This astonishing chronicle of life and death in the Jewish Ghetto of Kovno, Lithuania, from June 1941 to January 1944, was written under conditions of mortal danger by a Ghetto inmate and secretary of the Jewish Council. Through it all, Avraham Tory's overriding purpose was to record the unimaginable events of those years and to memorialise the determination of the Jews to sustain life in the midst of the Nazi terror. It is a supreme achievement. Martin Gilbert's masterly introduction presents these events against the backdrop of the war in Europe and considers the crucial questions of collaboration and resistance.