The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak — The Other Holocaust Diary

While Anne Frank's diary is known worldwide, Dawid Sierakowiak — a 15-year-old Polish Jewish boy — kept a detailed diary in the Lodz Ghetto from June 1939 to April 1944. His entries, written in Polish, are among the most devastating primary documents of the Holocaust. On July 25, 1944, his final entry read: 'They are liquidating the ghetto. The liquidation will last only a few days, and then there will be no more of us. The ghetto is empty. The streets are empty. The houses are empty.' His diary was discovered after the war, still in the ruins of the Lodz Ghetto. Unlike Anne's diary (which had the benefit of her surviving the war in hiding), Dawid's entries were written in real-time from inside a killing process that he knew was happening and could not escape. He perished in the final liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto.