Halina Nelken ( September 1923 Krakow- March 2009 Boston) daughter of Emanuel and Regina Nelken
And Yet, I Am Here!
The powerful story of a young woman's journey through the Holocaust
HALINA NELKEN

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Halina Nelken was a precocious fifteen-year-old, living a middle-class life in Krakow. Like other girls her age, she recorded her personal observations and feelings in a diary. As conditions in Krakow deteriorated and her family was forced into the Jewish ghetto, she continued to write, eventually smuggling her diary out with a Catholic friend. This remarkable book tells the story of Nelken's experiences in the ghetto and later in eight Nazi concentration camps, including Plaszow, Auschwitz, and Ravensbröck. Her diary entries, written between 1938 and 1943, form the core of the volume and are supplemented by recollections written shortly after the war, and by later commentaries and explanatory notes which she added in the mid-1980s. Although there exist numerous published and unpublished memoirs by Holocaust survivors, Nelken's book presents one of the few extant diaries written at the time. Already released in Polish and German editions, it has been hailed as one of the finest works of its kind. Now it is available in English for the first time.
"While memoirs of the war years abound, diaries kept at the time are rare. Still rarer are diaries as moving, intelligent, and well-written as this one. The work of an independent, highly observant, and talented girl, it invites comparison to The Diary of Anne Frank and does not lose in the comparison. . . . Nelken's book is a brilliant and engrossing portrayal of the coming of age of a Polish Jewish girl during the Second World War, as well as an authentic, eyewitness account of life in all its moral complexity in German-held Krakow and the concentrations camps."—Alicia Nitecki, author of Recovered Land

"A priceless document of rare value and importance, which allows the reader and the historian of the period to comprehend more clearly the psychological plight of the people locked in the ghetto, through the personal experience and thorough self-analysis of a young girl."—Gideon Hausner, chief prosecutor,

Eichman trial, and author of Justice in Jerusalem

"Nelken's diary is one of the most important to survive from the Second World War. Written by a young girl from a protected and privileged background, it gives a unique and moving account of the Nazi occupation and of the experience of the camps of Plaszow and Auschwitz. . . . There are many memoirs and diaries of the Holocaust, but few with such immediacy and with such a genuine voice."—Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University

"As a teenager, Nelken, who is Jewish, kept a diary of the permanent destruction of her comfortable life when the Nazis overran her homeland. Unlike Anne Frank, this girl survived the Holocaust to tell the full story. Now an art historian, she was born to a prosperous, assimilated Polish family. And she recalls, with bittersweet verisimilitude, her idyllic early days in Krakowthe people and the pastry, the kitchens and the streets. Moved from home to the ghetto and to ever more confined quarters and constricted living conditions, Nelken goes on to describe the travails of her parents and brother, her friends at gimnazium (when she was allowed to attend school), her work (including enforced street cleaning), and, with special grace, her youthful yearnings and romances. Despite lack of rest and food, she notes the music, poetry, and aspirations she found in the ghetto. ``Somehow,'' she wrote in her diary, ``I hope that something will happen and my life will change for the better.'' Then the ghetto was closed, and Nelken, her mother, and sister-in-law were sent to the Plaszow, Auschwitz, and Ravensbrck concentration camps, where the likes of Amon Gth, Franz Hoessler, and Dr. Mengele were her keepers. By the closing days of the war, some prisoners were able to escape and, save for her father, the author and her immediate family endured. Her story of purgatory is a lifetime ago and a world away from her present life in academic Cambridge, Mass. But she fulfills a moral obligation to remember the past, while urging us not to heed the ``professional Holocaustniks'' who weren't even there. ``If only,'' she wishes for those who were, I could protect all of us from forgetfulness, individually, as we were, we living people!'' In moving testimony, her legacy is another story snatched from six million. An intelligent and writerly memoir."—Kirkus Reviews
After World War II, Halina Nelken pursued a career as an art historian, moving to the United States in 1959. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Foreword by George H. Williams . . . ix
Introduction by Gideon Hausner . . . xi

Prologue: 7 D?ugosza Street . . . 11
1 Diary from the Ghetto in Kraków . . . 372
2 Behind Barbed Wire: P?aszów, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck . . . 199 
3 Bottomless Pit . . . 245
4 Return to Kraków . . . 267
Epilogue: The Legacy of the Holocaust . . . 271

Glossary . . . 275
Biographical Note . . . 277

Illustrations follow page 198

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 survivor of eight camps Halina Nelken used to work in the Auschwitz office compiling the numbers gassed and falsifying the cause of death of murdered inmates in the camps records.

