Dawid Rubinowicz (Poland, 1927-1942), Holocaust victim

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(1960; ET 1981)
(1995)
(2002)

Dawid Rubinowicz (M / Poland, 1927-1942), Holocaust victim.

  • KEYWORDS : <Poland> <Treblinka>
  • MEMOIRS : The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (1960; ET 1981)

Biography

Dawid Rubinowicz was born and raised in Krajno, Poland, the son of a poor Jewish diary farmer. Dawid and his entire family perished in the Nazi gas chambers at Treblinka. Dawid was only 15 when he died.

Book : The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (1960; ET 1981)

  • First published in Poland (Warszawa : Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1960). English ed. The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz (Edinburgh, Scotland: Blackwood, 1981). Also published in German, Hungarian, Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, Yiddish.

The diary was written in Polish by Holocaust victim Dawid Rubinowicz (1927-1942) in 1940-42 (age 12-15), while living in Poland under Nazi rule.

"Dawid Rubinowicz began his diary in March 1940, after the Nazi invasion, and continued until at least June 1942. He left his diary, written in at least five copybooks, with his Polish neighbor and friend, Tadeusz Waciński. Later, the notebooks were passed on to Antoni Waciński, who kept them in his house for 15 years. A family that rented the house in the 1950s found the diary and read it aloud on the local radio. A few years later, journalist Maria Jarochowska arranged for it to be published for the first time. Excerpts from Dawid's diary also appear in several anthologies, including Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, edited by Alexandra Zapruder and We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust, edited by Jacob Boas."--Publisher description.

"Presents the diaries of a twelve-year-old Polish boy written between 1940 and 1942. Describes the Nazi occupation of Poland and the increasingly harsh decrees targeting Jews. Contains photographs."--USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia.

Polish ed. German ed.

Book : We Are Witnesses (1995), by Jacob Boas

  • Jacob Boas, We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust (New York, NY: Henry Holt, 1995).

"The five diarists in this book did not survive the war. But their words did. Each diary reveals one voice, one teenager coping with the impossible. We see Dawid Rubinowicz struggling against fear and terror. Yitskhok Rudashevski shows us how Jews clung to culture, to learning, and to hope, until there was no hope at all. Moshe Flinker is the voice of religion, constantly seeking answers from God for relentless tragedy. Éva Heyman demonstrates the unquenchable hunger for life that sustained her until the very last moment. And finally, Anne Frank reveals the largest truth they all left for us: Hitler could kill millions, but he could not destroy the human spirit. These stark accounts of how five young people faced the worst of human evil are a testament, and an inspiration, to the best of the human soul."--Publisher description.

Book : Salvaged Pages, by Alexandra Zapruder (2002)

  • Alexandra Zapruder, Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002).

"Presents excerpts from the Holocaust diaries of fifteen young people, ranging in age from twelve to twenty-two, each with an introductory essay that looks at the writer, and the historical context of the diary, with a study of the text and its relevance in the context of Holocaust history or literature. Includes a list of over fifty additional known diaries written by young people during the period."--Publisher description.

External links