Under the watchful eyes of two Italian guards, Yosef dug a grave with his bloodied hands and buried his two-month-old daughter in the desert sand. He never believed such horrors could befall his people.

1942. Yosef Dadush was only 20 years old when he was forcibly deported from his home in Benghazi, along with 2,600 other Libyan Jews, to the Giado concentration camp deep in the desert. Risking his life, he secretly kept a diary on scraps of paper depicting the harsh realities of camp life.

Yosef’s diary portrays a brutal reality. Prisoners survive on little food and water and diseases such as typhoid run rampant. But despite these harrowing sights, Yosef and the Jewish prisoners do their best to maintain a sense of community, ardently holding on to their faith as a beacon of hope.

The story of the Holocaust of North African Jews is seldom told in the grand scheme of the Third Reich’s Final Solution. Yet, as Yosef’s diary reveals, it was just as real and just as devastating as its European counterpart. Over four arduous years of painstaking work, Yosef’s words—worn away by time and decay—were deciphered to expose just how a once-thriving community was forced to endure unspeakable horrors.

Weaving historical research with testimonies from Yosef’s diary and other Giado survivors, The Diary Keeper of Giado tells the unimaginable true story of the Holocaust of North African Jews by a survivor who risked his life to have his people’s story heard.