“MARYLA’S DIARY”
BOOK PREMIERE
The "Diary" is a record of the thoughts, feelings, and fears of a young Jewish woman named Maryla, who was in hiding during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
It depicts the life of people doomed to extermination, isolated from the rest of the world by walls, describes the fate of Jews on the Aryan side, and reports on the course of the revolt.
It is not known exactly from when the mysterious Maryla kept her diary, and it breaks off abruptly on 27 April 1943, giving no answers about the further fate of its author.
The notebooks she had been writing in were found on the grounds of the former German concentration camp at Majdanek in the late 1940s.
As written by Maryla, the young Jewish Woman hiding in a bunker a few days after the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising:
“We are listening to these increasingly louder sounds of fighting and fear paralyses us all, we cease to be human and turn into twitching bundles of nerves ready to go mad...”
Her diary is a unique testimony to the Shoah. In it, the author describes - from the perspective of a victim and at the same time of a witness to these dramatic events - the life and death of the Jewish children, women, and men locked behind the ghetto walls. She reports on the course of the uprising, that was bloodily suppressed by the Germans.
To this day it has not been determined where and when the author died. The diary, which she kept from the spring of 1942, breaks off on 27 April 1943. Shortly after the war it was found on the grounds of the former German concentration camp at Majdanek.
Currently, Maryla's diary is kept in the Archives of the State Museum at Majdanek. In 2010, the document was conserved and then digitised, making it available to a wider public.
On the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the State Museum at Majdanek, in cooperation with Prószyński Media publishing house, is releasing a new edition of "Maryla's Diary." It was undertaken by eminent experts in the history of the Warsaw Ghetto: Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz (POLIN Museum) and Dariusz Libionka (State Museum at Majdanek).
"Maryla's Diary" is one of the most moving and unique testimonies written during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. On the 80th anniversary of the events it describes, the State Museum at Majdanek in cooperation with Prószyński Media publishing house is releasing a new edition of this source.
Majdanek Memorial