Éva Heyman's diary
Éva was 13 years old when she started writing her diary on February 13, 1944, and she continued writing until May 30, 1944 – three days before she was deported to Auschwitz.
Éva was murdered in Auschwitz on October 17, 1944. Éva’s mother Agnes Zsolt who survived the Holocaust, found the diary in Nagyvárad in 1945.
“May 10, 1944 Dear diary, we’re here five days, but, word of honor, it seems like five years. I don’t even know where to begin writing, because so many awful things have happened since. I last wrote you. First, the fence was finished, and nobody can go out or come in. The Aryans who used to live in the area of the Ghetto all left during these few days to make place for the Jews.
From today on, dear diary, we’re not in a ghetto but in a ghetto-camp, and on every house they’ve pasted a notice which tells exactly what we’re not allowed to do [...] Actually, everything is forbidden, but the most awful thing of all is that the punishment for everything is death. There is no difference between things; no standing in the corner, no spankings, no taking away food, no writing down the declension of irregular verbs one hundred times the way it used to be in school.
Eva's mother, Agnes Zsolt, pictured on the right escaped to Switzerland on the Kasztner train in December 1944. Not at all: the lightest and heaviest punishment – death. It doesn’t actually say that this punishment also applies to children, but I think it does apply to us, too.”
The diary ends on May 30, 1944, a few days before her deportation, with the words: "... dear diary, I don’t want to die; I want to live even if it means that I’ll be the only person here allowed to stay. I would wait for the end of the war in some cellar, or on the roof, or in some secret cranny. I would even let the gendarme who took our flour, kiss me, just as long as they didn’t kill me, only that they should let me live.
I can’t write anymore, dear diary, the tears run from my eyes, I’m hurrying over to Mariska …”
In Album: Jimmy's Timeline Photos
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242 x 328
File Size:
17.15 Kb
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