In 1941, in Zlochow, Poland, where Ephraim Sten lived with his family, the SS rounded up Jews into ghettos. Thirteen-year old Sten, who had started a diary, fled with his mother to the countryside where a Catholic-Ukrainian couple hid them and several relatives. Sten's account of those years is harrowing. Fifty years later he had the diary translated into Hebrew for his children and responded to each of his own youthful entries. This is the first English-language edition. "For decades," he writes, "I was not conscious of the load crushing my soul. This damned writing has newly rediscovered everything." This is an extraordinary record and, in itself, a distinctive work of literature. As Myra Sklarew writes, "the boy and the man he became finally stand side by side in an attempt to free themselves from the voices, faces, images of their shared past."

Translated by: Moshe Dor
Introduction by: Myra Sklarew