16 Facts About Rutka Laskier

Ruth "Rutka" Laskier was a Jewish Polish diarist who is best known for her 1943 diary chronicling three months of her life during the Holocaust in Poland.

Rutka Laskier was murdered at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 at the age of fourteen.

Rutka Laskier's manuscript, authenticated by Yad Vashem, was published in the Polish language in early 2006.

Rutka Laskier was born in Krakow to Dwojra Hampel, daughter of Abram Chil Hampel, and Jakub Laskier, who worked as a bank officer.

Rutka Laskier attended the Furstenberg Gymnasium, at the time a private school for Jewish students.

Rutka Laskier's diary remained in the hands of Rutka's surviving friend for 64 years and was not released to the public until 2005.

Rutka Laskier's family was forced to move to the newly formed Jewish Ghetto in Bedzin during the Holocaust in World War II.

Rutka Laskier was deported from the ghetto and was believed to have been murdered in a gas chamber, age 14, along with her mother and brother, upon arrival with her family at the Auschwitz concentration camp in August 1943.

Zofia Minc, a fellow prisoner who survived, revealed in a published account of her time at Auschwitz, that Rutka Laskier slept in the barrack next to her until falling victim to a cholera outbreak in December 1943.

Rutka Laskier's father was the only member of the family who survived the Holocaust.

Rutka Laskier went on to explain that she only learned of the existence of Rutka's diary in 2006, and she expressed how much it has meant to her to be able to get to know her half-sister through Rutka's words.

From 19 January to 24 April 1943, without her family's knowledge, Rutka Laskier kept a diary in an ordinary school notebook, writing in both ink and pencil, making entries sporadically.

Rutka Laskier wrote about the gas chambers at the concentration camps, indicating that the horrors of the camps had filtered back to those still living in the ghettos.

Rutka Laskier gradually came to realise she would not survive, and, realizing the importance of her diary as a document of what had happened to the Jewish population of Bedzin, asked Sapinska to help her hide the diary.

Rutka Laskier kept it in her home library for 63 years and did not share it with anyone but members of her immediate family.

Coincidentally, Rutka Laskier was born the same day as Anne Frank, and, in both cases, of their entire families, only their fathers survived the war.