Childhood friend guards memory of 'Polish Anne Frank'

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2008

BEDZIN, Poland (AFP) — Spread on an apartment table, a handful of editions of the heart-rending journal of a Jewish girl now known as the "Polish Anne Frank" testify to a childhood friend's guardianship of her story in the decades since the Holocaust.

"For me this was a memory of a friend, a very precious memory, not a historical document," said 90-year-old Stanislawa Sapinska at her home in this southern Polish town.

Sapinska kept Rutka Laskier's wartime diary safe for 63 years. In 2006 her nephew convinced her to make it public after she let him read it.

"He said: 'Auntie, you can't keep this to yourself,'" Sapinska told AFP.

The diary has since been published in Polish, Hebrew, Spanish, French, and in English as "Rutka's Notebook: A Voice from the...