In the Beginning Was the Ghetto: Notebooks from Lodz
In 1940, the Nazis forced the 160,000 Jews of Lodz, Poland, into a sealed ghetto, creating a huge work camp for the German war effort. Rosenfeld, an author and playwright, was deported from Prague to the ghetto in October 1941 and was included in the final deportation from the ghetto to Auschwitz in August 1944, where he was murdered. From February 1942 to July 1944, he served in the ghetto's statistical office. During that time Rosenfeld wrote his diary in 21 notebooks. They contain vivid descriptions of daily life in the ghetto, including details about deportations, forced labor, hunger, diseases, cold, terror, and the struggle to maintain human dignity. A few excerpts will indicate the diaries' graphicness. "Throngs of children in rags cross the streets, their yellow, weatherworn faces furrowed, weary." "Living quarters crawling with cockroaches and vermin." "One man goes insane . . . a woman commits suicide." "No human being can descend to such depths of terror." Edited by Hanno Loewy, this book is one of the most important and lasting works documenting the horrors of the Holocaust.George CohenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved