The diary (2002.74.1) was written by a young woman named Debora who fought with the Polish underground in Warsaw. Debora hid the diary and told her friend Lusia Schwarzwald Hornstein, a fellow underground fighter, where to find it should Debora not survive. Debora was killed by a bomb in Warsaw during the Polish uprising in 1944. Lusia recovered the diary in March 1945 from behind a radiator in a burned-out house, and wrapped in in a newspaper (2002.74.2). In August 1998, shortly before her death, Lusia Schwarzwald Hornstein gave the diary to to her children. The diary was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Lusia Schwarzwald Hornstein's family in 2002.