The short, spare Holocaust account of a nineteen-year-old Jewish boy from Krakow. The first 78 pages of the book are a memoir of Julius Feldman's experiences from the start of the war; the final couple of pages are some diary entries from April 1943. The diary ends in mid-sentence. Little is known about Julius's fate, other than that he didn't survive the Holocaust; he was probably killed in May of 1943.

Although Julius writes calmly and unemotionally, the horror of what he went through is obvious. He lost his entire immediate family -- mother, father and younger brother -- on the same day during a major deportation in the ghetto. During that time he instructed his mother to hide under a table in a workshop, but after he left her, when the Germans called for everyone to come out of the buildings onto the street, for whatever reason she obeyed. When he returned to the spot where she'd been hiding, all he found were the marks of her tears on the table.

The book is illustrated with many black and white photographs, some from Julius's surviving relatives and some general war pictures. There are also endnotes and a timeline to help clarify the diary and place it in its proper historical context.

A decent scholarly effort, and a worthy edition to the shelf of Holocaust diary/memoirs. ( )