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BATSHEVA B E N - A M O S

A MULTILINGUAL DIARY FROM THELODZ GHETTO*

When Abraham Bankel returned from Auschwitz on July 1945 he went tohis former home in the Lódí ghetto. In the dwelling next door he found ananonymous diary, written in the margins of a book. The entries in the diarywere written in four languages — Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish and English, withoccasional sentences in German and lew words in Latin, Bankel took the diarywith him to Palestine and in 1969 entrusted it to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.'

Neither the diary author's name nor much else about him is known — onlythat he was most likely a young man in his late teens or early 20s whose parentswere already dead by the time he started lo write his diary. His father, to whomhe seems to have been close, died of hunger in the ghetto. Several times thediarist mentioned him with love and affection, writing about how he died andrecalling his last words. In contrast, he hardly wrote at all about his mother. Hissister, an intelligent and resourceful twelve year-old, lived with him.

The diary entnes extended over a period of three months, from 5 May-3August 1944. During that interv al the Germans decided upon the final liquidationofthe Lódí ghetto; between 23 June-14 July over 7,000 Jews were deported toChelmno, and m August the remaining 74,(KX) inhabitants ofthe ghetto were sentto Auschwitz-Birkenau. Fortunately, unlike in many cases, the complete text ofthe diary, and not merely a fragment, has been recovered. The completeness ofthe text is established by the fact that ii was written in the margins of a boundprinted volume — a copy of the French novel Les Vrais Riches by François

* The author thanks Israel Banal, Dan Ben-Amos. François Guesnet, John Klier. OigaLilvak. and Marcos Silber for their insightful comments and support at various stages inihe wnling of this article.

t M. Bemet. "The Unknown Diarist of Lodz,' Hadassah Magazine. October 1969, pp. 6,7, 37; Yad Vashem Nei\s. Jerusalem 1970. The original text of the diary is located in theYad Vashem Archives (YVA). 033/1032. A facsimile was pnnted in H Loewy and A.Bodek, eds.. Les Vrais Riches ' — Notizen am Rand. Ein Tagebuch aus dem Chello LodzIMai bis August 1944t. Uipzig 1997.

51

Baishcv;! Bcn-Amiii

Coppée ( IMi-IStllSj. Coppée. a wcll-kni>wn nineteenth-century author, wroteromantic plays, dramas, ciimedies, poems, stories, and even a one-act opera. Tbeuse I'f a bonk by this particular author tn record a diary of life in a gbctiii underNazi occupation is rather ironic, because Coppöe was a veteran nationalist,racist, and anti.semite. an active anti-Dreyfusard who was later among thefounders of the antisemitic Ligue de la Patrie Française.

For four years the diarist lived under Na/.i rule in the Ludí ghetto withoutwriting a journal. He started his diary only three months before the ghetto'sliquidation. At that time information about the advancing Allies had alreadypenetrated the closed world of the ghouo, and hope for imminent liberatiiin wasreflected in his writing. But on I August the Red Army stopped its westwardadvance at tbe banks of tbe Vistula River, and on 2 August the Germansannounced the liquidation of the gheu<>. The last entry in lhe diary was writtentbe next day.

For many decades, as Jewish diaries from the Second World War were beingdiscovered, deposited in archives, and published, historians looked upon themmainly as potential sources of empirical information about the war and itsvictims and as evidence that might be used in war crimes trials. As a result,scholarly discussions of Holocaust diaries tended to focus upon the histoncalveracity of the material in these texts. Thus, lor example, in bis introduction tothe Hebrew edition of the diat7 of Chaim Kaplan, published in 1966. NacbmanBlumcnthal observed tbat the diarist bad written "very critical words aboutthe Jewish leadership ... and even words ol anger toward heaven... that didnot always reflect the objective reality." To be sure, he continued, 'we did notchange the words." However, 'passages related to [Kaplan's] family... that wereprivate in nature and without any historical significance, were omitted fromthe [published] diary.'-By the l9ii0s literary critics moved the focus of analysisbeyond tbe empirical dimension, examining diaries for the ways in which theyrepresented reality and not merely for their factual content. One literary scholar,James Young, summarized bis approach to Holocaust diaries as follows:

2 N. Blumenthal, 'Hakdamah." in Chaim Kaplan, Megilai ïîsurin: Yoman geio Varshah.Tel AVIV anil Jerusalem 1966. p. 29 I Hebrew pagination).

52

A Multilingual Diary from the Ludí Ghetto

[L]inguistic, cultural and religious patterns of the mind and e.vpression...frame a writer's narrative moment by moment, during or after theHolocaust. For even the diarists themselves — onee they enter immediateexperience into the tropes and structures of narrative — necessarilyconvert experience into an organized, often ritualized, memory ofexperience. In addition to the narrative mediation of a writer's language,genenc properties ofthe diary also organÍ7e and structure literary witnessm particular ways... In addition to time and place, the diarists' verylanguage, traditions and world \ icw played crucial roles in the making oftheir literary witness.

Nevertheless. Young still attached empirical importance to diaries insofaras they reflect the meanings witnes'îes attached to events. Another literaryscholar, David Patterson, criticized Young's approach as an 'epistemológica!flight from responsibility' that ultimately dtscredits the dianst and his text.Young, he claimed, assumed that the importance of Holocaust dianes lies inthe facts they convey instead of recognizing that, in Elie Weisel's words, 'theultimate mystery of the Holocaust is that whatever happened took place in thesoul.'* But it turns out that Patterson has a rather restrictive conception of whatconstitutes a "Holocaust diary.' For him, a diary must meet the following critenain order to merit the label: it must demonstrate a sense of responsibility for thecommunity and for its (JewishI way of life; it cannot be focused on the diaristalone; and a notion of the God of Abraham must be present m it. Patterson rejectsany diaries that do not conform to this model, ^uch as, for example, the diary ofEtty Hillesum. as non-Holocaust diaries. Moreover, he includes only the diariesof public or famous people such as Emmanuel Ringelblum, Shimon Huberband,Chaim Kaplan, and Zelig Kalmanovitch or texts that have become canonized,like the diaries of Anne Frank and Moshe Flinker.

