' Helga’s Diary is another moving testimony to the courage, endurance and painfully premature maturity of the young victims of the Holocaust.' 'Resounds with a ferocious will to endure conditions of astonishing cruelty.' - David Casarani, New Statesman Even with all the books that have been published, this one, with its immediacy and child’s point of view, is hard to forget.' - Jewish Week 'She is one of few children to survive Auschwitz. 'Reads with refreshing immediacy, describing how a smart, spirited young girl negotiated increasingly desperate circumstances.' - Jewish Daily Forward 'Fascinating…A youth’s contemporaneous view of life and death.' - Jewish American World The young Helga responds to hardship with indignation and defiance, maintaining a sharp sense of observation while trying to make sense of the upheaval and suffering she sees.' - New Yorker 'Describes the unfolding horrors of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of a young girl. 'The most moving Holocaust diary published since Anne Frank.' - Daily Telegraph With an introduction by Francine Prose, a revealing interview between translator Neil Bermel and Helga, and the artwork Helga made during her time at Terezín, Helga's Diary stands as a vivid and utterly unique historical document.'Touches raw nerves and contains the potential to send shock waves through the oeuvre of Holocaust memoirs…Astonishing.' - Linda F.

Reconstructed from her original notebooks, the diary is presented here in its entirety. Of the 15,000 children brought to Terezín and later deported to Auschwitz, only 100 survived. Miraculously, he was able to reclaim them for her after the war. Before she left, Helga’s uncle, who worked in the Terezín records department, hid her diary and drawings in a brick wall.

In 1944, Helga and her family were sent to Auschwitz. There, Helga continued to write with astonishing insight about her daily life: the squalid living quarters, the cruel rationing of food, and the executions―as well as the moments of joy and hope that persisted in even the worst conditions. In 1941, Helga and her parents were sent to the concentration camp of Terezín. As Helga witnessed the increasing Nazi brutality, she began documenting her experiences in a diary. Along with some 45,000 Jews living in the city, Helga’s family endured the first wave of the Nazi invasion: her father was denied work she was forbidden from attending regular school. In 1939, Helga Weiss was a young Jewish schoolgirl in Prague. The remarkable diary of a young girl who survived the Holocaust―appearing in English for the first time.

Helga's Diary by Helga Weiss