Original subtitles

(sorrowful music)

Downloaded from YTS.MX

- [Rutka] The rope around us is getting tighter and tighter.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

The little faith I used to have

has been completely shattered.

If God existed, He would certainly have not allowed

humans beings to be thrown into furnaces alive.

Or the heads of little children to be smashed

with the butts of guns.

Or shoved into sacks and gassed to death.

It sounds like a fairytale,

those who haven't seen these things would never believe it.

But it's no myth, it's the truth.

(sorrowful music)

- [Narrator] These words were written in 1943

by a 14 year old Jewish girl called Rutka Laskier.

The diary she kept in the ghetto of Bedzin in Poland

remained hidden from the world for over 60 years.

When it came to light in 2006,

Rutka was dubbed the Polish Anne Frank.

Zahava Scherz is Rutka's half sister

but she didn't even know of Rutka's existence

until she herself was 14.

Now, she's on a journey to discover the sister

she never knew.

(sorrowful music)

- [Zahava] I was born in Israel, I was an only child

and we were a family of three.

Very happy family and very small family.

- [Narrator] Like many children in Israel after the war,

Zahava grew up with no extended family.

- But when I was about 14 years old

I discovered an album which was not in the regular place

where my parents used to keep albums.

My eye caught this picture of two children

and I thought that the girl looks very much like me.

I decided that I'm going to ask my father, "Who is this?"

And he said, "This is Rutka and Henius,

"they were my children.

"And they were murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis."

- [Narrator] Zahava's father revealed

that he had been married before in Poland

before the Second World War.

The family had been transported to Auschwitz,

his wife and children were killed.

He alone had survived.

He remarried and made a new life in Israel.

- This was a big shock, a big surprise to me

that we didn't talk a lot about it.

My parents didn't want me to grow up

with the shadows of the Holocaust.

- [Narrator] Zahava's father, Yaacov died in 1986.

She thought she'd hear no more about his lost family.

Then in 2006, Zahava received a phone call

from a man she didn't know.

- He said, "Are you the daughter of Yaacov Laskier?"

And I said, "Yes I am."

"Do you know if he had a daughter named Rutka?"

And I said, "Yes, he did."

He said, "I have to tell you something.

"In Poland they discovered a diary written by a girl

"named Rutka Laskier,

"we think it's the daughter of your father."

And I thought that I'm going to faint.

Since then, I have a sister.

Really, because since then

I started a journey discovering Rutka.

- [Narrator] Rutka's original handwritten diary

is now held at the Yad Vashem Center in Jerusalem.

It's part of the collection of evidence here

documenting some of the six million individuals

who were murdered in the Holocaust,

as the Nazis tried systematically

to exterminate the entire Jewish people.

(mournful music)

After the Germans invaded Poland

at the beginning of World War II,

they forced the Jews into confined areas known as ghettos

where they could be strictly controlled.

In one such ghetto, Rutka wrote her diary.

- When you read Rutka's story,

you read the unique testimony of the Holocaust

and a story of an adolescent in very dreadful times.

- [Narrator] Zahava has come to Yad Vashem

to look at Rutka's original diary

with the man who first called her about it,

80 year old Menachem Lior.

He's a Holocaust survivor and remembers Rutka

from the town of Bedzin in Poland where they both grew up.

- She was a beautiful girl and she was very very magic,

she was something special.

- [Narrator] Zahava has been able to read

the diary in translation

but this is the first time

she's had a chance to examine the real thing.

- This is the diary.

It's very beautiful handwriting, it's unbelievable.

You know, as a matter of fact,

it's the first time that I have a chance

to really look at it and to hold it in my hand.

This is something that is unbelievably exciting for me

and I can't believe that it survived all these year

and in pretty good condition, I would say.

Pretty good condition.

- You are touching the ink of 70 years ago

and you're going back to Rutka, to older time, to '43.

It's just (speaks in foreign language),

something special.

- [Narrator] Rutka's slim notebook covers just three months

between January and April 1943.

Not yet 14, she's already a veteran of the ghetto.

(speaks in foreign language)

- [Rutka] I can't believe it's already 1943.

Four years since this hell began.

- [Narrator] The diary's a potent mix,

the intimate thoughts and feelings of a teenage girl

alongside vivid descriptions of Nazi atrocities.

(speaks in foreign language)

- [Rutka] I have a feeling

that I'm writing for the last time,

there's a round up of Jews in town.

