Survival

Ita Dimant (née Rozencwajg) was born in Piaseczno, Poland in 1918. She ran a kindergarten in the Warsaw ghetto, from which escaped in 1942, before being deported to Germany as a forced laborer. After the war she lived in Israel and the United States. The diary records her experiences during the Holocaust. Martin Dean holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University. He worked previously as a war crimes investigator and is now a historical consultant. He has edited and translated several books and is the author of four monographs, including Robbing the Jews (2008), which won a National Jewish Book Award. Teresa Pollin served for many years as a curator for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and is fluent in Polish, English, Yiddish, and Hebrew. She translated the diary using the handwritten Polish originals donated by the Dimant family to the USHMM. Jacob Dimant, Ita and Symcha Dimant’s son, holds an MD from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.

Preface

Introduction: A Story of Courage and Survival by Jacob Dimant

Prologue by Ita Dimant (published originally with the 1993 English and Hebrew editions)

The Diary
The Warsaw Ghetto Years
The Częstochowa Year
Leaving for Germany
Freedom          

Epilogue by Jacob Dimant                    

Courage and Survival—Symcha Dymant by Jacob Dimant

Appendix 1:  The Brust Notebook Diary

Appendix 2:  A Diary in Note Form

Appendix 3:  Documents, Photographs, and Artifacts Donated to the USHMM by the Dimant Family

Appendix 4:  Miodownik Family Tree

List of Illustrations