What follows is part of a historical inquiry into the meanings individualJews gave to their lives during the Holocaust. It is based upon the study of aparticular case and treats the text examined as period- and culture-specific beforeconsidering it as a manifestation of a theoretically-defined genre. It begins by

3 James E. Young, Writing and fif« rilme the Holocausi: Narralive and ihe Consequencesof Interprelalion Bloominglon and Indianapolis 1988 pp 25-26

of Ufe in

53

g y g

3 James E. Young, Writing and fif« rilme the Holocausi: Narralive and ihe Consof Interprelalion. Bloominglon and Indianapolis 1988, pp. 25-26

4 David Patterson, Along ¡he Edge of Annihilaiuin. The Collapse and Recoverythe Holocaasi Diary. Seattle and London 1999. pp 5-16.

Batsheva Bcn-Amos

iinaly/.ing the text's, peculiar use of many languages and considers its implicationsfor polysystem language theory. It then highlights one central theme of the diarywhose expression was not limited to any one language but defined the existentialciindition of the diarist and retlecled bis (lwn subjective plight. Finally, the diaryis analyzed as an example of two related genres — as a diary generally and asa Holocaust diary specifically. The preseniation has two purposes. Tbe first isto present this particular text, which is of a great interest in its own nght. Thesecond is to establish a mode of analyzing Holocaust diaries based on tbe textsthemselves and their historical context instead of on generalizations regarding allHolocaust diaries or on readers' expectations from them.

Tbe uniqueness of this diary has not escaped the scrutiny of editors and scholars.In I9S9 Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides selected 59 of the diary's 97 entriesfor inclusion in tbeir edited volume on the Lódí Ghetto.^ However, ibey didnot articulate their selection criteria, nor did they indicate that they bad editedentries, shoriening some and changing the wording of others, including somewritten in English. They also made two editorial mistakes that led to erroneousinterpretation. First, they dated the entry written on 28 July 1944 as if it had beenwritten on 20 August, making it the final entry in tbe diary. In the event the diaristwrote his last entry on 3 August, a day after the liquidation of (be ghetto hadbegun; by the twentieth of the month be may not have been in the ghetto anylonger. The editors appear to have assumed tbat the author look the diary withhim lo Auschwitz; indeed — this is their second error — they slate that the diarywas found in Auschwitz after the war. whereas in fact the diary was found in thearea of tbe former ghetto.*

Ten years laler, in 1999, Rachel Langford and Russell West discussed the diaryin the introduction to their edited volume Marginal Voices, Marginal Forms?

5 Alan Adelson and Roben Lapides, cds , íjidz Ghetto: Inside a Ccmmuntu tinder Siege.New York 1989.

6 See the review of the work by Adelson and Lapides in Robert Moses Shapiro, 'Diariesand Memoirs from the Lódí Ghetto m Yiddish and Hebrew.' in R. M. Shapiro, ed..Hohcausi Chmmcte.^. New York 1999, p. 109,

7 Rachel Langford, Russell West, "Introducuon; Dianes and Margins," in R. Langford andR. West, cds , Marginal Voices. Marginal Forms: Diaries in European Literature andHistory. Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1999. pp. 6-21.

54

A Multilingual Diary from ihe Ludí Ghetto

For them ihe placement of the text in the margins of a book was symbolic, for theyconsidered the arrangement of entries around the printed text as a representationof the disciplinary marginality of dianes ' The diary thus sen ed as a metaphor fortheir general theoretical position. However, by representing this particular diaryin this way they projected their own theor> onto ihe text they interpreted, therebyfining the diary into the editors' preconceived idea of whai it oughi to meanwhileneglecung the meaning the diar>'sie\t might have had for the writer or thewriter's state of mind as it »as reflected in his writing. In at least i«o cases theirinterpretation involved senotis misreading. The first case concerned the diai^ sflnai entry. Langford and West staled thai the last entry, written on 3 August1944. was written in Hebrew and that in it the dianst talked about the future,even though his life was coming to an end. For them this was an ironic situation,since this entfy was written ai the ^er^ moment of the author's deponation toAuschwitz.' Therefore, they regarded the dian s language as defiant and insistedupon its capacity to iive on into 'what Walter Benjamin called an "afteriife"[of the text].' Such an entry was a 'brief notation of everyday life taken as thebuiiding blocks of the future in spite of ihe evidence they offer of the wTiter'sindividuai extinction.'^ This interpretation is built on much that is unknowTi. Iiis not certain whether the entry was in fact written at the diansi's last moment,although figuratif eiy the entire period can be seen as consisting of lasi moments.We do not know if he died in Auschwitz or was sent lo a camp inside Germanyand perished there.'° But more crucial is that the entry in question was in fact notthe last one. The entr>' the> read as defiant was actually written at the end of Juiy,when the diarist thought he was about to be liberated. If his Hebrew representedoptimism, apparently there was a flickering moment of hope when he wrote thatentry.

The actual lastenir>' of 3 August 1944 v.as written rather in English. By thenthe Germans had made known their plan to liquidate ihe gheiio; Hans Biebow,the Nazi commandant, had made a public speech in which he told the Jews that

s Ibid. p. 8,9 Ibid.. p. 10,10 Mosiofihe68J00indi'.nduals*holivediniheLódíghenoatlhetJmeofiheAugust 1944

deponanons were sent to Auschwitz, but some were seni to labor camps in Germany M.Unger. HaHayim haPemmiyim beGeio Lodz." unpublisbed Ph.d. dissenauon. Hebte»Uoiversiiy of Jenjsalem. 1997. p. 294

55

Batsheva Ben-Amos

they had nothing to fear and would only he taken to work." The diarist's lastentry was mil déliant at all. He wrote about his despair and depression, hopingthat the Na^is mighl not kill ihc Jews of ihe ghelto but let them work for ihe Reich,In other words, when he wrote in Hebrew about the future he actually believedthat he had a future and was not thinking about his extinction.

The second case of misreading concerned the order of the entries. The diaristappears not to have written his entries on consecutive pages. He wrote on thefront matter and text pages up to page I S {>f ihe book, ihen seemingly skippedto page 253, writing from there to ihe end of the text and on the back matterpages. But the sequence of entries did not fi>llow the pages in the book; insteadthe author skipped back and forth between front and back. For example, the firsiand second entries, both in English, arc on pages 3 and 4 ofthe diary.'' Bui thethird(Yiddish)entry isonpage56of the diary, while the fourth (English| is backin the early part of the book, on diary page 4, The author wrote the fifth and sixthentries (both in Hebrew) on page 56, but ihen he shifted to page 5 to write theseventh, eighth and ninth entries (all three in Fnglish) and placed the lenth entry(Hebrew) on page 55, Langford and West saw this pattern as a reflection of ihediarist's loss of internal control, corresponding to his lack of control overextemalevents. However, a closer examination reveals that precisely the opposite wasthe case. The diarisl actually attempted lo establish a linguistic order He startedby placing his English and Polish entries in the front of the book, writing towardthe center from left to right, while his Hebrew and Yiddish entries began at theend of the book and moved inward trom right to left. At some point he could notmaintain this pattern any longer, because as soon as he ran out of clear pages inthe front and back of the book, he had limited writing space, and his order becameless consistent,'•*

