Liz asked Diane Ackerman:

How difficult was it to verify the events laid out in the diary?

Diane Ackerman It really wasn’t all that hard and I find research fun. Actually, I love learning about everything and I knew nothing. I am happy starting from a place of total ignorance and having to come up to speed on what happened during World War II in Poland, the rest of the world, the natural history of Poland and all of these different things. There are fortunately many people who have kept records of things. So, I could read the writings of the people who were in the ghetto because some of them kept diaries and hid them in milk churns, which they buried. Those churns were found and were actually dug up after the war. As a result, we have them available to us. I could get a lot of insight about what was happening in the ghetto because we have the sermons from the ghetto Rabi and all different kinds of accounts. The underground has been written about and members of the underground have also written accounts. I was able to speak with two women who were in their 80s at the time, but who had been girl cyclist messengers between the underground in the zoo during the war and I could ask them about different things including sensory things. I asked them things like, what did the air smell like, what kind of food did you eat, were there dogs and cats around, were there birds, what songs did you listen to and all different aspects of daily life. It was possible to verify the diary to make small corrections if she got the date wrong or place wrong. I also spoke with her son, and both of her children are still alive. I’m very excited that they’re going to see their parents on screen. So, it wasn’t all that hard to do.

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