Reading Dawid Sierakowiak’s diary, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak, and Chaim Kaplan’s diary, The Scroll of Agony, proved to be a very difficult task. It was not challenging in a sense that it was onerous or monotonous, but rather difficult because of the hundreds of pages of harrowing tails of inhumanity articulated by the Nazis. The diaries of both Chaim Kaplan and Dawid Sierakowiak are first hand accounts of not only the atrocities committed by the Nazis, but accounts of Jewish leadership in the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. Both authors paint a vivid picture about the Jewish leadership, the Judenrat or the Jewish Council. Each author has their own viewpoints on their specific leader and, throughout the diary, their perspectives on their leaders transform. Regardless of the leader, the diaries provide disturbing tails of Jewish governance and leaders oppressing other Jewish victims of Nazi persecution during World War II.
In many ways, the diaries of Sierakowiak and Kaplan are very similar. In terms of …show more content…
The upper class or the Beirat was the ruling class in the Lodz ghetto. It consisted of all the leaders in the ghetto, important people and the only people who had influence. According to Sierakowiak, the Beirat ate until they were full, had electricity and could afford shoes. Sierakowiak noted that as time went on, recourses became scarcer and the gap between social classes widened even further. Sierakowiak states, “The ghetto dignitaries are gorging, unafraid of death from exhaustion or tuberculosis. The gap between the haves and the remaining ghetto population is becoming wider, more insolent, and extreme.” Sierakowiak wrote in his journal that Rumkowski is only trying to save ten thousand lives and he knew that he was not going to be one of them only because of his social