“What will the next five years bring me?”: Shulamit Pilitovski’s personal diary, Lithuania–Jerusalem, 1936–1939

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the diary of Shulamit Pilitovski, a young Jewish woman from the small town of Lazdiaji, Lithuania, who studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem between 1936 and 1939. The diary was written in Yiddish and later in Hebrew and dealt with the political, social, and personal affairs of that period. After graduating, she went back home for a family visit on the eve of The Second World War and could not return. She was murdered in the Vilna Ghetto in 1941. The diary, which survived in Jerusalem and had been buried in an archive for decades, is written in beautiful poetic language and in a sincere manner reflecting the events of the time from a uniquely personal viewpoint.