Las Vegas resident Simone Salen remembered her father, Israel “Sol” Goldhirsch, reading from his diary when she was a child. He had carefully recorded his arrest by the Gestapo and his family’s escape from Vienna to the Netherlands in 1938 and then to England in 1939. Salen’s mother was four months pregnant with Salen when the Nazis began taking over Austria. Her father talked about one day finishing the book, but he died at 39, and soon after, the diary was taken by an intruder along with many personal family treasures. In 2012, the diary resurfaced, and Salen was finally able to read her family’s story. She shares the tale in the book “My Father’s Lost Diary: A Personal Account of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe (1937–1942).” Salen is scheduled to sign copies of the book at 7 p.m. Saturday at the 2191 N. Rainbow Blvd. Barnes & Noble. For more on the book, visit simonesalen.com.
