The "I" in text, in town and in history : Renia Spiegel’s "Diary 1939-1942"

The diary written between 1939 and 1942 by Renia Spiegel, who lived with her grandparents in Przemyśl, is one of the unique Holocaust documents. Its author recorded her wartime daily life in the town on the San River in highly emotional, engaged, earnestly reliable notes. This text examines Spiegel's diaristic strategy, treating the notes as an idiosyncratic dialogue (or sometimes polylogue), in which confession, prayer and lyrical fragments are combined. The diary subject of the teenage girl is not just a product of textual creation; in fact, it becomes a figure gaining special protection from the world through narrative mediation. Living in a city occupied by the Russians and the Germans, Spiegel often pushes aside the painful historical experience by writing – focusing on everyday life, her relationships with family and friends, love, and plans for the future. This diary of an adolescent girl was like a veil, separating her from the Holocaust.