More recently, Alexandra Zapruder included a selection from the diary inher edited volume. Salvaged Pages, a collection of Holocaust diaries written

11 Ibid,, p, 292,12 In addition to the primed page numbers of the book, there is a handwritten enumeration

ofthe diary pages m red. which seems lo have hcen made at a later date by an unidentifiedperson. Information provided by Nadia Kahan, an archivist at Yad Vashem, The lotalnumber of pages containing diary entnes is 58,

13 This paltem is noted in Loewy and Bodek, Les Vrais Riches, ' p. 6, It is also mentionedin a footnote by Alexandra Zapruder, ed.. Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of ¡heHotocausl. New Haven and London 2(X>2, p 466

56

A Multilingual Diary from tbe Lódi Ghetto

by adolescents and young adults, some previously published, others not.'^Thedegree to which the selections in this volume have been edited vanes: some arcpresented in full, others in fragmentary form. The Ldd¿ diar>' belongs to thelaner group. Like Adelson and Lapides. Zapruder did not offer an> criteria forthe selection of entries or their editing Consequently some of the omissions arebaffiing. For example, the relations between the diarist and his younger sister arean important theme in the diar>\ vet Zapruder excluded two consecutive entriesdealing with this subject, written on the samedav tlóJunei in English and Polishrespectively These entries are significant in particular because the writer, whowas the older of the two. highlighted his sister"s influence on him.

The translation in this volume, especially of the Hebrew texts, is problematicas well. For example, on 2 July the dianst described in Hebrew the physicalappearance of the Jews in the ghetto For precisions sake he even coineda new Hebrew word for what he sav*: Damenu kevar nitmayam' tliterally'our blood has already turned to water.' using the Hebrew word for water —mayim — as a verb). This phrase was not translated. Even if the translatorhad difficulty rendering this unusual term, she needed to report its existence. Inanother instance the translation of a Hebrew entr^ conveys exactly the oppositeof what lhe diarist wrote. The translator rendered the Hebrew text written on31 May as: "I do not waver from m> crazv idea to get to Eretz Israel 1 willnot Slay in Poland after the war ends. '^ However, the original Hebrew doesnot express a determined decision, but a conflict between the author's wish toimmigrate to Palestine and his desire to stay in Poland after the war. The dianstactually wrote. 'Ani mehases beRa'ayonomi shig'onotai im yesh ¡a'alot artzah

Yisrael o tehishaer bePolaniyah ahar gemar haMithamak ' which should berendered as 'I waver in my wild thoughts whether to immigrate to Palestineor to stay in Poland after the end of the war.' '" \Mien the diarist divulged thisconflict he opened a window onto his background and his thoughts about Jewishnational identity, a major issue for Polish Jews in the interwar years. This crucialissue occupied the dianst's thoughts, and he «ould develop this theme fiirther.demonstrating his psychological defense mechanisms and changes that occurredin his Jewish identity as his vwiting evolved. But lhe nuanced developments of

14 S«c previous note.ts Ittd. p. 37016 Loewy and Bodek. Les \hns Riches, p 56 of the diary text.

57

Batsheva Bcn-Amos

the writer's train of thought are lost in a translation that glosses over conflict andatnbi valence.

Such a manipulation of the diarist's text, whether intentional or the resultof misreading, draws attention to the more general question of representation,publication, and analysis ol Holocaust diaries. No responsible historian orstudent of literature would even contemplate an arbitrary "cut and paste'presentation of primary documents and texts. Yet the writings of dead diaristshave become defenseless prey in the hands of editors who have felt free tomanipulate them for their own purposes, from ideological commitments to theeconomy of publishing. The bowdlerizing or expurgating of a text by omitting,modifying, or substituting in full or in part sections or words considered sensitiveviolates the diaries' integrity.' It is important to remember that diaries, like anyother primary texts, require careful attention in editing and translation to maintaintheir reliability as sources, as well as detailed explanations of any changes thatwere made in them. They also require close reading and interpretation relatedto the context of the writer's time and place as best possible, without subjectingthem to any prior commitments or theories held by the researcher.

The young diarist from the Lód¿ ghetio was not the only writer of a Holocaustdiary to record his intimate thoughts between book covers. The historian SimonHuberband, who worked for Emmanuel Ringelblum's Oytieg Shahhes archivein the Warsaw ghetto, initially wrote in the margins of books as a precautionarymeasure, thinking that his notes would look like commentaries on the pnntedtext. Ringelblum, who did not believe that the Nazis were interested in the 'lonedelinquent' or in the private practices of Jews, convinced him to stop writingin books.'* An unknown wnter of a brief diary in Yiddish from the Wilno ghettofollowed a similar practice. The four extant readable pages of his diary werewritten in a school notebook, placed inside a book cover of a Yiddish translation

17 K. Goldstein examined ibis phenomenon in folklorisiie material, where changes in ihetext may be looked upon as part of folk transmission processes whereas in fact theyare instances of bowdlerization and expurgation. K S. Goldstein, 'Bowdlenzation andExpurgation. Academic and Folk,' Journal of American Folklore 80 11967):374-86.See also David Enge!, 'On the Bowdlenzalion of a Holocaust Testimony. The WartimeJournal of CalekPereehodnik,' Polin 12 I l999):3lfi-29.

18 Emmanuel Ringelblum. ¿Û.« Writing.^. January 19-ii'April 1944. Jemnlem 1994, p. 4.

58

A Multilingual Diary from the Lódí Ghetto

of a small Polish novel, which was apparently meant to disguise the diary. In thiscase the writer had good reason to lake precautions, because he noicd some detailsabout the German army. " Another diary from Wi Ino. which contains instructionsabout how to build a homemade grenade, was camouflaged with the words "JesusChrist Our Saviour" wnrten on the c o v e r t

Though the diarist from Lódí did not »rite about underground or militaryactivities, and thert was no official ban on diar\' writing in the ghetto, it isnonetheless quite possible thai securit> and secrecy motivated him to use a bookas a cover. He himself wrote in his diar> aboui how the criminal police iKripotmade surprise visits in private dwellings. For example, on 11 Jul> he made iwoentries, one in Hebrew, the other in English, about a search by the Kripo of thehouse of Rabbi Zilman. The> found him and his son praying, inquired aboutthe prayer books they found in tbe house, and humiliated and assaulted the oldman. We can only imagine the danger that awaited the diarist if his diary hadbeen discovered by the Kripo.

