Diaries about genocide are works that provide the contemporaneous perspective and invaluable first-hand observations of individuals living under regimes that are either heading toward or overtly planning, even actively pursuing, genocide. They are a record of the experiences, sights, sounds, rumors, and insights into the daily life of such individuals, and sometimes even detail the actual events of the genocide. By their very nature, diaries offer one person's limited but on-the-spot observations, commentary, and questions regarding his or her own fate, and the lives of family, friends, and colleagues—and perhaps even the fates of people whom the diarist does not know personally. The most powerful and most valuable diaries often reveal the diarist's self-inquiry into his or her own beliefs, the facts surrounding his or her own existence, and the circumstances of the government and of those carrying out genocidal polices. They can also...