Kazimierz Sakowicz

It is a detailed record of that atrocity of the Second World War, in which about 100,000 Jews, Poles and Russians were murdered by Germans and Lithuanian collaborators.

After his studies he returned to Vilna, where he began his journalistic career; Poland regained independence around that time in the aftermath of World War I. Sakowicz married a woman named Maria.

[3] Due to economic troubles during the German occupation, Sakowicz had to close his print shop and became a worker in a business dealing with animal skin and fur.

While the exact circumstances of his shooting are not known, it is generally assumed that he was attacked by Lithuanian collaborators who discovered his interest in the massacre.

[4][5][6][7] He was found in the evening by his neighbours in a ditch, near his bicycle,[1] and brought to St. Jacob Hospital in Vilna where he died ten days later.

[9] This diary is reconstructed from writings that Sakowicz had buried in empty lemonade[1]: xiv  or soda water[3] bottles in his garden.

The foreword of the English edition noted that it "is one of the most shocking documents of its time", describing the murder of tens of thousands.

She also speculated that "historians were denied access to the diary for many years, possibly because it provides evidence of the atrocities committed by the Lithuanians", and noted that some early transcriptions of the diary fragments published in Lithuania were imprecisely translated "apparently in order to diminish the role played by Lithuanian nationalists in the extermination of the Jews".