Two rows of file cabinets stood in the middle of the room, their deep drawers full of folders and index cards for all inmates in Auschwitz-Birkenau and the subcamps: Buna, Monowitz, and the others. Each one of us worked on different letters of the alphabet. According to daily reports we received from the Sclzreibstube , the camp clerk's office, we kept track of transfers from block to block, work assignments, and the deaths of inmates. Jewish transports from all over Europe went to the gas chambers with only general remarks from the administration of the crematorium: Verwaltung des Krematoriums gibt bekannt—on such and such a day, so many thousand from such and such a country were gassed in Birkenau. Just that—GASSED.

In case of the death of a registered inmate, regardless of the cause—beating, "selection," starvation, exhaustion—we wrote "heart attack" or "pneumonia" on the index card, removed it from the files, and placed it into the Totenkartei , the death register. 

On my first day, I was told to straighten up these Totenkartei in the next room. Index cards tied with string were stacked up to the ceiling, but a pile of them from the last few months had fallen out and was lying in a disorderly heap. I began to arrange them on the shell when some writing in red pencil on one of the packages caught my eye: transport from P?aszów-Kraków vergast in May, along with the Hungarian transport. Gassed! 

Shaking, I went through these index cards. He was there: Edmund Emanuel Nelken. My father. 

I handled the daily reports from the Verwaltung des Krematoriums . There was always a long list of the names and tattoo numbers of gassed inmates. I remembered the flames blazing from the chimneys in Birkenau when I saw in what a frighteningly meticulous bookkeeping system the thousands of Auschwitz inmates were recorded, those of us still living or already on the Totenkartei . I did not believe that the Germans would allow even one witness to such documentation remain alive.

Halina Nelken, Alicia Nitecki (trans.), And Yet, I Am Here, Amherst: University of Mass. Press, 1999 (originally published in Polish as Pami?tnik z getta w Krakowiein , 1986), p.229.
NELKEN, Halina Of Cambridge. Entered into rest March 15, 2009, at the age of 85. Beloved mother of Les Nelken & his wife Helen Ronan of Acton, Cherished grandmother of Jason Nelken. Services at Stanetsky Memorial Chapel, 1668 Beacon Street, BROOKLINE on Friday, March 20, 2009 at 1:00 PM. Interment in Temple Emeth Memorial Park, West Roxbury. Memorial observance will be private. In lieu of flowers, expressions of sympathy in her memory may be donated to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. A native of Krakow, Poland, born in 1923 to Emanuel and Regina Nelken, Mrs. Nelken was a holocaust survivor. A noted writer, lecturer and art historian, she was the author of "And Yet, I am Here!" Stanetsky Memorial Chapels Brookline (617) 232-9300
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USC Shoah Foundation Institute testimony of Halina Nelken

Record Type:
Oral History
Interviewee:
Halina Nelken
Gender:
F
Birth Year:
1925
Birth City:
Cracow (Poland)
Birth Country:
Poland
Prewar Religious Identity:
Judaism
Ghettos:
Cracow (Poland : Ghetto)
Camps:
Malchow (Germany : Concentration Camp) 
Auschwitz I (Poland : Concentration Camp) 
Auschwitz II-Birkenau (Poland : Death Camp) 
Ravensbrück (Germany : Concentration Camp) 
Krakau-Plaszow (Poland : Concentration Camp) 
Krakau (Poland : Concentration Camp)(generic) 
Krakau (Poland : Concentration Camp)(generic) 
Leipzig-Mansfeld (Germany: Concentration Camp)
Hiding or False Identity Location:
Nossen (Germany)
Location of Liberation:
Leipzig-Mansfeld (Germany: Concentration Camp)
Liberated By:
armed forces/ Soviet
Other Experiences:
escapes during forced marches 
concealment of Jewish identity
Interview Date:
11/24/1995
Interview Location:
MA / U.S.A.
Interview Length:
4:21:40
VHA Interview Code:
6258
Experience Group:
Jewish Survivor
Description:
Forms part of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive.
Restrictions:
On-site access only. Registration required.
Language:
English
Special Collection:
USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive 
Holdings Status:
Testimonies cannot be viewed from USHMM Collections Search.
Locate a viewing station near you: (http://sfi.usc.edu/locator)
Obtain copies of interviews directly from the USC Shoah Foundation: (https://sfiaccess.usc.edu)

 
http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/vha6258
alina Nelken was a Shoah survivor, who as a child lived in Podgorze district and an author of diaries from Krakow ghetto. We find her writings very powerful and unique for many reasons, firstly she draws a colorful and vivid picture of Podgorze from the pre war period secondly she gives an account of the atrocities of ghetto life in a very personal way. We are currently working on bigger commemorative project that would include a guided walking tour but also an audio tour. The work is still in research phase