saving holocaust diaries
for generations to come
How a Kickstarter campaign by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum honors the memory of those whose written words will now be heard
Joseph Stripounsky awoke early on the morning of May 10, 1940, to the sounds of aircraft and gunfire. The Germans had invaded his town of Antwerp, Belgium. He was just 17.
Joseph fled with his parents and younger brother, leaving almost everything they owned behind. He carried with him a math textbook and two math notebooks, one of which became his diary. They joined thousands of others heading south through France, making a slow and arduous journey with little food or money.
In France, they spent a year trying to get farther away from the ever-encroaching Nazis. They managed to secure American visas through Joseph’s father’s employer and finally landed in New York in May 1941—just six weeks before Joseph’s 18th birthday, when he would have been legally required to stay in France.
All of this is recounted in the math notebook-turned-diary that Joseph tells of his family’s harrowing exodus, a written tome waiting to be catalogued, translated and published online.
All photos in this article: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Raymund Flandez