I'm not allowed to go out and I'm going crazy,

imprisoned in my own home.

- You can see the pen that she's using,

you can even see her emotions.

The handwriting is getting wild a little bit,

it makes you feel like you are there.

All these 60 something years didn't pass by.

- I think Rutka's diary and her story are special.

She offered us an insight into things

that we might not have otherwise.

Especially from these young eyes that are a mixture of

youth and adult all at once.

Adult experience with youth emotions.

So I think we've got something really quite unusual here.

- I was afraid from the beginning if it's the real diary.

A genuine diary, after I read it, I was sure.

She mentioned something about love with a boy named Janek,

who was my friend, three people know about it,

Rutka, Janek and I.

- And she wanted to be kissed, you know.

And I don't think she got a chance.

- She got her chance, yeah.

- She did?

- She did.

- Okay.

(both laughing)

(plane engines whining)

- [Narrator] To understand more about Rutka and her diary,

Zahava is making the journey from Israel

to Rutka's hometown of Bedzin in Poland.

Close to what was then German territory,

Bedzin was occupied within days of the Nazi invasion,

in September 1939.

Five centuries of vibrant Jewish life and culture,

came to a brutal end.

The Nazis began by confining the Jews

to a small area of town, the ghetto.

- [Rutka] I would like to pour out on paper

all the turmoil I'm feeling inside.

But I just can't do it.

Sometimes I'm in such a foul mood

that when I open my mouth, it's only to snap at people.

Other days, I'm bursting with joy

and could laugh all day long.

- [Zahava] I have a kind of empty hole in my life.

I grew up with no close relatives

and it is not natural.

This trip in Poland is an opening for me

to know better my family.

Bedzin used to be a very religious Jewish community.

It was vivid and full with life.

One thing which is good for me,

is the fact it didn't change much.

It is very much preserved.

You can really feel how it used to look.

(hopeful music)

- [Narrator] The first person Zahava wants to see

is the man responsible for publishing the diary in Poland.

Adam Szydlowski is Bedzin's registrar of births,

deaths and marriages.

- Now we're going to Kamionka.

- [Narrator] He's also set up

an organization to rehabilitate

the town's lost Jewish heritage.

Adam has offered to take Zahava to the house

in the former ghetto where Rutka wrote her diary

and where she hid it

in the hope that one day it would be found.

- This is the house?

- This is the house of Rutka.

- Wow, and where did they live, in which floor?

In this floor?

- Next floor.

- [Zahava] Second floor?

- [Adam] Second floor.

(dog barking)

(door bell buzzing)

(dog barking)

- [Narrator] Several Jewish families, including Rutka's,

were made to share this house.

- I'm Zahava Scherz.

- [Narrator] The Nazis forced the Polish family

who had owned it before the war

to find somewhere else to live.

Their daughter Stanislawa

would come back occasionally

to check up on the place.

(sorrowful music)

- They were living here?

- [Rutka] Mum gets upset and screams at me

because of Henius.

He's a sweet little thing

but sometimes he can be pretty obnoxious.

Can't say anything in front of him

because he goes and tells everything to the old folks.

- I think the diary was a sort of privacy for Rutka.

I imagine that she would write in the diary

when the apartment was empty.

I think you needed to have somebody to talk to

and maybe those days she had two people.

She had the diary and she had Stanislawa Sapinska.

- [Rutka] Although I don't usually look good in photographs,

I'm in fact quite pretty.

I'm tall, thin, my legs aren't too bad.

I've big black eyes, short black hair, nicely outlined lips.

And there's my portrait.

- I'm very curious to see, where did she hide the diary?

- [Zahava] So underneath?

- Wow, unbelievable.

(calm music)

- [Narrator] After the Nazis cleared the ghetto,

Stanislawa returned to look for the diary.

- [Narrator] It was only by chance

that Adam Szydlowski got to hear about the diary,

over 60 years later.

He immediately realized its historical value,

within months it had been published.

Stanislawa sometimes misses the diary

now that it's in Yad Vashem museum.

But Zahava and Adam have a surprise for her.

- I want to give you a present,

it's on the memory of Rutka's diary.

(Stanislawa in foreign language)

- This is Rutka's diary.

It's a facsimile, it's like the original.

And it's so you remember Rutka, you'll remember the diary

and you will remember what you have done for me,

the memories and the sister that you gave me.

