Young Moshe's Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe

Moshe Ze'ev Flinker

Moshe Ze'ev Flinker (Maurice Wolf Flinker) was a Jewish youth born in the Hague on October 9, 1926 and killed in Auschwitz by the Nazi Regime in 1944. He was the son of Noah Eliezer Flinker of Poland, who had migrated to Holland and subsequently become a wealthy businessman. Following the 1940 Battle of the Netherlands, the family left the Hague for Belgium to evade Nazi rule and the rounding up of Jews by the Gestapo. The Flinkers stayed in Brussels, Belgium until their arrest in 1944. Moshe and his parents were deported to Auschwitz and murdered there.

Flinker began writing diary in 1942. The diary was saved by his siblings and published in Hebrew by Yad Vashem in 1958. An English translation was published by Yad Vashem in 1965, titled Young Moshe's Diary, subtitled The spiritual torment of a Jewish boy in Nazi Europe and a second edition followed in 1971. A Yiddish translation was published by Perets, Tel Aviv in 1965, titled Dos yingl Moyshe; Dos togbukh fun Moyshe Flinker. A German translation was published in 2008 under the title Auch wenn ich hoffe: Das Tagebuch des Moshe Flinker by Berlin University Press.

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