"Get to know myself by writing" : self-portrait, autobiography and self-references in the Ruth Lieblich’s diary

Bibliogr. s. 72. Recenzowane materiały z konf. nauk.: "Autoportret, autobiografia autotematyzm". dn. 25–26 kwietnia 2015, Kraków. Na publikacji elektronicznej błędnie podany ISBN: 978-83-63910-44-0

The article is a kind of introduction to the study of the insofar unreleased in Polish (although written in this language) Ruth Lieblich’s diary. The authoress is a Jewish girl from Andrychów, who in 1943 - at the age of seventeen - died in Auschwitz. The Holocaust, although it appears on the pages of a diary (ghetto, forced labor, "camp') is not, contrary to what one might believe, the main subject of the writing. The diary, called by the authoress herself a "memoir', has for her - as it seems - the compensatory function (denial of reality, "look ahead into the future") and, above all, self knowledge. The purpose of its creation, which Lieblich repeatedly declares was to "know herself", explore her own "I". By adopting these pronouncements (according to the concept of "autobiographical pact" by Philippe Lejeune) the article attempts to show the relationship between autobiography, self-references and self-knowledge. The main argument, however, says that the (self-)portrait of Lieblich emerges from thematized in the diary cracks between the desire to play the role that is culturally ascribed to women (girls) and continuous crossing of the pattern, to which she aspires.