How an Astonishing Holocaust Diary Resurfaced in America – Hidden for 70 years, a new invaluable contribution to Holocaust literature—the diary of Renia Spiegel—was rediscovered inside a desk in New York | Smithsonian

On January 31, 1939, a 15-year-old Jewish girl sat down with a school notebook in a cramped apartment in a provincial town in Poland and began writing about her life. She missed her mother, who lived far away in Warsaw. She missed her father, who was ensconced on the farm where her family once lived. She missed that home, where she had spent the happiest days of her life.