num_pages: 208
description: In 1939 Helga Weiss was an eleven-year-old Jewish schoolgirl in Prague enduring the first wave of the Nazi invasion. As Helga witnessed Nazi brutality toward her friends and neighbors and eventually her own family she began documenting her experiences in a diary. In 1941 Helga and her parents were sent to the concentration camp of Terezin where she continued to write with astonishing insight about her daily life. Before she was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 Helga's uncle who worked in the Terezin records department hid her diary and drawings in a brick wall. Miraculously he was able to reclaim it for her after the war. Of the 15000 children brought to Terezin and deported to Auschwitz Helga was one of only 100 survivors. Written in school exercise books and translated here for the first time Helga's Diary is a strikingly immediate and exceptional firsthand account of the Holocaust.
language: English
title: Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp
publisher: W. W. Norton