There could have been other reasons for writing in tbe margins of a Frenchnovel, but the text itself offers no clues about them. The diarist could havebeen engaging in a personal private joke or stmply having fun in an otherwisedepressing world, playfully «riting over a language he did not use. Or he mayhave been reading the book at the time. A general shortage of writing papercould have also been a reason. To be sure, the writers of the Chronicle of the

Lodz GheHo. who kept daily records until 30 July 1944. seem not to have runinto such a problem, but they might haie had more resources than this diarist.

The tise of four languages, the diarv's unique feature, is more puzzling.Langford and West suggested that multilingualism represented the writer'sspiritual resistance against the Nazis: by imagining and addressing multiplereaders in different languages he took a stand against the Na2i obliteration oflinguistic and cultural realities. At the same time, claimed Langford and West.he defied the Germans' treatment of him as a nonperson.'' In contrasL Shapirothought tbat be wTOte in four languages so that his twelve-year-old sister wouldnot be able to decipher his texL~ Yet while either of these interpretations could

19 YlVOArchi\es. New York. RG 223-26/64220 [nformation provided by Marek Web of tbe YIVO archive.21 Langford and West, Marginal Voices, p, 9.22 Shapiro. Holocaust Chronicles, p. 109.

59

he correct in part, neither offers a sullicient explanation. Rather the multiplicityof languages in the diary must be seen in context of the mullilingualism ofPolish Jewish society during ihi: inierwar years. The wriier''^ alternate use ofPolish, Hebrew, and Yiddish in ihc diary is consistent with the linguistic fabricof contemporary Polish Jewish culture. l)n the olhcr hand, the use of EnglishIS idio.syncratic; English was not a part ot the mullilingual cultural system ofintenvar Polish Jews.

Chone Shmeruk, who analy/.ed ihc multilingual 'polysystem' wiihinwhich the Jews of inicrwar Poland <ipcratcd, noted that bilingualism andmultilingualism were common even among those Polish Jews who had nul beenformally schooled in the languages ihey employed,•'^ The polysystem developedas a result of Jewish education, tradition, speech al home, and contacts with thelocal population and ihc government-;. With Ihc cslablishmenl of an independentPoland after the First World War. knowledge of Russian and German declined,but the use of Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish continued. The younger generationtended to use Polish in daily life, its members spoke Yiddish with their elders andPolish at school and with their peers. Such was the case especially among whitecollar workers and professionals in the large cities in the centra! and southernprovinces of Poland like Ldd/ . Yiddish remained dominant among OrthodoxJews, especially in small towns in eastern and northeastern provinces.

Shmeruk's description of the Imguislic behavior of inierwar Polish Jewrymade use of the polysystem model thai llamar Evcn-Zohar developed regardingHebrew and Yiddish.-'' Evcn-Zohar's model described a case where a canonizedlanguage. Hebrew, which was a writlen language used for religious and legalpurposes and generally nol spoken, retained its high status within Jewish culturewhile the functions of daily speech and popular reading were relegated to Yiddish,Shmeruk extended the analysis lo the situation in independent Poland, wherecompulsory schooling in the Polish language, the need for higher education, andfurther acculturation caused Polish to replace Yiddish as ihc principal vernacular.The main theoretical difference between Even-Zohar and Shmeruk is ihat while

3.1 Chone Shmeruk. 'Hebrew-Yiddish-Polish A Tnlingual Jewish Culture,' in Y Gulmanel al. eds.. Tbe Jey\s of Poland bett\een Two World Wars. Hanover and London 1989,pp. 285-311

24 llamar Even-Zohar. Papers in Historical Parties, Tel Aviv 1978, idem . "Aspects of theHebrew-Yiddish Polysystem. A Case of a Multilingual Polysystem,' Poetics Today 11119901 121-.10.

60

A Multilingual Diary from Ihe Ladt Gheiio

Even-Zohar emphasized the systemic aspect and the different functions of thedifferent languages. Shmemk emphasized the interdependency between thelanguages in a multilingual system.

For purposes of clarification it is necessary to distinguish between the termspolysystem," in which two or more different languages function side by side in

the same society, and 'diglossia.' a term coined b> Charles Ferguson to denote asystem where two dialects of the same language or several vanetics of the samelanguage take on specialized functions or low and high statuses.-' The model ofdiglossia applies niceiy to the case oí the regional Yiddish dialects in Europe withtheir ditïerent standards and attempts b) VIVO to create a standardized Yiddishbased on the Wilno dialect. But dunng the internar years increasing numbers ofPolish Jews functioned in a true pol> system. In 1934-35 80.8 percent of Jewishelementary school children attended state and municipal public schools, while19,2 percent studied in private Jewish schools, including those in which Polishwas the principal language of instruction. About 16 percent of Jewish studentsin public schools received supplementary Jewish education after school hoursin the Jewish school network.-* Hence, not surprisingly, although in the 1931census80percent of Polish Jews claimed Mddishas their mother tongue, by 1939about half of Jewish high school students declared tbat thetrnatne language wasPolish.^

The reason for the predominance of public education was economic: publicschools were free, whereas Jewish schools were not. Social mobility was anadditional factor Parents wanted their children to leam Polish in preparationfor high school. Education in Jewish languages declined further during the highschool years. Thus Polish education relegated Yiddish to the status of a secondary-language for these youngsters. Hebrew «as in decline as well, as the Hebrewliterary center moved to Palestine during the 1920s.-^ Thus Polish becamean increasingly prominent language of Jew ish cultural production. Still, the use

ZS Cbañe&feígason, Language Structure and Language Use. Stanford CA 1971. pp. 1-26.26 Cerchón C. Bacon. 'National Revival. Ongoing Accuinuation: Jewish Educauon in

I men* ai Poland.' Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubno» Insiiiuis I (2002);7l-92.27 Werses. -Haftonut,' p. 8828 David Weinfeld. 'HaShira hal^nl bein shetei milhamot o lam. in Chone Shmeruk and

Shmuel Wetses, eds., Bein Shelei Mithamot Otam Peraktm miHayei haTarbul shelYehudet Polin leLeshonoieihem, Jerusalem 1997, pp. 37-44, Shmuel Werses, 'Hallonothalvni veKor'eihah bePolm bem shctei milhamot olam.' ibid.. pp. 73-95.

