Personal Diary of Nelly Epstein.

(HOLOCAUST)

1st January, 1935 – Haifa, 18th January

Vienna

1943

Manuscript in German. Diary includes clippings, a floor-plan, maps and occasional drawings.

A private document of a life uprooted. Diary entries of Brno-born Nelly Epstein (1921-2013) from the age of 13 to the age of 21. The diaries commence with those typical of a teenage girl: Her friends, family-life in Vienna, school, vacation trips, theater performances including clipping of actors she was fond of, the move to a new apartment with a drawing of the floorplan, dance parties and first romantic encounters. All this starkly contrasts with her entries four years later when she describes her lengthy four-month journey with her young husband Emil (Aryeh) Katscher and a group of young Zionists seeking to escape the Nazi net. They travel via the Danube to the Black Sea and then on to Palestine. Upon arrival Nelly is subsequently interned for eight months in a British-run detention camp near Haifa. Particularly striking are her drawings depicting life on the boat and in the detention camp. The diary ends in January 1943 when her husband who had joined the military, is deployed to Egypt. The last news concerning her parents is a note from relatives stating that they had to travel to Poland in April 1942. Nelly’s parents Amelie (1894-1943) and Berthold Epstein (1883-1944) are known to have been killed in Auschwitz. Her younger brother Hans (1925-45) died in Theresienstadt.