Yitzhak Rudashevski (1927–1943)

Yitskhok Rudashevski was born to a close-knit Jewish family in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, the only child of Rose and Elihu Rudashevski. His father worked as a typesetter for a well-known Yiddish newspaper and his mother was a seamstress. Yitskhok had a relatively comfortable childhood. He was 14 years old in 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded his city in World War II. He was confined to the Vilna Ghetto with his family, where he attended a clandestine school and kept a diary detailing his life and struggles. He was shot to death in the mass murder of Jews known as the Ponary massacre of September–October 1943. Yitskhok's diary was hidden and later discovered by a cousin who managed to escape the massacre and join the partisans. He returned to Vilna after the war and found Yitskhok's 204-page diary. It was published in 1973 by the Ghetto Fighters' House publisher in Israel and translated into English as The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, June 1941-April 1943.