It's like the original.

(lips smacking)

(children chattering)

- [Narrator] The publication of Rutka's diary

was a big event in Bedzin.

It's now part of the curriculum

at the local elementary school.

- Hello.

- [Students] Hello.

(Zahava speaks in foreign language)

(students speak in foreign language)

- We are very glad that we have sister of Rutka Laskier

over here in our school.

Now, we are waiting for Easter

and according to Polish traditions,

we want give you these festive decorations.

- [Both] It's for you.

- Thank you very very much.

So what is the project that the children are doing?

- The project is about Jewish history in Bedzin.

And we also read the diary of Rutka Laskier.

- I understand you all read the book that Rutka wrote

and as you are very close to the age

she was when wrote the diary,

I wonder which part did you like the best?

What did you choose?

- Okay, can you read it?

(speaks in foreign language)

- [Rutka] They say I'm intelligent, educated,

well maybe, I'm a bit nutty.

I like telling people in the face

exactly what I think about them.

I also sometimes like to dress in a crazy manner,

basically I couldn't care less,

I am who I am and nothing can possibly change that.

See you later, my diary.

- That's very nice, thank you very much.

- [Narrator] Despite her circumstances,

Rutka reveals all the normal concerns of a teenage girl.

(girl speaking in foreign language)

- [Rutka] Tomorrow I will have to settle things with Janek.

I'll tell him if he wants to be my friend,

he has to be on time or else adios.

Obviously not in those words exactly,

I couldn't care less about him.

But I'm curious to see the look on his face.

Micka came round with lots of gossip.

Someone told her I'd cut my hair to please Janek,

that I put on silk stockings for Janek and so on.

That's a total lie, as if I even cared about him.

- Why did you choose this?

What did you feel?

- [Narrator] Rutka's diary entries move seamlessly

between the everyday thoughts of a young girl

and the brutal reality of life in the ghetto.

(girl speaks in foreign language)

- [Rutka] I'm so saturated with the horrors of this war.

That even the worst things I hear have no effect on me.

I just can't believe that one day

I'll be able to go out without a yellow star.

Or that this war will ever end.

- What is your reaction to life in the ghetto?

- I couldn't say it better than you, thank you.

Rutka was a teenager.

And to see these girls reading from the diary

choosing the part they liked,

all of a sudden there was Rutka for me

in many many voices.

- [Narrator] Before they were sent to the ghetto in 1939

the Laskier family lived in a middle class area

in the center of town.

It was once the heart of a vibrant Jewish community.

- Wow, this is the house where Rutka's family,

my father's family lived before the war.

I wondered whether the house exist

or whether it was destroyed

but I couldn't believe that it is kind of an in between.

They were very modern people

and they were very prosperous, very well to do.

They used to go skiing in the winter

and in the summertime they would go to the seashore.

They had very nice life.

I think it is very important to remember

because that again gives us the connection

to the people they really were.

Because they not really were the people

that the German decided to diminish.

They were people like you and me, like everybody,

and you can really feel it from Rutka's notebook.

(calm music)

- [Rutka] I'm completely absorbed with a longing

for something beautiful, wonderful and distant.

When I'm standing by the riverside,

and looking at a gushing waterfall.

I feel something inside of me being lifted

and taken far away.

(calm music)

- [Narrator] The quality of Rutka's writing

is remarkable, she had talent but also a good education.

(bell ringing)

Rutka attended the Furstenberg-Gymnasium,

a private school for Jews

which is now a Polish state school.

One of her close friends here was Linka Gold,

who managed to escape from the ghetto

and now lives in London.

At 79, she's the same age Rutka would have been.

- Before the war, it was a very happy go lucky

atmosphere, Rutka was an attractive young girl.

Slim and tall and she was very intelligent.

She was a good pupil and she had followers,

a lot of boys, you know?

(girl speaking in foreign language)

- [Rutka] I think my womanhood has awoken in me.

Yesterday when I was taking a bath

and the water stroked my body,

I longed for someone's hands to caress me.

I didn't know what it was,

I've never felt like this before.

- Well this is the first time I'm here,

and I'm really really very excited.

The minute I came in it was what I expected,

like an old gymnasium from the last century.

It is really exciting to know that Rutka was here

and studied here and it's very meaningful.

- [Narrator] Rutka mentions a number of boys

in her diary.

