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After 60 years of silence, The Diary of Mary Berg is poised at last to gain the appreciation and widespread attention that it so richly deserves, and is sure to take it is place alongside The Diary of Anne Frank as one of the most substantial memoirs of the twentieth century. From love to tragedy, seamlessly combining the each day worries of a growing teenager with a distinctive commentary on one of the darkest chapters in history, this timeless story provides an illuminating clear or deep perception into life in the Warsaw Ghetto.

From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Today I am fifteen years old. I feel very old and lonely.... Everyone is afraid to go out. The Germans are here." So begins this extraordinary essay of Jewish life in Lodz, Poland, and the Warsaw ghetto as the Nazis begun to liquidate it is starving and disease-ridden inmates. In 1940 Berg fled Lodz with her parents and sister. They lived in the Warsaw ghetto, and in July 1942 were transposed to Pawiak prison within the ghetto. Originally published in the U.S. in February 1945, the essay is based on notebooks that Mary Berg (née Wattenberg) smuggled out of Europe when she and her interned family were swapped for German prisoners and sailed to America. This powerful testament documents Nazi brutalities, and the divergence amid those without means, who starved and passed away of typhus, and the more privileged, like Berg's family (her mother was American and her father comparatively wealthy), who, for a time, were competent to patronize ghetto cafes and attend the theater. Berg is a to an outstanding degree clear-eyed, skillful and heart-breaking recorder of those terrible years. 23 illus. (Apr. 12)
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From BooklistThe book was primary published in the U.S. in 1945 as Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary,and now it is in an expanded edition. The author, a Jew, was 15 when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. From then until she arrived in the U.S. with her parents and sister in March 1944, Berg held a diary recounting her years in the Warsaw ghetto, prison detention in Warsaw, internment in France, and the trip aboard a mercy ship contracted by the U.S. Berg recorded her eyewitness account in 12 notebooks that she smuggled out of Europe. In describing the ghetto, for instance, Berg wrote, "In the streets, frozen humane corpses are an progressively usual sight. Many mothers often sit with children wrapped in rags from which protrude red frostbitten little feet. Sometimes a child huddles versus a mother, thinking that she is asleep and attempting to arouse her, while, in fact, she is dead." The richness of Berg's memories and the intensity of her experiences record for posterity a chilling account of childhood for the duration of the Holocaust. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

ReviewThis powerful testament documents Nazi brutalities, and the more privileged, like Berg's family(her mother was American and her father comparatively wealthy), who, for a time, were competent to patronise ghetto cafes and attend the theatre. Berg is a outstandingly clear-eyed, skillful and heart-breaking recorder of thos terrible years. -- Publishers Weekly

Most helpful client reviews

10 of 11 humans found the following review helpful.
An valuable historical document!
By Z Hayes
Throughout the amount of time of the Holocaust, a lot of diaries were written by the Jewish victims and survivors, documenting this horrific amount of time in humane history. Among the more widely known and esteemed diaries are The Diary of Anne Frank, and more recently, The Diary of Petr Ginz. What is aweinspiring when it comes to most of these diaries is the young voice narrating the horrors of the period, and describing with intimate detail, the lost hopes and dreams of a young generation doomed to suffer and in galore instances perish for being considered 'undesirable' as a Jew. The Diary of Mary Berg adds to this portrait of young lives diminished, and potential lost, only Mary Berg survives and her diaries are a living testament to her unwavering spirit to survive and document the stark realities of war, in queer the siege of Warsaw by the Nazis, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the ghetto's liquidation. Luckily for Mary Berg and her family, their privileged positions enabled them to seek a path to freedom but though they escaped the horrific deaths indicated for the Jews by the Nazis, Mary Berg has surely made a worthful contribution to the annals of Holocaust history by her poignant documentation of a time of despair.

8 of 9 humans found the following review helpful.
A will have to read, along with "The Diary of Anne Frank"
By Bruce Caplan
The Diary of Mary Berg is a will have to read for any severe student of the Holocaust. Her account is distinguishable in that this child experienced the day to day traumas and horrors of the Nazis for over three years as she fought for survival in the streets of Warsaw.

I feel that this is the finest narrative ever written with regards to the Warsaw Ghetto! Readers will be mesmerized, traumatized, and enlightened as they experience the reality of how this young lady pulled through six decades ago.

Bruce M. Caplan

5 of 5 humans found the following review helpful.
Packed with History
By Princeton
Very well done, perceptive and terrible and sad. Gives you the sentiment as if you were there and walked in the footsteps of those who had to go through this and bears a torch of light to chase the darkness of ignorance away so that hopefully this will never take place again. Touching classic.

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