From the preface: "For forty-five years I had no longer opened the wood field with the partiality hand-carved lid. I knew what was once in it. including miscellaneous keepsakes and images, it contained six notebooks written in German. This used to be the magazine I stored from 1938 to 1941, in the course of a vital interval in lots of people's lives, together with mine. The field had remained locked seeing that 1942, whilst I had pulled down my very own "iron curtain," shutting out the stories preserved on these pages. however the time finally got here for the curtain to be raised. the most explanation for this modification of brain used to be my profound remorse that I had now not quizzed my mom and dad extra approximately their own background; i did not wish this to ensue to my youngsters and grandchildren. therefore I introduced myself to open the field, actually and figuratively, and set approximately translating the diaries from German into English - strictly for using my family members, or so I thought." Hanna Fischl, a Czech of Jewish descent, was once a twenty-four-year-old instructor in a German-speaking a part of Czechoslovakia whilst Hitler's shadow loomed over Europe in 1938. now not capable of affiliate brazenly together with her lover, Hans Feiertag, the gifted, Christian composer whom she had enjoyed due to the fact her youngsters, she all started writing a diary at his request in order that, after they have been reunited, he might know about her lifestyles whereas that they had been aside. Written in a touching and candid sort, Hanna's Diary, 1938-1941 is the results of that request. Hanna's Diary, 1938B1941 deals an intimate view of sweeping old occasions that engulfed Europe and the area, evoking the creeping worry, determined hopes, desertion of neighbors, and experience of isolation that Hanna Spencer felt as Nazism unfold. The diary follows Spencer to England - the place she confronted distress of a special type - after which to Canada, the place, as a tender immigrant with a PhD, she labored in her uncle's glove-making manufacturing unit sooner than eventually touchdown a educating activity in Ottawa. Spencer describes her studies lecturing on Czechoslovaki's heritage and its takeover by way of the Nazis, and her ensuing famous person at the Ontario lecture circuit. Written with transparent wit and a pointy eye for element, Hanna's Diary, 1938B1941 is a must-read for somebody drawn to the human part of the second one international War.