Most frequently, one called Janek.

(girl speaking in foreign language)

- [Rutka] Janek came around this afternoon,

while we were talking,

he suddenly blurted out he'd like it very much

if he could kiss me.

I said, maybe, and continued the conversation.

But I won't let him kiss me.

I'm afraid it would destroy something beautiful.

Pure, I'm also afraid that I'll be very disappointed.

(girl speaking in foreign language)

- [Rutka] I've decided to let Janek kiss me.

Eventually someone will kiss me for the first time,

so let it be Janek.

I do like him.

(girl speaking in foreign language)

- [Rutka] I think I've gone completely crazy.

Today when I woke up,

I realized I no longer have any affection for Janek.

- More than half a century past,

but I think still relationships,

it's the same there and the same today

and I think that is why it is so interesting

for young people to read Rutka's diary

to identify with people who lived 70 years ago

and were quite the same.

They just had very different end.

A very different fate.

- [Narrator] Shortly before the Nazis invaded

and closed all the schools in Benzin,

Rutka wrote a dedication in her friend Linka's notebook.

- Here it is.

(speaks in foreign language) means to your memory.

Enjoy every bit of your luck

and the moments of your luck

because they will fly away like the butterflies

and afterwards will be painful.

And you'll feel sorry for yourself.

Rutka.

- [Narrator] Only a tiny minority of the Jews

who lived in Benzin before the war,

survived the Holocaust.

One of them is the man who first told Zahava

about Rutka's diary, Menachem Lior.

- Menachem has a fascinating story.

He escaped and he arrived to Israel

when there was still war in Europe.

There are very very few, very few cases like that.

He was one year older than Rutka, he used to know her.

- [Narrator] Menachem has come to Benzin

to share his memories of the ghetto with Zahava.

- There were 27,000 Jews in Benzin.

Approximately 50 or 60% of the population.

It was a very very nice life in Benzin.

But when the war started, everything changed.

We were afraid every day what would happen to us.

This was an area where many Jews lived.

There's a church, there is a castle,

and for the Jews who lived here, a big synagogue.

All the children came here to play,

especially Saturday or on occasions.

- It's very beautiful.

- It's was very beautiful, it was for us an attraction,

to run between the walls of the castle,

it was a very nice place.

The main synagogue here, yes.

- Where was it, exactly where the monument is?

- Yes and--

- [Zahava] How big was it?

- [Menachem] It was very big.

- [Zahava] How many people could it hold?

- A few hundred people.

- Wow.

What happened when the Nazis invaded Bedzin?

- They occupied the town,

they closed all the schools,

they closed all the factories,

they closed all the business of the Jews.

They confiscate everything.

- What happened to the synagogue?

- After week, they were in Bedzin,

they burned the synagogue

with all the people that were inside.

(mournful music)

- One of the first major events

that was seared into the memories of the people of Bedzin,

was the burning of the synagogue,

the main synagogue in Bedzin

with Jews inside of it, who'd been forced inside.

That happened right after the Nazis conquered.

This is part of a larger picture in Poland,

there were thousands of synagogues destroyed.

And the ones that were left standing

were the ones that were used either

as refugee centers or as storage rooms

and stables for the Germans.

- This monument is a symbol for the memory

of the citizen of the city who were killed viciously

by the German Nazis in the time of the Holocaust

in the year 1939 1945.

The friends of Bedzin built this monument

in the place where the synagogue was standing

and it was burned and destroyed by the Nazis' occupation

8th of September, 1939.

(mournful music)

- [Narrator] In this first phase of their persecution,

the Nazis forced some 20,000 Jews

to gather their possessions

and move into the poorest area of town.

Here they were exploited as slave labor.

There was virtually no food for those that couldn't work.

Kidnappings and beatings were commonplace

and a strict curfew was enforced on pain of death.

The Nazis classified the Jews as subhuman.

- It wasn't a pleasant feeling.

Someone was watching you all the time.

And I was scared because to shoot a person

for the Germans was just like having a piece of cake.

So we had to be very careful.

- [Rutka] I'm sick of these gray houses.

Of the fear painted on every face,

a fear that grips everyone and won't let go.

Everywhere people are queuing up.

Queuing for potatoes, coal, bread.

A policeman pushed an old man,

he fell and hit is head on the cobbles.

Over there a woman is crying, her husband has been arrested.

