A family memorabilia or scrap paper? Post mortem fate of diaries based on the writings by Hélène Berr and Mary Berg

Abstract

This article discusses the diaries kept during the war by two young Jewish girls: Hélène Berr who lived in occupied Paris, and Mary Berg who lived in the Warsaw ghetto. Hélène Berr’s diary appeared in print in 2008, more than sixty years after the diarist’s death, and was kept as a manuscript and typescript by the deceased’s former fiancé and in the family archives. The manuscript was donated to the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris. Meanwhile, Mary Berg’s diary, in the form of abbreviated, almost stenographic notes in twelve notebooks, arrived in New York in March 1944. After arriving in the States, Mary set to work with reporter S. L. Shneiderman to publish the diary as soon as possible. However, when the text appeared in print, she broke off contact with Shneiderman and, beginning in the 1950s, cut herself off from her past. After her death, various personal belongings went to an estate sale. The unsold items were sent to the York County Solid Waste Authority’s incinerator. Thus, the twelve manuscript notebooks probably no longer exist, but fragmentary typescripts have survived: a Yiddish-to-Polish translation by Stanisław Wygodzki from 1979 and fragments of the 1944 Polish typescript. These typescripts were not taken into account in the preparation of the now-published reissues of the diary, yet a comparison with the book version shows that the work of Shneiderman and the diarist on the text was far-reaching and that they rewrote the whole thing together.