Category Archives: Przemyśl

Livestream of the ‘Unforgotten’ Event About Renia Spiegel’s Diary

08 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by in Memory, Przemyśl, Survival, Uncategorized, World War II

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I’m counting down the minutes before I tune into this event at the Smithsonian Institute today:

80 Years after Kristallnacht: Diarists of the Holocaust

This is Renia, who was murdered on the streets of occupied Przemyśl at the age of 18 in 1942. She left behind a diary that through some miracle found its way to her family in New York.

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Renia in Skole in the 1930s (Courtesy of the Bellak family)

I grew up calling Renia’s sister “Aunt Elizabeth,” but she never mentioned her sister until a few years ago. Encouraged by her daughter Alexandra, they started looking for someone to translate the diary from Polish to English, and Elizabeth started talking about her hidden past. It’s an extraordinary story about two extraordinary sisters. Both Elizabeth and Alexandra will share their stories at 1 PM eastern time today, November 8, 2018.

 

“The Polish Anne Frank” in The Forward

12 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in Family, Memory, Przemyśl, World War II

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Today in The Forward is an article Why Renia Spiegel is Called ‘The Polish Anne Frank‘.

During the Nazi occupation of Przesmyśl, Poland, she filled notebooks with her poetry and diary. Renia was only 18 when she was shot on the street, after someone reported her hiding place to the Nazis. Ariana, her younger sister, survived because she had been brought to Warsaw just a few days before that. Ariana became Elizabeth, whom I grew up calling Aunt Elizabeth. She was my mother’s friend for nearly 80 years.