Holocaust journal and improvised haggadah spurs Yad Vashem search

Page 49 of Regina Honigman’s diary Ma Nishtanah – “The Four Questions” of the Haggadah and other passages. /PHOTO | The Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection via donation from Fay (Lustigman) Eichenbaum and Esther (Lustigman) Gordon in Melbourne, Australia.

JNS – The research team of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem is searching for information about the women named in a diary and haggadah that was written during the Holocaust.

Regina Honigman, who was imprisoned and forced to work at the Gabersdorf Camp in Czechoslovakia, was the author of the diary, in which she recorded her daily life and listed the names of other female prisoners. The diary also includes some poems, autographs and an improvised haggadah. 

Honigman survived the war with her brother, while her parents and sisters died at Auschwitz. She died in 1992 in Australia, and her family donated the diary to Yad Vashem in 2005.

Yad Vashem has listed the names of the women mentioned in the journal, and asks that anyone with information contact Yad Vashem’s artifact collection by phone at 972-2-644-3598 or by email at museum.artifacts@yadvashem.org.il.