The Diary of Petr Ginz Petr Ginz
Not since Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl has such an intimately candid, deeply affecting account of a childhood compromised by Nazi tyranny come to light. In 1941, Petr Ginz was a young teenager living in Prague with his parents and sister. Adventurous, artistic and optimistic, he wrote poems and novels and edited a children's magazine inside the work camp at Theresienstadt. Originally written in his own special code-language, Petr's diaries describe daily life for the Ginz family and document the introduction of anti-Jewish laws from a young adult's point of view - pithy and unsentimental. The writing stopped in 1942 when Petr received his summons, but the books survived in a Prague attic. They recently came to light in extraordinary circumstances and were published in the CzechRepublic in 2005 to a storm of publicity. Edited by his sister, Chava, and including background material and beautiful reproductions of Petr's artwork, this book is a classic in the making.