Who knows if she'll ever see him again.

(people chattering)

- I remember horrible things happened in front of my house.

We came home and on the trees were two bakers hanged.

Why, because they baked some bread for people.

This is remember.

Which was very unpleasant and frightening.

(train roars)

- [Narrator] The Nazis had worse horrors in store

for the Jews of Benzin.

As Rutka recollects in her diary.

The 12th of August, 1942,

some 30,000 people were told to gather at a sports ground

next to the railway line.

Rutka, her parents and five year old brother Henius,

arrived here at crack of dawn.

The stadium has since been demolished

to make way for Benzin's main bus station.

But this has not dimmed Menachem memory of that day.

- I was here, I was a young child, a young boy.

We were all together here.

Families, friends, waiting for something

that we didn't know what.

Most of the town was here.

And suddenly we saw soldiers surrounding us

with machine guns.

And when we saw the soldiers

we understood something was going to happen here.

(ominous music)

- [Rutka] I looked beyond the fence

and saw soldiers with machine guns aimed at us.

People fainted, children were crying.

In short, Judgment Day.

- Well my mind is very vivid,

they gathered us all on the football grounds

and they made a selection.

- [Narrator] Nazi policy towards the Jews

was becoming ever more draconian.

The young and able bodied were still to be used

as forced labor

but those considered unproductive,

were to be rounded up for extermination.

- [Rutka] At three o' clock the selection started.

Group one meant you could go home.

One A meant going to the labor camps.

Two meant going for further inspection

and three meant deportation.

In other words, death.

- Number three was (speaks in foreign language),

which means sending to Auschwitz.

And you knew that this is the end.

- I think maybe for Rutka it was this time

that she really realized that the plan is to kill the Jews.

- I fear the first time for Rutka,

that everyone realized that they decided to kill the Jews.

In such situation, you don't feel nothing.

You are empty, just empty of feelings.

- [Narrator] When they Laskier's turn came for selection

Rutka's parents and little brother

were put into the group to be sent back home.

But Rutka, along with her friend Linka Gold,

were selected for the group to be deported

to forced labor camps.

(crowd chattering)

- [Rutka] I walked over in a daze,

Linka Gold was already there.

The weirdest thing was that there were no tears,

absolutely none.

- When I saw her, I said keep together,

let's stick together.

But she disappeared from the crowd

and I never saw her again.

(thunder cracking)

- [Rutka] Then all of a sudden, it started pouring.

Little children were lying on the wet grass

as the storm raged above our heads.

The police were beating people ferociously

and firing their guns.

I sat there until one o' clock at night.

(rain splashing)

- Part of the Nazi process, often, in a round up,

was beating and shootings.

And Rutka describes that

in the August 1942 mass deportation.

Terrorizing populations into submission

was something Nazis were very good at.

They don't want people to stop and think about options,

what does this mean?

What can I do?

Where can I hide?

But if you're being yelled at, beaten over the head,

shot at, the natural human instinct is to run for cover

and to go like that and do what they say.

And that's exactly what they wanted.

- There's the Polish area here.

- [Narrator] The Nazis organized the deportations

with great efficiency.

The selection took place just yards from the railway lines.

Which lead to the labor camps,

or to the death camps at Auschwitz just 20 miles away.

- This was the train station?

- [Menachem] Railway station, railway station of Bedzin.

- [Zahava] And that was the station from which they--

- From this area they took the people to Auschwitz, yeah.

- [Narrator] Rutka had been taken to a nearby building

to await deportation to the labor camps.

Imagining this to be a prospect even worse than death,

she decided to risk everything.

(dramatic music)

- [Rutka] I ran away, my heart was pounding.

I jumped out of a window on the first floor

of a small building.

In the street, I ran into someone in uniform.

I was pretty sure he was going to beat me.

But apparently he was drunk

and didn't see my yellow star.

And he let me go, my head was spinning.

Around me it was dark like in a prison cell.

(dog barking)

But from time to time, flashes of lightening

lit up the sky and it thundered.

(tense music)

The journey home that normally takes me half an hour,

I did in 10 minutes.

- She ran away from the round up in Bedzin

and that was risky and courageous.

Most people who tried to run, as far as I know,

were shot so she evaded that as well.

And I think that that also, it not only reflects her courage

and her initiative, she saw the situation

and said, "I've gotta get out of here."

