The Girl in the Diary. Searching for Rywka from the Łódź Ghetto

In 1945 a Soviet doctor found a school notebook in the liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp. It was a diary written by the teenaged Rywka Lipszyc in the Łódź Ghetto between October 1943 and April 1944 — the testament of an orthodox Jewish girl who lost her siblings and parents, but never lost hope despite moments of doubt. More than 60 years after its discovery, the diary traveled to the United States, where it was translated from Polish, supplemented with commentaries and published in book form.

Rywka Lipszyc’s diary, a moving memoir of life and adolescence in the Łódź Ghetto, has become a starting point for The Girl in the Diary. Searching for Rywka from the Łódź Ghetto exhibition created by the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków, Poland. Selected excerpts of the diary are supplemented by expert commentary from historians, doctors, psychologists and rabbis. These commentaries help us to understand the context of the times and events Rywka refers to in her diary. The exhibition includes also unique historical artifacts and documents from museums in Poland, the USA, Israel, Germany and Belgium. The beads, thimbles, and toys are a moving testament documenting the personal dimensions of the Holocaust, which are so easily overlooked when teaching the Holocaust.