Rutka’s Note­book is the diary of a Jew­ish teenag­er liv­ing in Bedzin, Poland in ear­ly 1943. Six­ty years after the young author, Rut­ka, hid her diary, it was retrieved by a friend and sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished. The book cov­ers the four months pri­or to Ruthke’s depor­ta­tion to Auschwitz. Through the young author’s eyes we are wit­ness to the hor­rors and bru­tal­i­ty deliv­ered by the Nazis dur­ing their occu­pa­tion of Poland. Rut­ka reveals her life in her note­book, in both actu­al­i­ty and raw emo­tion. We are drawn in by Rutka’s typ­i­cal teenage emo­tion­al con­flicts — love, anger, jeal­ousy — at the same time as we are buf­fet­ed by the bru­tal­i­ty and hor­ren­dous cru­el­ty of her Nazi tor­men­tors. This book is unique in its for­mat. Eschew­ing foot­notes, the pub­lish­ers inter­min­gle pho­tographs and explana­to­ry text with rel­e­vant diary pas­sages. The diary is a worth­while read for mature stu­dents thir­teen years of age and old­er, espe­cial­ly for those with some Holo­caust study background.