Simply put, Dawid is an amazing young man. Unfortunately for this world, he probably had to suffer to make a long lasting impact. True greatness rarily comes to those of us who contribute daily to the ENHANCEMENT of life and young Dawid is proof of this. His sometimes yielding but never breaking spirit of joy and hopeful speculation makes him a true hero. While his tragic, and "all too early" death are sad, the important things left behind in his words are timeless. He reminds us all that no matter how (supposedly) bad things get in our (truly) rich lives, a thing such as maniacal tyranny and slavery can never be tolerated. The light at the end of Dawid's tunnel never came to him, but by his words and actions hopefully we will all see that inspiration and determination will also glow.

This book deserves a Five Star "Plus." It is an absolute "must" read for those interested in the destruction of European Jewry. I have read very many memoirs on the Holocaust, some quite good, yet none moved me to tears as much as Dawid's diary. What I found remarkable was that a 15-year old (his age when he started writing his diary) should have so much depth and so much wisdom. His description of his extreme hunger and finally his feelings when his mother was deported are extremely poignant. His love for his mother and the extreme agony he experienced when they took her away defies description. Yet he manages in simple language to share his agony with us, so much so, that it would even move a stone to tears. Ever since I read this book, I think of Dawid when I eat. And ever since I read the book I think of Dawid when I merely speak to my mother. I've never cherished both as much as I do now.

As Adelson writes in the Foreward, Dawid is "increasingly piqued by the hierarchy of privilege that prevails among Jews in the ghetto." The "privileged" do not lack food or adequate shelter while the "ordinary" Jews (which was the overwhelming majority)literally starve. Dawid, a devout Marxist, writes eloquently about these "privileged" Jews. All this privilege of the few and suffering of the majority further reinforces his Marxist principles.

"A HOLOCAUST VOICE Writings about the Holocaust take many forms--novels, stories, poems, plays, histories. But, as `The Diary of Anne Frank` showed, none has the effect of actual reports left behind by its victims. `The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto` is quite different from Anne Frank's memoirs because, unlike Anne, who was hidden away from the Nazis for years, Dawid lived openly in the sealed ghetto of this Polish city and was a witness to and victim of the deprivations, humiliations and cruelties inflicted on the Jewish populace. He was 15 years old when he began to keep his notes, and 19 when he died of illness and starvation in 1943. His diary, edited by Alan Adelson and translated by Kamil Turowski, is written with a sardonic humor and growing despair that can still horrify today. It is illustrated by shocking photos of life in the Lodz ghetto, most of them taken surreptitiously."

Be still when you read this book. Find a place with no distractions, no children asking for help with homework, no chores to do in the next room. Because you will need the stillness to grapple with the images from Lodz.

The book opens with an idyllic calm, when Dawid is being the young boy he was born to be. Anyone who has been to a youth camp will see himself in Dawid. This identification is critical to grasping the horror that is to come.

And no! There are no answers to the questions you cannot ask. The Whys and Hows cannot be riddled. You may think about them when you have put the book down for the last time, but let Dawid show you his world as it is destroyed around his ears. Worry about the nature of good and evil and humanity and war and peace and betrayal when you are done.

But first, let the young man tell his story. We are lucky this story survived.

This book is quite moving and powerful as its young, sardonic, incisive author leads us vicariously into the world of the ghetto. The brilliance of this young man is readily apparent through his keen observations of his desperate situation and horrendous surroundings. This is a must-read for anyone, and would be especially good for young people who sometimes ask how the Jews "let" this happen to them. The author is also very honest about his father's moral breakdown, as well as his bitter thoughts on the role of Chaim Rumkowski, the leader of the ghetto community. The preface is excellent, giving backround information about David, the war, the ghetto system, and Nazi methods of deceit and control. Highly recommended.

This book is a double account of escaping death during the Holocaust in Poland by a couple that is now married. Before these two met, they each had their own horrifying adventures of survival in the Polish countryside as well as in Treblinka. It is well written and a great source of information about what happened in the cities and towns after the Jews were evacuated, how escaped Jews survived in the woods and how the local Poles signed the Jews death warrants by violence and informing. A touching account of desperation and survival during the worst of times. This book leaves you feeling the sting of hunger, hate and abandonment as well as love, redemption and personal triumph.

This book is an anthology of 128 orders, proclamations, speeches, poems, and other ephemera that have survived from the wartime Lodz ghetto.

