Book Club: Renia’s Diary by Renia Spiegel, Elizabeth Bellak
April 17 @ 3:30 pm
Join Cantor Debra Stein, Rabbi for an opportunity to delve into an interesting book, expand your thinking on a new topic or just meet new friends. Whether you’re an avid reader or just want to follow along with the group, our book club welcomes you!
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Renia’s Diary by Renia Spiegel
Renia Spiegel was a young girl from an upper-middle class Jewish family living on an estate in Stawki, Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. In the summer of 1939, Renia and her sister Elizabeth (née Ariana) were visiting their grandparents in Przemysl, right before the Germans invaded Poland. Renia’s Diary is a significant historical and psychological document. The raw, yet beautiful account depicts Renia’s angst over the horrors going on around her. It has been translated from the original Polish, with notes included by her surviving sister, Elizabeth Bellak.
Elizabeth Bellak
Elizabeth Bellak (née Ariana Spiegel) was born in 1930 into an upper-middle class Jewish family in Stawki, Poland. She was a prominent child actress before World War II, went to live in Warsaw to pursue a career in film and was known as “the Shirley Temple of Poland.”
When war broke out, Ariana and her older sister Renia were visiting their grandparents in the town of Przemysl. Renia was killed in Przemysl in 1942, but Ariana survived and made her way back to Warsaw along with a friend’s father who was a member of the resistance. There, Ariana was baptized with a new name-Elzbieta—and sent to play a real-life acting role as a Catholic girl at a convent school.
After the war, Elzbieta made her way to New York via Austria, and becomes Elizabeth, and became a schoolteacher. Years later, she was miraculously reunited with her sister Renia’s wartime diary, in which Renia had documented their family’s experiences and shared intimate personal reflections. St. Martin’s Press published it in 2019 as Renia’s Diary and the diary became an international bestseller.