But it also reflects a sort of watershed,

after that, even though she's an adolescent teenager,

she's also a grown up.

She has an understanding of the world

that most people never have.

(windows slam)

- [Narrator] More than 4,500 Jews were transported

to their deaths at Auschwitz following the round up.

Rutka had escaped, as had Linka Gold

with help from a family friend.

Back in the ghetto, Rutka describes

how she was forced to start work in a Nazi sweatshop.

(mournful music)

- [Rutka] On Monday,

I've got to be at the factory by 6.30a.m.

6.30 is terribly early.

I wonder what kind of job I'll have.

(sewing machine whirring)

- [Narrator] Rutka was set to work as a seamstress.

Probably in a uniform factory.

- [Rutka] The days go by,

every day it's the same grizzly day.

I work from 8a.m. to 2p.m.

It's bearable, the work is quite easy.

I'm getting through it somehow.

- Forced labor and exploitation of Jews

was a clear Nazi policy from the very beginning.

There was absolute exploitation

for the benefit of the Third Reich.

Jews in Bedzin, many of them being skilled laborers

because of the industries in the area

and others being craftsmen, tradesmen,

were very useful to the Nazis

'cause they gave them something.

So you have the development of what was known as shops,

kind of workshops, in various fields,

textiles, shoemakers and things like that

and they would work for the Nazis.

And if you work as a jew

then they don't send you away somewhere

and you also have the right to eat

because Jews don't have access to a grocery store.

They have access to a food distribution center

but only if you qualified.

And if you work, you qualified for yourself

and several family members.

So work for the Jews was a ticket to remaining alive.

- [Narrator] For a while, Polish industry

was considered vital to the German war effort.

But once the Nazis had decided on their so called,

Final Solution, the extermination of the Jews

took precedents over exploiting their labor.

For Rutka and so many like her,

it was the beginning of a decent into hell.

(sorrowful music)

- [Rutka] Something has broken in me.

When I pass by a German,

everything seems to shrink inside me.

I don't know whether it's out of fear or hatred.

(sorrowful music)

I saw how a soldier tore a baby,

who's only a few months old,

out of his mother's arms

and bashed its head against a lamppost.

The baby's brain splashed on the wood.

The mother went crazy.

I'm writing this as if nothing has happened.

As if I was in an army and experienced in cruelty.

But I am young, I'm 14.

I haven't seen much in my life

and I'm already so indifferent.

I'm turning into an animal waiting to die.

- Rutka was very reflective.

I mean she was able to look at herself

and to realize what's happening to her personality.

She says, "I'm getting used to seeing this horrible thing,

"what kind of person am I?"

It's very sad.

The fact this young girl was witness to that.

- [Narrator] In the spring of 1943,

the Nazis started preparing

for the ultimate fate of Bedzin's Jews.

First, the entire population was crammed

into an even smaller ghetto called Kamionka,

on the outskirts of town.

- This is Kamionka, here was the ghetto.

It was a Polish area before the ghetto.

No Jews were here, they threw out all the Polish people

and put us in.

They put many families in one apartment,

in one room, seven or eight people.

It was very crowded.

- So life was impossible?

- Hard life, not impossible, hard life.

- Hard life.

- [Rutka] I wish I could leave all this behind

and run away from all this grayish rottenness.

Spread my wings and fly high and far away.

Hear the wind howling, feel it blowing on my face.

Fly to places where there are no ghettos,

no workshops, no pretending.

Enough now, I'm going to sleep.

- All the time she was very much scared

of moving to Kamionka.

- We were afraid.

Afraid of the change, well to be honest,

you have less space and warmth to live.

- This was the kind of demonization

that the Nazis did to the Jews.

They lost their dignity, they lost their comfort,

they lost their freedom.

- We tried not to lose our dignity,

we tried but it was hard.

- You tried, yes, but that's what they wanted you to do.

- Yes, it was very hard.

You tried not to lose.

We were young but old, what happened to us.

Yes, very young in age but old with our feelings.

We suddenly lose our youth.

- [Zahava] You lose your life.

- You lose your life, you lose your friends,

your family, you lose everything that was close to you.

(sorrowful music)

- [Rutka] The sun is shining so brightly,

outside the windows apple trees and lilacs are blooming.

But you have to sit in the suffocating and stinking room.

To hell with it, the town is already empty.

Almost everyone lives in Kamionka.

We'll probably move there this week.