61

Batsheva Bcn-Amos

iif Polish did not necessanly weaken Jewish identity. There was an extensiveJewish daily and periodical press in the Polish language, which published, amongother things. Polish translations of Hebrew and Yiddish literary works. This pressexisted alongside a Yiddish press and publishing industry that, despite a declineduring tbt; iy3Üs. still reached large numbers of Jewish readers.

Thus the anonymous diarist Irom Lrtd/, might have attained bis knowledge oflanguages in any number of different ways. He might have attended a Jewishelementary or bigh school that taught Yiddish or Hebrew (or both] in additionto Polish, which was a state requirement. Or be could have learned his Yiddishat bome and Hebrew in a supplementary school. He might have learned Englishin high school or from a private tutor if his tamily was well off. or perhaps onhis own as a hobby. Indeed, he displayed interest in European literature andexhibited linguistic facility, being able to write rather well in all tour of thelanguages he employed in the diary.

The diary contains 97 entries. Of these. 32 are in English. 30 in Hebrew. 23 inPolish, and 12 in Yiddish. Five entries were written in May (beginning on thelifth day ofthe month), 24 in June. 64 in July, and one entry, his last, m August.As time passed tbe frequency of the entries increased. In May the diarist wrotetwice in one day on only one occasion (on the last day of tbe month), whereasin June he made multiple entries on seven different days. In July there were 19days in which he wrote from two to five entries, at various hours of tbe day andnight. Sometimes the multiple entries for a given day were written in differentlanguages; at other times all entries for a day were in ihe same language. Healso wrote five short entries without a date. All of these dateless entries wererecorded between entnes for July and are counted as belonging to that month.The following table illustrates tbe chronological distribution ofthe entries andtheir languages:

29 See Natan Cohen. Sefer. Safer vellna: Merkaz haTarbut haYehudii heVarshah.í9/S-/fJ2. Jerusalem 2003. pp 169-70.

62

A Multilingual Diary from itie L6d± Gbeito

Distribution of Languages by Month

English

Hebrew

Polisb

Yiddish

May

3

t

-

1

June

9

S

4

.'

1-14 July

10

8

7

4

15-29July

9

13

12

4

Augusi

1

—

-

Totals

32

Î 0

; :

i :

The diarist used the lour languages in dillerent ways. Each language had itsown function and dominated at different times. Moreover, in each of them thewriter employed different imagery and emphasized different aspects of his ownidentity.

More than a third of the entries were written in English. English was themost frequently-used language until the second half of July, when entries inPolish and Hebrew became more numerous. English was the language of thefirst and final entries, although the writer may not have known that the Englishentry of 3 August would be his last. The level of English was not colloquial,but the writer had a large vocabulary and appears to have written the languagewith confidence. The English entries contained metaphors, humor, and somebroad philosophical statements in which the author expressed his admiration forShakespeare. Homer, Dante, and Goethe. The author took pride in being ableto read Shakespeare in the original. On the other hand, the English entries didnot mention any Polish or Jewish writers.

The diarist generally used English to express his hopes of gaming a wideraudience for his writing. For example, on 1 June he wrote. ' I go on dreamtng,dreaming about survival and about getting fame in order to be able to tell "theworld".... to tell and "to protest."... I dream about telling to humanity but shouldI be able? Should Shakespeare be able?' He also employed the language toexplain why he started to write, as well as to work through some of his conflicts

* July IS divided into two penods; from 15 July to the end of ihe monih transports toCbelmno slopped.

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Batsheva Ben-Amos

und moral dilemmas. In the process of doing so be related narratives of ibingsthai hud happened to him and to olhers.

In the diary's lirst entry, which was written in English, the diarist wrote wilhamazing honesty aboul bis own moral failure. He had just finished bis ownbread ration, but he was still hungry, so he ale the half a loaf of bread thatconstituted his sister's ration for the entire week. At first he wrote about this actas a demonstration of ihe degree of inhumanity to which the victims of the Nazisystem had been reduced: ' I shall for evermore despise this part of "mankind,"who were able to inflict such internal woes on their "co"-human beings."However, even though he was eventually able to get another ration for his sisterby lying tbat the bread was stolen, he accepted ultimate moral responsibility:'All I can say is tbat I shall always suffer on the remembrance of this "noble"did [sic — should be 'deed'l of mine. And I shall always condemn myself....'Ultimately he and his fellow human beings shared a universal character flawwith the Nazis.

The diarist was clearly inlluenced by his little sister; her realism anddepression affected him. He described in English how lonely she was andhow she had to fend for herself, while he only made things worse by fightingwitb her Later, feeling curious or perhaps envious, he read her diary, translatinginto his the opening sentences and a little poem she had written in Polish aboutber lost childhood.'''Her diary began with words similar to those he employed inhis introduction, thus giving cause lo wonder whether he started writing a diarybecause she bad. Or perhaps it was the iither way around: she started afcer him.

In either case, hunger and tbe moral dilemmas il presented comprised acentral theme in the diary. Being so young, the diarist felt its pain withincreased intensity. Hunger was even more excruciating for him because it wasassociated in bis mind with a moral failure. He tried to control his suffering andbis behavior under the influence of his hunger, but to his mind he did not dowell:

All I should like lo have in life at the present moment is plenty to eat....|T|he sad fact ¡is| that a 'Geiionian' when deprived of half a loaf ofbread suffers more terribly than if his own parents had died — coulda human being be reduced lo such tragic callousness...? Nay, it is only

3Ü Entry of II July

64

A Multilingual Diary from the Ló-lt Ghetto

German artistry in Sadicisising which enabled this.... Nobody who didnot experience it will be able to believe it."

The ideological debate over the Jewish question that had raged in interwarPoland was also reflected in the English entries. On 15 May the dianst gavevent to an internal conflict over whether aflcr the war he would emtgrate toPalestine or America or stay in Poland:

My mind is still further disordered, in ihis [i.e. ihese) infernal conditionsin which I am plunged, i trouble my mind and cannoi decide if... olfool that I ami I shall go to Palestine or remain where I am. I want togo. Socialist cosmopolitist. and I still have many misgivings in nearestrealisation of the World United States; and still dear oid Hebrew andancient Palestine has an irresistible fascination for me •— although inmy lemble wrath against nationalism caused by the barbaric Germanexaggeration — I rebuke myself as being partie u i ari st. 'a parochialist'but after all I scarcely believe Ihat. let us say, the Poles would over nightforget their age long hate towards the.... Jews.

