Girl with Two Landscapes: The Wartime Diary of Lena Jedwab, 1941-1945

by Lena Jedwab Rozenberg, Solon Beinfeld

In June, 1941, sixteen-year-old Lena Jedwab left Bialystok for summer camp in Russia - just when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
Stranded by war in a children's home in Russia, Lena agonized over the unknown fate of her family and her precarious future. Lucky to be alive, nourished, and in school, yet consumed with anger at the war and the confusion of adolescence, Lena began to keep a diary. The diary chronicles her personal experiences of loneliness, pain, fear, and desire for love and recognition, as well as a vivid description of the world in which she then lived.
Lena wrote her diary in Yiddish, not only because it was her mother tongue, but also as a conscious effort to maintain her Jewish identity. Her writing shows an exceptional literary talent, full of subtlety and sensitivity, and by using that talent, she has left us a moving testimony to one of history's darkest times.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2002

Reviews

[Robin Schoenthaler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everybody should read this book. An excellent addition to the very sparse shelves of "books written by teen girls during WWII." She leaves Poland for summer camp, never sees her family again, and has to make her way through schooling, loneliness, near-starvation, uncertainty, terror, and extremely hard physical work, all while coping with teen-age angst and hyper-emotionality. Wonderful wonderful book. So glad it was written -- I can't imagine the work that went into transcribing it, but I'm so glad the people involved did the work.

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is billed as a Holocaust diary, and I suppose it could be classified as that. Lena Jedwab grew up in an impoverished Jewish family in Bialystok, Poland, which was claimed by the Russians after the division of Poland in 1939. In the summer of 1941, Lena, then fifteen, went to Lithuania to be a camp counselor. While she was gone, the Germans launched a surprise attack on Russian-occupied Poland. Unable to get home, Lena and the other summer camp children were evacuated deep into Russia. Her entire family perished in the Holocaust.

However, I think this book has more in common with the diaries of non-Jewish Russian youths during this period -- such as Nina Kosterina. Lena rarely mentions the Nazis, and she didn't experience firsthand any of their atrocities (though she has no illusions about the fate of her loved ones back in Poland). She doesn't even talk about the war very much. Instead she writes about her studies, her budding sexuality, and her activities in Communist youth organizations. In other words -- you won't see the stuff about ghettos and yellow stars and going into hiding like you will read in the diaries of Anne Frank, Rutka Laskier, etc.

Lena was a very intelligent and likeable girl with a genuine literary talent. I enjoyed watching her grow and mature in her diary, and I think the diary is well worth reading. But don't expect it to be like other "Holocaust diaries" out there.

[Ludmirska · Rating 5 out of 5]

touching and sombering memoir.