Holocaust survivor publishes childhood diary recalling life in concentration camps

The diary of Michal Kraus (who survived the Holocaust as a boy) was published on Friday on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As a boy, Kraus went through Terezín and later the Auschwitz and Mauthausen concentration camps where he lost both parents and he survived two death marches. He wrote his diary shortly after the end of the war but never published it. He had started writing a diary at home, prior to deportation but in Auschwitz it was taken away from him. The diary will be officially presented at the seat of the Prague Jewish Community on February 2.

Mr Kraus´s diary describes the events and relations in the camp and condemns inhuman behaviour of some inmates, the Czech news agency reports. In July 1948, 17-year-old Michal Kraus left Czechoslovakia and moved to Canada with the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He took his diary with him and later gave it to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Copies of the diary are kept by four museums in the Czech Republic and Israel. Mr Kraus, now 81, decided to publish his diary because of the persecution of ethnic and other minorities, still a problem in the Czech Republic and Europe in general, he said.