In the first entry, Renia made clear why she was writing:

“I want someone I can talk to about my everyday worries and joys, somebody who will feel what I feel, believe what I say and never reveal my secrets.”

It is Jan. 31, 1939. She does not know that in seven months, war would come to the increasingly ruined town of Przemysl , a place of noisy school grounds, intimate cafes and romantic alleys where first kisses were stolen. By July 30, 1942, less than two months after she turned 18, she would be dead.

The last passage in the diary was written by the man she had loved during those terrible years, Zygmunt Schwarzer, who survived Auschwitz and was supposed to look after the diary a fter Renia and his parents went into hiding to avoid being deported to concentration camps. The Nazis found their hide-out, in the attic of a house in Przemysl, and dragged them into the street.

After they were shot, he wrote:

“Three shots! Three lives lost! Fate decided to take my dearest ones away from me. My life is over. All I can hear are shots, shots … shots.”

Alexandra Garbarini , a professor and historian at Williams College in Massachusetts who specializes in Holocaust diaries, said that Renia’s story was unique because she experienced both Soviet and Nazi rule, providing rare insight into Stalin’s less-examined occupation.

“This is such a complete text,” Professor Garbarini said. “It shows the life of a teenager before the war, after the war breaks, until she has to move to the ghetto and is executed. It’s absolutely remarkable.”