(children talking)

- [Narrator] This was the last entry Rutka

made in her diary,

on April 24th 1943.

- [Narrator] Fearing that her diary would not survive,

she hid it under the stairs as arranged with Stanislawa.

There's no record of what happened

to the family in the months

after they were moved here to Kamionka.

But in August, the Nazis carried out

their final liquidation of the Jews in Bedzin.

- The took out the people from the houses,

brought them to the station,

put them on the train and sent them to Auschwitz.

- [Zahava] Very efficient.

- [Menachem] Very efficient.

- [Narrator] The Laskier family were amongst 30,000 Jews

taken to Auschwitz.

The registration card of Rutka and Zahava's father Yaacov

shows that he was taken there with his wife Dorka

and their children Rutka and Henius on August the 5th.

(sorrowful music)

He told Zahava how the infamous Auschwitz doctor

Josef Mengele was waiting for them

when they were unloaded from the cattle trucks.

- They went there was Dr. Mengele

and he remembered him very very vividly

and he hated this man and he said he was standing there

and he was the one who decided to send the three

Rutka, Henier and Dorka to one side

and him to the other side.

And that was the last time he saw his family.

(sorrowful music)

That meant that he would be sent work

and maybe will have the chance to survive.

And they for sure were sent to the crematorium,

to the gas chamber.

And he knew it very well.

And that was pretty much, as far as I know, the end.

Very very sad end of a beautiful girl.

Very talented.

My sister's story of my family,

this is the story of many Jewish families

in Eastern Europe in that time.

- [Narrator] But a startling new revelation

may mean that Rutka was not taken directly

to the gas chambers with the others.

During the making of this film,

Adam Szydlowski was contacted

with a disturbing new piece of information.

In 1947, a young girl called Zofia Minc

had dictated a witness statement

detailing her memories of Auschwitz.

- The new revelation has made headlines in Bedzin.

Zofia Minc didn't arrive at Auschwitz

until several months after Rutka.

- If Rutka lived, as it implies, six more months,

it is very sad.

I'd rather not think about it,

I would rather think what I used to believe,

that Rutka died immediately.

For now, that's what I want to believe.

- [Narrator] Whatever the exact details,

Rutka died at Auschwitz

along with many of her close family members.

Just a few of the six million murdered.

30,000 of them from Bedzin.

- In memory of over 30,000 Jews from Bedzin,

(dogs barking)

who have settled here for ages

and generation and have been taken away

and murdered by the Nazis, 1939 1945.

It's very symbolic, it's very symbolic.

(sorrowful music)

- [Narrator] Zahava's father, Yaacov,

survived a number of labor camps.

After the war, he tried to make his way to Palestine

along with many thousands of other Jewish refugees.

The ship he was traveling on

was turned away by the British

and he was sent to a detainment camp in Cyprus.

Here he met his future wife.

- Through all my life I felt so sorry for him

to lose children and I couldn't understand

how could he get his life back again

but he was a strong man

with lot of energy to continue.

He was a wonderful person.

I was very fortunate to have a father like this.

- [Narrator] Having finally made it to Palestine,

Yaacov remarried in 1947 and Zahava was born

two years later.

Long before she heard that Rutka kept a diary,

Zahava named her own daughter

after the half sister she knew so little about.

- Rutka was always a bit special to me

since I'm named after her.

I have the dark hair and eyes

so I guess I look a little bit like her, yeah.

(children talking)

- [Zahava] In a mysterious way,

I always felt very close to Rutka,

I called my daughter Ruth.

Ruth now has two daughters of her own.

(children laughing)

- [Zahava] Rutka wanted the diary to be found.

She knew that she was not going to survive the war.

She wanted somebody to find it

and make it known to the world.

And apparently, this somebody is me.

At my age, to find a sister and to get to know her

through a diary, this is an experience

that nobody imagined it would happened to them.

- [Rutka] At daybreak, I got up and ran to the window.

A tiny bit of golden sunlight

was already peeking over the horizon.

Less than half an hour later,

I was at the foot of the mountain.

I climbed higher and higher.

More and more often rocks blocked my way.

Piles of rocks stained with moss

and roots of trees were twisted like embracing snakes.

The sun flooded the mountain with its golden rays

and outlined the green of the grass.

In the distance, a thin blueish streak of smoke

lit by shepherds could be seen far away.

(hopeful music)