Works

In June 2016 under the patronage of the Marshal of Podkarpacie, the first edition of Renia Spiegel's diary was published. The book is available on Amazon and Allegro.

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31 January 1939
Why have I decided to start my diary today? Has something important happened? Have I found out about my girlfriends’ diaries? No! I simply seek a friend. I seek somebody I could tell about my worries and joys of everyday life. Somebody who would feel what I feel, who would believe me, who would never reveal my secrets. A human being can never be such a friend and that is why I have decided to make a diary my confidant. Today, my Dear Diary, is the beginning of our really close friendship. Who knows how long it will last? It might even be until the end of my and your life. In any case I will be honest with you, I will be open and I will tell you everything. In return you will listen to my thoughts and my worries, but never ever will you reveal them to anybody else, you will remain silent like an enchanted book, locked with an enchanted key and hidden in an enchanted castle. You will not betray me, if anything it will be those small blue letters that people are able to recognize. First of all I need you to get to know me. I am in the third grade of the Maria Konopnicka Middle School. My name is Renia, or at least that is what my friends call me. I have a little sister Ariana who plans to become a film artiste (she has fulfilled this dream in part already, as she sometimes plays in films). Our Mummy lives permanently in Warsaw. I used to live in a beautiful manor house on the Dniester River. I loved it there, I think these were so far the happiest days of my life. There were storks on old linden trees, apples shimmered in the orchard and I had cute, even rows in my flower bed. But that is in the past and will never return. There is no manor house anymore, no storks on old linden trees, no apples or flowers. The only thing that remains are memories, sweet and lovely. And the Dniester River, which keeps flowing, distant, strange and cold; which hums, but not for me anymore. Now I live in Przemyśl, at my Granny’s, but honestly speaking I have no home and that is why sometimes I get so sad that I have to cry. I cry, though I don’t miss anything, no dresses, no sweets, no strange and precious dreams. I only miss my Mummy and her warm heart. I miss home where we could all live together, like in the white manor house on the Dniester River. 

Again the need to cry takes over me
When I recall the days that used to be
The linden trees, house, storks and butterflies
Far… somewhere… too far for my eyes
I see and hear what I miss
The wind lulling the old trees
And nobody tells me anymore
About the fog, about the silence
The distance and darkness outside the door
I will always hear this lullaby
See our house and pond laid by
And linden trees against the sky…

Translated by Anna Hyde