After more than 50 years, the charred remains of a diary found in the Warsaw ghetto have been made readable again thanks to the work of scientists at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The diary was recovered by a Holocaust survivor and friend of the diary's author, Lusia Schwarzwald Hornstein, but she waited until she was on her deathbed to reveal its existence, and she willed it to the museum. Her friend, the narrator Debora - whose surname is never mentioned - recorded the horrors she and her family went through in the ghetto, and though we know that she didn't survive World War II, we will probably never know who she was.
The diary tells the terrible story of how the narrator's mother was shot dead for trying to save a young girl from being raped by Nazi soldiers, as well as how she would hide from the Gestapo, often at risk of suffocation in cramped spaces. One of the most horrific incidents described is how the Nazis would toss an infant in the air and shoot it. The diary chronicles Debora and her family's lives in the ghetto from January 1943 until the middle of 1944. It was found in Debora's bombed-out apartment by her friend in 1945. Debora herself escaped the ghetto, but was killed in the Warsaw Uprising.
The now-restored and readable document was presented to scientists at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences just recently. When it first arrived at the museum, it was unreadable, and many of the 20 pages had been severely burnt or were stuck together. After much experimentation with trying to restore the text, the text was revealed by soaking the pages in de-ionised water. The diary's text as a whole is now part of the museum's collection, and is available to be read online as well. |