Renia Spiegel

Renia Spiegel (18 June 1924 – 30 July 1942) was a Jewish-Polish diarist who was killed during World War II in the Holocaust.

Spiegel's diary, kept between the ages of 15 and 18, documents her experience as a teenager living in the city of Przemyśl through World War II as conditions for Jews deteriorated. Spiegel wrote about ordinary topics such as school, friendships, and romance, as well as about her fear of the growing war and about being forced to move into the Przemyśl ghetto. As a diary about the Holocaust, it is unique in that it chronicles experiences under both Soviet and Nazi rule.

Though it was in the possession of Spiegel's family for decades, the diary was not read by others until 2012 and was first published in English in 2019.

Life Renia Spiegel was born on 18 June 1924 in Uhryńkowce, then in Poland and now in western Ukraine, to Polish-Jewish parents Bernard Spiegel and Róża Maria Leszczyńska. She grew up on her father's large estate on the Dniester River near the border between Poland and Romania, along with a sister six years younger than her, Ariana (now Elizabeth Bellak), who was a child film star in Poland.

In 1938, Spiegel's mother sent her to live with her grandparents in the town of Przemyśl, Poland, while she herself moved to Warsaw to promote Ariana's acting career. Ariana was sent to join Spiegel in Przemyśl during the summer of 1938. Spiegel's grandmother owned a stationery store and her grandfather was a construction contractor.

When the Przemyśl ghetto was established July 1942, Spiegel moved in along with 24,000 other Jews. After about two weeks, Schwarzer, who worked with the local resistance, secretly removed Spiegel from the ghetto and hid her and his own parents in the attic of his uncle's house because they had not received the work permits they would need in order to avoid deportation to concentration camps. An unknown informant told Nazi police about the hiding place, who executed the eighteen-year-old Spiegel along with Schwarzer's parents in the street on July 30, 1942.

Spiegel's mother, sister, and Schwarzer all survived the war and emigrated to the United States.

Diary and publication

History of the diary

Spiegel began to keep her diary on January 31, 1939, when she was fifteen years old. At the end of July, Schwarzer took possession of the diary and wrote the final entries about hiding Spiegel outside the ghetto and about her death: "Three shots! Three lives lost! All I can hear are shots, shots." The publication contains a prologue and epilogue by Elizabeth Bellak. This edition was published in Spanish by Plaza & Janés on December 17, 2019.

The diary is also the subject of a documentary film directed by Tomasz Magierski titled Broken Dreams. The film premiered at the United Nations in New York City as part of its Holocaust remembrance program. The film opened at a Polish cinema on September 18, 2019. Reception Journalists have compared and contrasted Spiegel's diary with that of Anne Frank, with Robin Shulman of Smithsonian noting that "Renia was a little older and more sophisticated ... She was also living out in the world instead of in seclusion." Writing for The New York Times, Joanna Berendt said, "At a moment when basic agreement over simple truths has become a political battleground and history a weapon, the publication of the book, 'Renia’s Diary,' offers a reminder of the power of bearing witness."