The words of 14-year-old Rutka Laskier living in Bedzin, Poland as the Nazi noose became tighter and tighter around her family and the Jewish people.

If all were well with this world, this beautiful child should have been worrying her head about little more than whether it’s a good idea to let her school friend Yanek kiss her or not. Instead, she spent whatever time she could get chronicling the incomprehensible blood chilling events taking place around her. In a little notebook later hidden carefully under the double flooring of the staircase, Rutka wrote of life in the ghetto in Bedzin. Just three months of it. After that, Rutka and her family were deported to Auschwitz.

Rutka’s diary is reminiscent of Anne Frank’s, but unlike Anne, she had experiences that are far more horrific before she was finally sent to the concentration camp. In the ghetto, each day became a struggle for good and survival. She knew, without a doubt, that she would have to die. “I’m turning into an animal, waiting to die”, she wrote.

Her 60-page notebook was published relatively recently, in 2007. The story of the diary itself is remarkable. Rutka’s friend later went back to the house and retrieved it and kept it with her for 63 years, not showing it to anyone. The Center of Jewish Culture eventually heard of it and weas able to get a photocopy and have it published as the historical document Rutka had meant it to be.

The other remarkable fact is that Rutka was  “discovered” by her half sister, Zahava. The only person who survived from the Laskier family was Rutka’s father and he later remarried and had children. Zahava saw a photograph of Rutka and began to wonder who this was and how she looked so very much like her. Her father would not tell her much but finally admitted she was her half sister. Zahava went to Poland to try and retrace the little girl’s life and death. She later named her own daughter Ruth.

This story of Rutka Laskier and her diary was told in a BBC documentary called The Secret Diary of the Holocaust. The documentary is in parts on Youtube.