"The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak"
             A compelling struggle to survive laden with disheartening starvation, loss of hope, and willing acceptance that this ghetto would consume its inhabitants is captured in the daily journal of a polish teenager caught in the relentless and unforgiving ghetto of £ódŸ. Dawid must suffer through this life for nearly four years before succumbing to the ghetto disease; his mundane conditions began just before his fifteenth birthday. From the entries recovered, a deep, dark insight into the hells of ghetto life for those in the Jewish community not blessed by connections or upper-class status is revealed. Throughout his notebooks, themes of his daily "life," or rather path to death, can be seen. Of these themes, most prominently are his downward spiral of hope that conditions would improve and life after war was foreseeable, his unfailing desire to press on with reading, literature writing, and entry-keeping despite his formidable and feeble state, and the sense of indifference and his sarcastic and jokingly approach to death and unfavorableness surrounding him.
             From the beginning of his notebook, while it does portray the horrors of his situation, holds a bit of hope, usually expressed in almost every entry. Slowly though, as times become more and more hellish, the small words of hope become less and less while the despair remains rampant in his entries. Early times in the war bring great happiness when events like gaining control over the railway occurs. "And the railway station in Zbaszyn has been taken back from the Germans! We disperse full of joy and go to sleep" (Sierakowiak, p. 33). In this same entry lightheartedness is felt in his words "Long live humor; down with hysteria." Little signs of hopelessness appear almost unnoticed when he writes, "What will tomorrow bring?" with an air of sadness to it. He still has great prid...