Such a discourse seems lo place the diarist among the acculiuraled youngJewish intelligentsia of his time. Similar opinions were published regularlyin the Polish literary weekly Wiadomosci Lilerackie, to which Jews wereprominent contributors. Wiadomosci endorsed 'universalism' and was against'parochialism' and 'provincialism' as well as nationalism, but Jews whomigrated to Palestine were perceived as closer to the universal ideal thanthe Yiddishists, who were seen as having a ghetto mentality.'" The diarist didnot resolve this dilemma in his English entries.

In contrast to English, which connected him to a wider audience and senedas a vehicle for confronting personal and universal problems, the diaristused Yiddish and Hebrew to express his connection to his fellow Jews. Heromanticized both languages, each in a different way. His attitude and sentiments

31 Entry of 15 May.32 On Wiadomosci Uterackie and the Jewish quesuon see Magdalena Opalski. "HaPulmus

al haShe'elah haYehudit baShavu'on Wiadomosci Uterackie baShanim 1924-1939.'in Shmeruk and Werses. Bein sheiei milhumot baOlam. pp 419-32, esp. p. 422; JanBloiiski. -Wiadtimosci Uterackie. 1924-1933, A Problem for the Poles, a Problem forIhe Jews.' Gat-Ed 14 11995):39^t8.

65

Batsheva Ben-Amos

toward Yiddish rellected his previous distance from the language — a dislancethat became bolhersome for him only in the ghelto. Having moved culturallyand socially into urbane Polish socieiy, he felt nostalgic toward Yiddish, asrevealed in his enlry for 12 June:

[N]ever before has suffering been felt so collectively as by us In theghetto. After fantasizing aboui wriiing in different languages, I return tomy own language, lo Yiddish, our charming mamelo.iheti. because onlyin Yiddish can I hope to express my true inner self directly and honestly.1 am ashamed when I think how I have neglected the Yiddish languageuntil now. Like it or not, it is my language and that of my fathers and mygrandfathers, grandmothers and mothers. So I must and will love Yiddish,because it is my language.''

In this paragraph the writer revealed an ambivalence toward Yiddish. Indeed,ihe claim that only in Yiddish could he express his true inner self wascontradicted by the relatively infrequency in which he actually wrote in thelanguage. Only 12 out of 97 entries were in Yiddish, making it the ieast-usedlanguage in the diary. Thus his expression of love for ihe language seems torefiect a sense of duty, an obligation, bul noi genuine affection, with the adjectiveihetievdif! ( 'charming" ) preceding manu-lashn (literally "moiher tongue.' a termof endearment for Yiddish) giving the passage a eondescending tone. For himYiddish appears to have represented tradition and the past, from which he haddeparted bul had now, like ihe prodigal son. relumed; il was the language oftheolder generations, of his forebears and their collective suffering. Apparently hefelt guilty for abandoning Yiddish and was determined to force himself to loveand use the language. But Yiddish had not been his language of self-expressionand personal identity during the prewar years.

Perhaps for this reason his writing in Yiddish was very general, lacking vividdescriptions and often expressing frustration about his inability to write. Forexample, his entry for 24 May staled that 'to write about our suffering is (asimpossible as it is to] drink the sea," On 17 June he wrote ihat even if he wereinspired by the muses' of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, or Dante, siill it would

be hard to describe Jewish suffering, because his language is not sufficient to

33 The translation has been modified from thai given in Zapruder. Salvaged Pages, pp.371-72.

66

A .MuUilingual Diary from the Lódí Gheiio

the task. Nevertheless, whereas he was able to overcome such limitations inother languages, in Yiddish he felt more constricted.

Jn Hebrew the dianst was able to draw upon a range of associations that appearto have been absent in Yiddish. Perhaps for this reason the number of Hebrewentries was more than double that in Yiddish The author's style and vocabularyreflected the contemporary Hebrew idiom ofthe 1930s; he even seems to havemade a conscious effort to maintain the punty of the language by using wordsderived from Hebrew roots instead of Latin based equivalents. His Hebrew wasclearly leartied in school, though it ma> haie been influenced in addition byHebrew literary journals or newspapers from Palestine. OccasionalK he mademinor grammatical erTors. mostly involving misuse ofthe definite article.

The diarist used Hebrew in two particular contexts. The first involvedexpression of his hope to sur^ùve the war. Indeed. Hebrew was the language inwhich he reponed aboui positive external events, such as the Allied landing atNormandy, the advances of the Red Army on the eastern front, improvementsin food distribution, or suspension of deportations. It was also the language towhich he turned after he resolved the internal conflict about where he wouldseek to rebuild his life after the war that he had first raised in English on 15May. The catalyst for the resolution was a conversation with his sister aboutlife after the war in which he sensed his sister's anxiety that they might notsurvive. On 31 May he wrote in Hebrew that as a result of this conversation heunderstood that his confusion stemmed less from an ideological conflict overwhether to go to Palestine or stay in Poland than from a fundamental uncertaintyabout whether he should even try to plan for the future. He decided that it washealthier to be 'madly' optimistic and to make plans in order to keep the gnmleaUty ai a distance. Evidently Hebrew and a vision of a future in Palestineseemed besi suited to this purpose. Thus, for example, after five Hebrew entrieswritten between 7-9 July in which he noted an increased likelihood that the warwould soon come to an end. he wTOte in Hebn:w on 12 July that he was longingfor Jewish hfe m a Jewish state. He believed that the last five years alone wereenough to unify all the survivors in Palestine on the basis of common sufFering.Hebrew thus seems to have been invariably connected to hope for survival andoften to the conviction that only in Palestine would he be able to make biswartime expenences understood.

