Renia's Diary

Renia Spiegel was born in eastern Poland in 1924. In January 1939 she began to write a diary. When war broke out she and her sister were living in Przemysl with her grandparents. Separated from her mother by the war, the next few years saw her living under first Soviet, then Nazi occupation, and the creation of the ghetto. In the summer of 1942, Renia was forced into hiding to escape the liquidation of the ghetto. A few days later, her hiding place was discovered and she was shot; she was just eighteen. Marta Dziurosz is a Polish literary translator and interpreter, and a literary curator. She was Free Word Centre's Translator in Residence 2015-16 and is a member of the Translators Association committee. Her translations and other writing have been widely published, and she is a finalist of the 2019 Jasmine Awards.

Anna Blasiak is a poet, translator and literature co-ordinator of the European Literature Network. She has translated over forty books from English into Polish and some fiction and poetry from Polish into English. In addition to her book-length translations, her work has been published in Best European Fiction 2015, Asymptote, Guardian, B O D Y Literature, Modern Poetry in Translation and York Literary Review.

Anna writes poetry in Polish and in English (Off_Press, Women Online Writing, Exiled Ink and Modern Poetry in Translation). She has worked in museums and a radio station, run magazines, written on art, film and theatre.

At a moment when basic agreement over simple truths has become a political battleground and history a weapon, the publication of the book, Renia's Diary, offers a reminder of the power of bearing witness New York Times