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Diary of a ‘polish Anne Frank’ Donated to Holocaust Memorial Museum

April 23, 1984
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The diary of a 17-year-old girl, describing her life hidden in a cellar in Warsaw during the first 113 days of the Nazi occupation of the Polish capital, has been donated to the Holocaust Memorial Museum at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot in western Galilee, by the diarist.

Described as the “Polish Anne Frank Record” the 54-page account of her life in the cellar, together with 60 other Jews, was recently found by the young writer, now Lily Goldenberg, during spring cleaning.

Goldenberg believes she was the last Polish Jewish citizen allowed by the Nazis to leave Poland for Palestine, on the strength of a Palestine entry certificate already granted to her before the outbreak of the war.

In the diary, she movingly describes the High Holiday prayers led by Cantor Moshe Koussevitzky, the growing degradation of the Jews in Warsaw and the start of construction of the wall around the ghetto.

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