I first came across the tragic history of the Ghetto in a sidebar in 'The Rough Guide' to Poland (the best Polish guide book). It is an extraordinary story: within 2 days of the 1939 occupation of Lodz (pronounced 'Wootch'), a large industrial city some 50 miles South-West of Warsaw, the Germans started a general and increasing anti-Semitic terror, and shortly afterwards herded the 230,000-odd Lodz Jews into a slum area. Chaim Rumkowski, a failed businessman (velvet manufacturer) with an interest in child welfare and Zionism, was appointed 'Elder of the Jews' by the Germans, and established himself as a dictator, supported by informers, sycophants, and the 'Kripo' police. Those opposing him were selected for the transports to Chelmno, which, unbeknownst but increasingly suspected, was a death camp. Rumkowski's strategy for survival was work: 'a gold currency of the highest calibre - the labour of Jewish hands'; 'only work can save us from the worst calamity'; 'work protects us from annihilation', and, in forcing the population to work for food, he fuelled the Nazi war effort. In 1944, with the advance of the Red Army from the East, the Ghetto was liquidated with the survivors being sent to Oswiecim - or, to give it its German name, Auschwitz. This book is a collection of some of the literary fragments that remain.

The book follows the chronological progress of the Ghetto, from its establishment (1940); the deportation into the Ghetto of some 20,000 Jews from Hamburg, 3,000 Polish Jews, 5,000 Gypsies (Rumkowski: 'I've explained that we cannot live together with them. Gypsies are the sort of people who can do anything. First they rob and then they set fire... .'), and Jews from Prague, Luxembourg, Berlin, Cologne, Vienna, Frankfurt... (1941); the 'Nightmarish Days' when, in 1942, the Germans liquidated the hospitals and demanded the surrender to them of children (with the sickening speech by Rumkowski: 'In my old age I must stretch out my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters, hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers, give me your children!'), until the final rounds of deportations and the liberation of the Ghetto in 1944: 10,000 survived; 60,000 died in the Ghetto (mostly, apparently, from hunger); 130,000 died at Chelmno or Oswiecim.

There are German documents ('To: The Eldest of the Jews. July 16h., 1942. Re: Machines in the Ghetto. I request that you immediately investigate whether there is a Bone Grinder in the ghetto, either with a motor or hand-driven. The special command in Chelmno is interested in such a grinder. On behalf of F.W. Ribbe, Assistant Director, Ghetto Administration'), Yiddish poems, diaries, fragments of notes, transcripts of Rumkowski's speeches and proclamations. The shattered fragments of a surprisingly rich cultural life.

The works selected for publication have been beautifully translated from the original Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, and German. The translation is of the highest order. The book is also illustrated with photographs, including some in colour, which are also of high quality. The notations to the texts are also good.

However, the book falls down badly in other areas. It should have a map, showing readers where Lodz, Chelmno, and Oswiecim are (there is a map of the Ghetto itself). It has a grossly inadequate contents page, and no index. However, the most serious failing is the woefully inadequate Foreword, which fails to put the Ghetto into an historical, Polish, or wider framework, or the texts into a literary context. The reader is, more or less, simply presented with the texts and left to get on with it.

I suspect that much of this parsimony is the responsibility of the publishers, but the editors must be held responsible for the failure to help the reader place the texts in context, and I suspect that their reticence has much to do with the contentious problem of Polish-Jewish relations, and wider questions about Zionism, the lack of resistance to the Germans (indeed, the collaboration with the Germans), the dictatorship of Rumkowski, and so on.

We learn, for example, from captions to photographs: 'A gypsy camp adjacent to the ghetto did not have any sanitation system and was quickly wiped out by typhus'; 'SS Reichsfuher Heinrich Himmler is greeted on his arrival in the ghetto by Rumkowski, June 7, 1941.' There is nothing else in the book about the Gypsy camp or Himmler's visit. Similarly, there are only minor references to the non-Jewish Polish population of Lodz (who also suffered hugely under Nazi occupation). There is one, minor, document about the dispute between Speer (Minister of Armaments), who wanted to preserve the Ghetto as a valuable contributor to the war effort, and Himmler, who eventually succeeded in enforcing the 'Final Solution'. Poems are included within the anthology, translated from Yiddish, but there is no attempt to explain the literary merit behind them.

The concentration on the Ghetto is both a strength and a weakness of the book; ultimately, however, it undermines the book. In particular, I should have liked to have heard more about the heroic Warsaw Ghetto uprising (1943) and the Warsaw uprising (1944), and how they impacted on the Lodz Ghetto. I think that it is wrong not to acknowledge, at least, the parallel suffering of the non-Jewish population; for the record, the Germans immediately rounded up the entire hierarchy of the Church, all Trade Unionists, Communists, and intellectuals (which appears to have been defined as anyone with a degree), and sent them to Oswiecim, and those remaining were considered 'untermensch' (sub-human), suitable only for slave labour. Some 25% of Poland's population - which included, of course, a large and well-integrated Jewish population - were killed during the war: a higher proportion than any other country.

In conclusion, the book never answers the question 'what is it?' Is it a record of historical documents; a literary anthology; or a collection of ephemera organised chronologically? How can a reader respond to the documents, as they are presented without any editorial help?