Palestine Diaries Of A Polish Schoolgirl

Book excerpt: The first part of this book provides an insight into a privileged life in Kresy (Eastern Borderlands of pre-war Poland) and the fate of its deported inhabitants, including Irena (the author's mother) at the time of the Second World War. This is an attempt to show how historical events shape, distort and sometimes destroy individual human lives. The second and main part of the book contains Irena's diaries from Palestine, written over a period of four years. In her frequent diary entries she tries to make sense of life events, of growing up in the exotic but alien environment of a military boarding school for girls in Nazareth, separated from her parents, who were involved in the war effort against Nazi Germany. These diaries offer a remarkable insight into a bygone era of life inside and outside a unique military school, in a country where different nations, Arabs, Jews, English and Polish, coexisted peacefully under the hot Palestinian sun.