Here’s a follow-up to a previous post on Diaries of the Holocaust which shared the translated diary of Renia Spiegel, a 17-year-old girl who spent her final days imprisoned in a ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland. The November 2018 issue of Smithsonian featured an article about Renia and included primary source diarist entries and photos.

We’re now fortunate to have access to actual teenage Holocaust diarists in graphic novel format.

When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers is New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein's new graphic nonfiction book, based on six of hundreds of newly discovered, never-before-published autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish teens on the brink of WWII-found in 2017 hidden in a Lithuanian church cellar.

These autobiographies, long thought destroyed by the Nazis, were written as entries for three competitions held in Eastern Europe in the 1930s, just before the horror of the Holocaust forever altered the lives of the young people who wrote them.

A CBS New broadcast provides background on the fascinating diaries along with archival film footage and meaningful connections to our own day.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum offers supporting curricular material including a lesson on Exploring Holocaust-era Diaries. A unit on Teaching Salvaged pages : young writers' diaries of the Holocaust is available from Facing History As Ourselves.

I’ve purchased a copy of When I Grow Up for our library’s Holocaust collection and look forward to hearing from TPS Teachers Network members with your suggestions for additional recommended titles. Thanks very much!

  Holocaust Diaries    Graphic novels    Teenage Diarists    Krimstein, Ken