Customer Reviews

Girl with Two Landscapes: The Wartime Diary of Lena Jedwab, 1941-1945

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Written by Lena Jedwab Rozenberg and translated into English by Solon Beinfeld, Girl With Two Landscapes: The Wartime Diary Of Lena Jedwab, 1941-1945 is the journaled account of a sixteen-year-old girl who in June 1941 bade farewell to her family for what was to have been a summer-long vacation camp. Lena Jedwab left her home in Bialystok, Poland and arrived in Russia just as Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Lena was stranded in a Russian children's home while her family was murdered by the Nazis at the Treblinka concentration camp for the crime of having been born Jewish. In her diary, Lena wrote in Yiddish as she agonized over the unknown fate of her family and the uncertainties of her future. Expressed are her conflicted emotions over what the war had done to her youth and the gratitude felt for being alive, nourished and in school will so many others were displaced, starving, and dying. Not since The Diary of Anne Frank, has there been such a personalized account by an adolescent girl caught up in the turmoil and terror of World War II. Girl With Two Landscapes is an incredibly important and highly prized addition to Judaic Studies and Holocaust Studies collections.

Like the Diary of Anne Frank, Lena Jedwab's diary provides an important first-hand account of the effects of war on ordinary people, in this case again a young, Jewish woman. Though comparison's to Anne Frank's diary are inevitable, Lena's diary is quite different from Anne's in important ways and should be read on its own accord. Unlike Anne, Lena is separated from her family (whom she never sees again) and her diary is a testament to the millions of children of World War II and every war who have to grow up on their own and too fast. Also unlike Anne, Lena interacts with many different people in many different circumstances and isn't just an observer of what is happening but is instead an active participant. Lastly, unlike Anne, Lena survives the war and therefore was not only a living witness to the horrors of the war but also an emblem of hope for those who survive and a breathing emblem of the resiliency of people and the world.

Lena is at once thoughtful and mature and self-absorbed and childish, like nearly all teenagers, though she is much more learned and focused on her studies than the average teenager. Much of her diary reads like the diary of almost any schoolgirl, recording the pettiness, emotional turmoil, self-doubt, and intense but ever evolving friendships of adolescence. Yet, we are constantly reminded, in a poignant and meaningful but not self-pitying way, that Lena experiences these things without a parent or any close adult to guide her with constancy, and indeed, without anyone who truly loves and cares for her. Her efforts to parent herself while trying to capture some normalcy are heartrending ... and provide a universal lens into the lives of children orphaned by war regardless of the country or time.

My only hesitation in giving the book five stars is that as a published work, it would have been better with more information about events, places, and things surrounding the entries. Though her entries during the first year are fairly thorough, thereafter Lena writes more sporadically and with less detail. As such, it was sometimes hard to understand exactly what was going on.

I was incredibly moved by this book and am going to work to have my children's school incorporate it into the curriculum. In my opinion, the book provides opportunities for great discussions with high schoolers about personal responsibility, ethics, war, class, discrimination, ethnic/religious identity, and family, to name a few. I also would highly recommend this book to reading groups.