Claras War By Clara Kramer, Stephen Glantz

``आपल्या प्रिय व्यक्ती आपल्यापासून हिरावून मृत्यूच्या दाढेत फेकल्या जातात आणि तरीही आपण जगतच राहतो.`` २१ जुलै १९४२ रोजी नाझी सैन्यानं पोलंडवर आक्रमण केलं आणि झोक्लीव या छोट्या गावातल्या पंधरा वर्षीय ज्यू मुलीचं, क्लारा क्रेमरचं आयुष्य बदलून गेलं. तिचे मित्र-नातेवाईक ठार केले जात असताना किंवा आगखान्यात जळून खाक होण्यासाठी नेले जात असताना, क्लारा नि तिचे कुटुंबीय एका तळघरात लपून जीव वाचवण्यासाठी झगडले. तेदेखील कुठं तर वरकरणी ज्यूद्वेष्टा वाटणाऱ्या बेक नावाच्या जर्मन माणसाच्या घराखाली.साठ वर्षांनंतर आता क्लारा क्रेमर तिची करुण कहाणी सांगते आहे. सतत मृत्यूच्या सावलीत जगणाऱ्या क्लाराच्या या विलक्षण आठवणींमध्ये क्रौर्य, भीषण हत्याकांडे आणि नाझींच्या सैतानी प्रवृत्तीची छाया हे सगळं असलं, तरी अखेर ही कहाणी आहे एका तरुण मुलीच्या दुर्दम्य आशावादाची आणि धैर्याची. This heart-stopping story of a young girl hiding from the Nazis is based on Clara Kramer`s diary of her years surviving in an underground bunker with seventeen other people. Clara Kramer was a typical Polish-Jewish teenager from a small town at the outbreak of the Second World War. When the Germans invaded, Clara`s family was taken in by the Becks, a "Volksdeutsche" (ethnically German) family from their town. Mrs. Beck worked as Clara`s family`s housekeeper. Mr. Beck was known to be an alcoholic, a womanizer, and a vocal anti-Semite. But on hearing that Jewish families were being led into the woods and shot, Beck sheltered the Kramers and two other Jewish families. Eighteen people in all lived in a bunker dug out of the Becks` basement. Fifteen-year-old Clara kept a diary during the twenty terrifying months she spent in hiding, writing down details of their unpredictable lifexfrom the house`s catching fire to Mr. Beck`s affair with Clara`s neighbor; from the nightly SS drinking sessions in the room above to the small pleasure of a shared Christmas carp. Against all odds, Clara lived to tell her story, and her diary is now part of the permanent col-lection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.