'Little Rutka'

It's 1943 in Poland, and not a good day to be Jewish.

Nazis Everywhere

From her dates it appears the Nazis broke off their Warsaw Ghetto battle to go capture 'Little Rutka'. 

Rutka's Gives Diary To A Friend

In August of 1943 Rutka knows the Nazis are closing in, so she gives her diary to Stanislawa Sapinska. Her friend hides it under the floorboards of her house. ``Rutka's Notebook'' is both a daily account of the horrors of the Holocaust in Bedzin, Poland, and a scrapbook of her life as a Jewish teenager.

Within a few months Rutka was dead and, it seemed, her diary lost. But last year, a Polish friend who had saved the notebook finally came forth, exposing a riveting historical document.
 

She Had A Special Insight

The 60-page memoir includes descriptions of the gassing of Jews, which were not common knowledge in the West by then, apparently had filtered into the Bedzin ghetto, which was near Auschwitz.

She wrote of  human beings be thrown alive into furnaces.  How Nazis delighted in putting toddlers into sacks, and throwing them into the gas chambers. 

She Witnessed A Baby Torn In Half

Poor Rutka described how a Nazi soldier tore a Jewish baby away from his mother and killed him with his bare hands.

Teenage Love, Stools, And Orgasms

But like many a blossoming teenage girl, there were moments of innocence. In the diary she describes her crush on a boy named Janek and the anticipation of a first love.

``I think my womanhood has awoken in me. That means, yesterday when I was taking a bath and the water stroked my body, I longed for someone's hands to stroke me,'' she wrote. ``I didn't know what it was, I have never had such sensations until now.''

Rutka Is Sent To Auschwitz

Rutka says goodbye to  Stanislawa Sapinska, and is stuck on a train to Auschwitz. Rutka, her mother and brother were deported from the ghetto to Auschwitz and sent to the gas chamber upon arrival.

A Sister Discovered

At age 14, Zahava (Laskier) Scherz discovered a secret photo album. “In the album was a picture of a girl hugging a little boy. That girl looked like me, and when I asked my poppa who she was Rutka, my dead step sister from a previous marriage.”

Poppa Winds Up In Tel Aviv

Jacob Laskier, her father, survived the Holocaust,  and immigrated to Israel. 

Her Father Kept His Pain Inside

Rutka's father, Yaakov, survived, living until 1986. Unlike Anne Frank's father, he kept his painful past inside. He moved to Israel, there he had a new family. His Israeli daughter, Zahava Sherz, said her father never spoke of his past, and Zahava cried at the thought of her step momma and sister being thrown in the ovens.

The Mystery Diary Appears

A miracle occurs when an 86 yr old women finds the diary hidden under the floorboards of her house.