Renia Spiegel was born on June 18, 1924, in Uhrynkowce, which was then part of the Polish-Jewish community. She was the daughter of Roza Maria Leszczynska and Bernard Spiegel, who was a landowner of a large estate on the Dniester River near the border between Romania and Poland. Renia had a younger sister, Ariana, who was six years her junior and went on to become a child film star in Poland.
Renia started her diary in January 1939, when she was 15 years old. At the outbreak of war, she and her sister Ariana stayed in Przemyśl with their grandparents. Renia's diary is a powerful insight into the life of a young woman during the Nazi occupation, providing an eyewitness account of the horrors of day-to-day life during this time. It is a primary historical source of the Holocaust, as well as a true and outstanding work of literature.
Renia's diary describes her loneliness living in war-torn Poland without a mother, her first love, and everyday life during the Soviet and then German occupations. She writes moving poems that are sometimes featured in the school newspaper, and a series of poems in a hand-illustrated and beautifully bound booklet. As the war progresses, Renia's diary becomes a record of her fears and terror during the creation of the ghetto in Przemyśl. She writes of the humiliation she experiences first-hand and witnesses on the streets of Przemyśl. Her diary entries continue up until the last day of her short life, when she was shot on the street of the ghetto a week after her 18th birthday.
Renia's diary is an incredible testament to her maturity and insight, with her observations and reflections on her personal life providing a poignant and heartbreaking account of a teenager's experience during the Holocaust. Her diary is not only a valuable historical document but also a powerful and moving work of literature that exposes the raw emotion of a young woman whose life was tragically cut short.