The Unwritten Diary of Israel Unger: Revised Edition - Paperback

by Carolyn Gammon (Author), Israel Unger (Author)

At the beginning of the Nazi period, 25,000 Jewish people lived in Tarnow, Poland. By the end of the Second World War, nine remained. Like Anne Frank, Israel Unger and his family hid for two years in an attic crawl space above the Dagnan flour mill in Tarnow. Their stove was the chimney that went up through the attic; their windows were cracks in the wall. Survival depended on the food the adults were able to forage outside at night. Against all odds, they emerged alive. Now, decades later, here is Unger's "unwritten diary."

At the end of the war, following a time as people sans pays, the Unger family immigrated to Canada. After discovering a love of chemistry, Israel Unger had a stellar academic career, married, and raised a family in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The Unwritten Diary of Israel Unger is as much a Holocaust story as it is a story of a young immigrant making every possible use of the opportunities Canada had to offer.

This revised edition includes a reproduction of Dagnan's List, a list of Jewish slave labourer similar Schindler's List, made famous in the Steven Spielberg movie. The name of Israel Unger's father appears on the list, in which Dagnan declares that Unger is an "essential worker"-a ruse that may have saved the father's life. This recently discovered document proves that Israel Unger's memory of this key part of the story was accurate. A new postscript details the importance of this startling document.

Author Biography

Born and raised in New Brunswick, Carolyn Gammon moved to Berlin in 1992. Her poetry, prose, and essays have appeared in anthologies in North America and Great Britain, and in translation. She is co-author of the Holocaust memoir Johanna Krause, Twice Persecuted (WLU Press, 2007).
Israel Unger was born in 1938 in Tarnow, Poland, and immigrated to Canada in 1951. He is Dean Emeritus of Science at the University of New Brunswick. Israel Unger was one of fifty Holocaust survivors to be honoured by the Government of Canada in 1998 in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He was the educational advisor for Atlantic Canada for the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.