Toward the end of July the second context for the diarist's Hebrew writing

67

Balsbeva Ben-Amos

emerged. For the lirst time he cimfronted the memory of those who had died.The timing ol the onset of this grieving process docs not seem to have beenaccidental. Earlier the y(iung man was not ready for it. In the English diary entryof 15 May he was en.-iconced in what he called his "inhuman state of mind.'thinking that the pains of hunger were worse than the pain of losing his parents.Later, on 26 June, he wrote (in Hebrew) about a discussion with his friends inwhich 'we all decided (gamarnii omer) that now we cannot feel the depth ofthe tragedy because our senses arc all invested in the question of eating, and thepain striking us with its horrible blows is too great for us to feel; for one canfeel a small pain, a medium si/e pain, but a pain so horrible who can feel?' Thediscussion centered about tbe Nazis' intentions — whether they would let theJews of the ghetto live or not — as they struggled as best they could to maintaintheir strength. Then, in mid-July, deportations to Chetmno, which had beenrenewed on 23 June, stopped, and for a few days food distribution ¡mproved.Vegetables were even available in the ghetto. At the end of the month he heardabout battles on the outskirts of Warsaw and began to believe that liberationwas imminent. Only then did be feel ready to grieve for his relatives and the'murdered half of the Jewish people.'''' He was able to do so because he fek thaisoon he would not be suffering hunger;

If we live and do not have to worry about filling up our empty stomachs,then surely the memory of the many pure and holy heroes burned at thestake despite their innocence will return. Let us remember our fathers,relatives, acquaintances who were murdered, those who died in hungerand agony that cannot be fathomed. Let us remember those who wereburied and bumed alive. Let us remember our mutilated brothers, hanged,bumed, and crucified, thrown into the water, etc., etc. The Jewish peoplewill remember ¡all of this].... Upon liberation... we will be bappy andcelebrate a second Purim.

In Jewish tradition a second Punm — Ihe day recalling the triumphof the Jewsover their enemies recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther ^ is celebrated by afamily or a community after a miracle has occurred. For the Jews of the ghettoa second Purim meant the celebration of the downfall of the twentieth-century

34 Entry of 31 July.

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A Multilingual Diary from Che tódí Cheito

Haman, Adolf Hitler. Thus the act of remembrance and grieving coincided inhis mind with a celebration of the miracle of survival. Both together markedthe beginning of healing and a readiness to move on.

Presumably, Hebrew served as the language for the memorial passages inthe diary because models in that language were readil) available Indeed.the descriptions of the various wa>s in wbich Jews died under the Germanregime echoed traditional memorial texts, like the lamentations recited after theChmielnicki massacres of 1648-49."' Nevenbeless. while employing traditionalliturgical elements, the diarist secularized them, resorting to a common Zionistdevice. Instead of using the opening word ÍTctor I'May He — i.e. God —remember'), which is the traditional beginning of such a memorial prayer, hewrote Nidior ("Let us remember"). This secular opening was regularly used bythe Zionist movement in Jewish Palestine following the Arab riots of the 1930sand 1930s. Such memonal prayers were distributed by the Jewish NationalFund in Poland."*

Yet despite his apparent masiery of Hebrew sources, and notwithstanding hisassertion that onl> in Yiddish could he express honestly his true inner self, itseems that Polish v^as ibe language with «bich he felt mosl comfortable. Hewas not as self-conscious about using Polish as he was about writing in theother three languages. Polish ihus seems lo have been his true mother tongue,and he used it to come to grips with the grim reality of the present. He also usedmostly Polish lo express his need for the diarv' to be his friend. The longesLmost emotional entry in the diary was written in this language on 27 June,On that day he learned that the Altestenrai (Council of Jewish Elders» mightbe def)or!ed. TTiis information provoked in him an intense fear mixed withfury toward virtually everyone around him. He was angry that life was still soimportant to Lhe ghetto dwellers, tbat e\en though 'we are no longer humanbeings nor animals... (but] a strange... creature "made in Germany".' the Jewsof the gheno "still struggle to stay alive and will not kill themselves.' He spewedforth rage and self-hatred, calling lhe Jews slaves without free will who wouldaccept any humiliation in order lo stay alive He said that the Germans were

35 For an example of such a lamentation see Michael Handel, Cezeroi Tak veTat. Jeni&aleni

1950. p 2836 Information provided by Prof. Elhanan Reiner of Tel Aviv Universily.

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Batsheva Ben Amos

corred to call Jews by such names as 'wretched insects' or 'sordid, crawlingreptiles.'

From mid-July, a period of the greatest frustration and impatience for him.when he sensed that his fate would soi>n be decided, Polish became a dominantlanguage. On IS July, he considered bui rejected suicide. Four days later, notingthe suspension of deportations, he wrote in irony that a 'golden period' hadcome lo the ghetto: now everyone could oblain live kilograms of vegetables.On 2i July he wrote about the transport of the Hungarian Jews to a 'place ofslaughter' — an indication that news from the outside was able to penetrate theghello walls. In ihe same entry he speculated that the 7,000 Jews deported fromihe Lód¿ ghetto between 23 June-14 July had probably mei a similar faie. Halfan hour later he wrote about the failed attack on Hitler's life, about which hehad learned from a German newspaper. Yet outside news notwithstanding, foodand his own personal fate remained his main concerns. On 26 and 27 July hereported again that food distribution in the ghetto had improved and that therewas talk that the Germans were about to leave; however, he feared that if theydeparted they would leave a trail of killings and destruction behind them. On28 July he expressed more frustration and impatience. He feit hke a prisoner;it was unclear to him whether the shots he says he heard were 'the sound ofliberation or the knock of the gallows.'

Thus the text in question appears to have reflected the broad linguisticchanges that occurred among the Jews of Poland between the two world wars.During this period Hebrew retained its canonical siaius while demonstrating anability to provide a basis for an idealistic, fulure-oriented discourse. Compulsoryeducation fostered rapid Polonization, causing Polish to replace Yiddish as thespoken, daily language. Yiddish attained a nostalgic status, conjuring childhoodmemories and a romantic longing for a bygone Jewish world. The events ofthe war drove many Jews in Poland to seek their Jewish cultural identity, butunless they were aiready well entrenched in Hebrew and actively involvedin the Zionist movement, they found this journey back to be difficult andconfusing. Such was the case with the anonymous diarist from the Lódí ghetto.In addition, however. Ihe experience of the war also appears to have sharpenedhis universalist sentiments, which he chose, idiosyncratically, to express inEnglish.

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A Muliilmgual Diary from ihe Lódí

Nonetheless, there appears to have been one theme in the diary that transcendedall linguistic divisions. That theme was the fear of death and a concomitantpowerful desire to survive. From mid-June emphasis in the diary shiftedgradually from hunger and the author's literary ambitions to a sense of impendingmortality. On 18 June the author wondered if he would ever read his diary again.On 26 June he wrote thai he felt alone, afraid, and in need of a fnend; the diarywould serve thai purpose. During July the frequency of his writing increased;he wrote three, four times a day and at night. He attempted to find some comfonby translating secretly the poem that his little sister had written in her diary, bytalking to a rabbi, and by visiting an old book store. But he could not overcomehis anxiety, as shown by his English entry of 12 July:

Though 1 am quite unable to wnte, let alone to concentrate my disturt)edmind [so] as to be able to produce any literary description of what 1 feelat the present moment, I cannot forebear of putting some scattered wordsupon paper. I have been in my only recreation place in the getto — at theold book shop: a woman came in lo buy a buckle to her rucksack whichshe prepares for her exile. She was displeased with the pattern she wasshown by the seller and went away without finishing the purchase. Thenthe merchant uttered a few words which made me shiver and shudderall over: "she will not have to carry long a time her rucksack becausethose who go to heaven have no need for the like." To say that it isunimaginable, undesc riba ble. unspeakable, un ,.. un ... un ... et cetera.is to have said nothingl Such terrible showers on the poor platforms ofthe human heart can only be experienced in modem gettos, (There is noproper plural indicated in non-Hitlenan grammar).

