Dawid Rubinowicz

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Dawid Rubinowicz (born July 27, 1927 in Krajno , † 1942 in the Treblinka extermination camp ) was a Polish Jewish child who became a victim of the Holocaust . Dawid kept a diary in Poland during the Nazi persecution of Jews . This diary was found and published after World War II .

Life

Dawid Rubinowicz grew up with two younger siblings in Krajno, a village in central Poland near Kielce . Seven Jewish families lived here before the war. David’s father ran a small dairy farm. In 1933 Dawid started school. He was a good student and the testimony books from those years have been preserved. In May 1937 the only surviving photo was taken with Dawid Rubinowicz, a class photo . There are no other written documents from this period, only the memories of his teacher Florentyna Krogulcowa and his classmate Tadeusz Janicki.

After the attack on Poland and the proclamation of the " General Government ", the reorganization of the school system was one of the first measures taken by the German occupiers . A German school was set up wherever at least ten German children lived in the town. History, geography and German were removed from the curriculum of Polish elementary schools "in the absence of suitable textbooks"; Polish universities, grammar schools and lyceums were closed. Polish youths older than fourteen were no longer allowed to attend school. Jewish children were expelled from all schools.

From November 1939, Dawid was no longer allowed to attend school. His teacher met his mother in secret, gave her assignments and corrected the boy's exercise books. She also advised the boy to keep a diary. Dawid was twelve years old when he started his diary on March 21, 1940. From then on he wrote down in five exercise books what he encountered and what moved him. In the first year briefly and at large intervals, then more and more often and in greater detail, the sensitive boy described the measures taken by the Germans and documented the mechanisms of totalitarian arbitrariness and violence with terrifying accuracy.

In March 1942 the Rubinowicz family had to leave Krajno. In Bodzentyn , where around a thousand Jews lived before the war, Jews from all over the area were now crammed together. They lived in unspeakable conditions. Hundreds died of starvation and disease. Like Dawid's father , people were shot or taken to forced labor camps every day .

In mid-September 1942, the Jews were herded into the Bodzentyn market square, which was intended as the assembly point. The next day the long procession of the doomed left for Suchedniów. There they were loaded into cattle trucks on September 21, 1942, the Jewish Day of Atonement . It must be assumed that Dawid's last journey ended after the arrival of the “Special Train for Resettlers” Pkr 9228 in the morning of the next day in the Treblinka extermination camp .

Dawid left his diary in Bodzentyn.

The diary

Reception story

In August 1957, Dawid's notebooks by Helena and Artemiusz Wołczyk were found in the trash. In October 1957 they began to read the diary on the local radio. In the fall of 1959, they sent Dawid's notes to the Warsaw journalist Maria Jarochowska, who she immediately published. They first appeared in January 1960 in the Twórczosc magazine .

The diary immediately caused a sensation all over Poland. The writer Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz used it as an occasion to appeal to his compatriots to make all records and diaries from the time of the occupation available to the public. He wrote:

“What little Dawid describes may seem incomprehensible and spooky to some today - but it is a reflection of a reality that millions of Poles and Jews went through in those difficult years. […] Anyone who reads the simple words, the simple sentences of the suffering, so very personable little boy will undoubtedly say: Never again! Never again a time of human contempt, never again an era of incinerators. "

- From the foreword to the first German-language edition, Berlin and Warsaw 1960

The first book edition appeared in Warsaw in the spring of 1960, and the German translation a little later. Since then, Dawid's diary has been translated into numerous languages.

expenditure

  • Dawid Rubinowicz: Pamiętnik Dawida Rubinowicza. Comments by Adam Rutkowski ; Epilogue: Maria Jarochowska. Warszawa 1960.
  • Dawid Rubinowicz: The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz. Volk und Welt publishing house and Książka i Wiedza publishing house, Berlin and Warsaw 1960.
  • Dawid Rubinowicz: The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1960.
  • Dawid Rubinowicz: The diary of Dawid Rubinowicz. Translated by Derek Bowman. Blackwood, Edinburgh 1981.
  • Walther Petri (ed.): The diary of Dawid Rubinowicz. Afterword by Walther Petri. Translated from Polish by Stanisław Zyliński. The children's book publisher, Berlin 1985.
  • Dawid Rubinowicz: Pamiętnik Dawida Rubinowicza. With a foreword by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz . Książka i Wiedza, Warszawa 1987.
  • Walther Petri (ed.): The diary of Dawid Rubinowicz. Afterword by Walther Petri. Translated from Polish by Stanisław Zyliński. With photos from the DEFA documentary film Dawids Diary by Walther Petri and Konrad Weiß. 5th edition, Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim 2001 (Gullivers Books Vol. 34), ISBN 3-407-78034-6 .

Further translations were made into Danish, English, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Italian, Yiddish, Dutch and Czech, among others.

literature

  • Konrad Weiß: Dawids Diary. In: Die Weltbühne, Berlin, No. 48 of November 25, 1980, pp. 1521–1524.
  • Walther Petri: The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz. In: Neue Deutsche Literatur, Berlin and Weimar, 30. Jg., No. 7/1982, pp. 111-113.
  • Konrad Weiß: Dawids Diary - An anti-fascist children's film from the GDR a. its reception. In: Education and Schools in East and West, Oldenburg, vol. 37, no. 3/1989, pp. 165–171.

Other media

  • Dawid Rubinowicz's diary. Speech plate (director: Charlotte Niemann, speaker: Charles Brauer and Hans Paetsch, vocals: Jürgen Schulz). Christophorus-Verlag, Freiburg i. Br. O. J. [1965].
  • David’s diary. Documentary film (book: Walther Petri and Konrad Weiß, camera: Michael Lösche, director: Konrad Weiß). DEFA Studio for Documentary Film, Berlin 1980.
  • I'm Still Here: Real Diaries of Young People who Lived During the Holocaust. Documentation (book: Alexandra Zapruder, director: Lauren Lazin). MTV News & Documentaries, New York 2005.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rubinowicz, Dawid
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rubinowicz, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish diary author
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Krajno
DATE OF DEATH 1942
Place of death Treblinka extermination camp