A diary written in the Hebrew language, recording day-to-day the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews in Warsaw from the two-month period preceding the outbreak of World War II through the early years of the Warsaw Ghetto, has been uncovered in Poland and is now in the possession here of Prof. Abraham I. Katsh the latter announced today.
Dr. Katsh, who is chairman of the Department of Hebrew Education at New York University, and head of the university’s Library of Judaica and Hebraica, obtained the diary a month ago from a Pole in New York who had kept it hidden throughout the war years.
The diary was written by H.A. Kaplan, the principal of a Hebrew high school in Warsaw. It records events affecting the situation of the Polish Jews from July 6, 1939 to August 4, 1942. The war started on September 1, 1939, when the Nazi armies invaded Poland.
Early in August of 1942, Mr. Kaplan, fearing that the diary would fall into the hands of the Nazis, by that time in full command of the Warsaw Ghetto with its half million Jews, gave his diary for safe keeping to a Pole living in a Warsaw suburb. Later, a relative of that Pole, Dr. Wladyslaw Wojcek, obtained the writings, keeping them hidden. Dr. Wojcek now here, gave the diary to Dr. Katsh a month ago. Mr. Kaplan’s fate is not known.
Dr. Katsh said he is planning to have the diary published in its original Hebrew, in Israel, this summer. Later, he said, he hopes to translate the work into English. The diary consists of three volumes, totaling 461 pages. In addition, Mr. Kaplan entrusted to his Polish friend also another diary, covering the years 1935 and 1936. That record is also in Dr. Katsh’s possession.
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