Persona] diary writing is a culttiral practice, with its own history and socialvalue," It is also a quiet, contemplative practice that stands out particularlywhen contrasted with the savagery of the Nazi occupation and treatment ofthe Jews. Usually people who wrote personal diaries came from sociocultural

37 Malik Allam and Philippe Lejeune, Joumau.x miimes. Une sociologie de I écriture

personnette. Paris 1996

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Batsheva Bcn-Amos

backgrounds where writing was valued. Such was the case with Polish Jews.especially young Polish Jews, between the two world wars.'* Hence the behaviornoted by Emmanuel Ringclblum in 1943 is not surprising:

The terror increased, [and]... Jews .started to write. Everybody wrote:journalists, wntcrs. teachers, public ligures, teenagers, and even children.Most wrote diaries, describing the events of tbe day through the prism ofpersonal experiences. Much has been written, but most of it was lost inthe expulsion and destruction ot the Jews of Warsaw. Only the materialwhich was bidden in the ghetto archive — Oyneg Shabbes — remains."

Personal writing in diaries provides a glimpse of how social and individualrealities interact with one another. In a diary the writer 'works' on his life,especially in situations where an older, stable balance has shifted or brokendown. One of tbe conditions that move people to write diaries is the discoveryof an imbalance between a previously coherent social situation with clearsocial norms and rules and a new situation without such norms, in whichpeople feel as if they have been pushed out of society.'"' Such was true forthe anonymous diarist from the Lod2 ghetto. Tbe sense of alienation from thefamiliar past and the necessity to build a bridge to an uncertain future was alreadyevident in the second sentence of the diary: 'To recapitulate the past events isquite impossible so I begin with the present,"" Indeed, the situation for Jewsunder Nazi occupation precluded any real option to reestablish a new balancetbat included even some aspects of the old life order. Old institutions, roles,and social distinctions had become irrelevant; family, friends, and entire Jewishcommunities had been murdered; property had been confiscated. On tbe otherhand, it is not apparent why the diarist decided to start a diary at the particularpoint in time when he did. After all, the Nazi occupation had begun four yearsearlier, the stable old order had already long since passed, and the dianst had beenin a highly abnormal situation for some time. The beginning of the diary revealsthat the diarist's need to work on his life was prompted primarily by bis personal

38 Marcus Mosclcy. 'Life, Literature: Autohiographies of Jewish Youih in ln(cruar Poland.'Jewish Social Studies 7 (20011.27-29.

39 Emmanuel Ringelblum, Keim-im ahammm: Yahasei Polanim-Yehiidim. Yanuar1943-April 1944. ed. Yisrael Gulman ci al, Jerusalem 1944, p. 4,

4(1 Allaiti and Lejeune. Joiimnux intimes, pp. 121 -23.41 Entiy of 5 May 1944,

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A Multilingual Diary from the Lódí Gheiio

situation, although the personal situation to which the dtary mitially respondedwas one that had been induced by the new, comipt moral order that the Na^is hadimposed upon the Jews of the ghetto.

That order displaced its moral failure onto its victims, forcing them to choosebetween death and options considered immoral in their own previous normalsocial world. As a result, whenever they made choices that were immoral intheir own eyes, Jews had to deal with the recognition of their own moral failure.Moral survival depended on how far Jews could go without breaking theirown moral code and still survive physicalK and psychologically. Thus it doesnot appear accidental that the anonymous ghetto diarist started his journal bydiscussing his moral shortcomings — in the first entry the stealing of his sister'sbread, in the second (and repeatedly throughout the work) his feeling that thepain of hunger is greater than the pain of loosing his parents. To be sure, heput some of the responsibility for this breakdown on the Nazis and understoodthat not only he himself but all Jews had been invidiously affected morally byNazi rule. However, this practice was mixed with a self-loathing that led. in thePolish-language entr>' of 27 June, to something approaching an acceptance ofthe Nazi 'grand narrative' concerning the Jews. In the end, the only thing thatcould humanize him in his own eyes was suffenng. Suffering also representedthe only connection he had with other Jews and the only significant thing hewas allowed to possess. Hence he earned the desire to write further about hissuffering and hoped that he would be able to do so properly.

But the diarist did not write only as a victim. He was fairly conscious ofthe politics of his situation. He often wrote about his dislike of nationalism asmanifested in Nazi dogma. The diary helped him to think about the politicalimplications of his actions. It also had other functions; as a representation ofthe writer himself, a vessel for stonng memories, and a work of literature.Hence he often struggled to control his feelings and to find the right wordsto describe his situation. Still, the intimacy between writer and diary and theauthor's self-revealing honesty seem to have been complete, even though thelack of personal details from the past, including any reference to his mother,is striking. The author focused only on matters related directly to him in thepresent.

Many people wrote diaries in ghettos and some in camps. Some wrote asa response to a request to write. Ringelblum, for example asked people like

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Batsheva Ben-Amos

Hubcrbynd and Rachel Auerbach to write diaries for the Oyneg Shabbes archive.Many writers contributed to the Chronule of the Lt'idz GheUo. Such diariescannol be considered completely pcrsiinal, and we wonder whether they wouldhave been written differently, or not at all, if not for this invitation to write.There is no indication that lhe anonymous diarist from Lódí knew about anyother diaries except for lhe one his sister kept. On the other hand, he probablysaw himself as a part of a community of great writers. The terrible sufferingand its sublimation through the process ul writing elevated him to that status inhis mind. He may bave bad m bis mind a public of readers or some particularreaders: at least he seems to have been carrying on imaginary conversationswith some of tbe authors he mentioned. Yel even if the diarist had some readersin mind, he still saw this diary as highly intimate, personal, and confidential, andhe was bim,self an attentive reader of bis own joumal. His work thus challengesmany notions about 'Holocaust diaries' as a particular genre ihat have becomecommon in the critical literature.

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