in the ghetto. Zigmunt,
who was working with the local resistance, managed to get
Arena and Ariana out of the ghetto. He set Arena

(03:23):
and his parents up in the attic of a house
where his uncle lived. He took Arianna to a friend's father,
and he took over Irania's diary, writing about his efforts
to save his girlfriend and family. The Nazis executed Arena
and Spartzer's parents on July thirtieth, nineteen forty two, when
they found the attic hiding spot. Irenia was only eighteen

(03:45):
years old when she was killed. Spartzer wrote the last
words in the diary. He wrote about the execution of
Arena and his parents, expressing his anguish at their deaths.
Spartzer survived the Holocaust and eventually passed the diary to
Rootsa and Ariana, now named Elizabeth Bellock. The two women
had fled to the US after World War Two. The

(04:07):
nearly seven hundred page diaries stayed in a safe deposit
box in New York City for more than forty years.
It was published in Polish in and in twenty nineteen,
the first full English translation of the diary was published.
The diary is noted as a unique and well written
personal account of everyday life under Soviet and Nazi occupation

(04:29):
in Poland. I'm Eves Jeff Coote, and hopefully you know
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
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(04:50):
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(05:12):
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