Tamar Lazerson-Rostovsky, (shown on cover) in a postwar photo with her brother, Victor, began keeping a diary shortly after her family was forced into the Kovno ghetto. In an entry this month in 1943, she described both the literal darkness of December days and the figurative darkness of life in a forced labor brigade:
“I have sunk in knee deep in the horrible mud of the brigades. Darkness is all around me. I thirst for light. But there is no time for it. As you go outside, the darkness of night has not yet dissipated. When you come back, night is settling back upon the earth. It is all a waste, but my heart pointlessly keeps resisting and sorrowing over its fate….”
A young teenager, Tamar wrote with great maturity about daily life, the struggle for food, and her fears as she witnessed people dying around her. And yet she held onto hope for a better future.
“I have such a great desire to live. My future as a doctor is only a pretty fantasy. But that is what keeps me going. That is the only thing that keeps me from sinking deeper and deeper into the horrible mud of mankind,” she wrote.
Tamar escaped the ghetto in April 1944 by posing as a Lithuanian orphan. Before leaving the ghetto, she buried her diaries, only some of which were recovered after the war. She survived in hiding and reunited with her brother, who had joined the Soviet army. Their parents were killed in concentration camps following the liquidation of the ghetto.
USHMM link is to the actual diary.
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