Eva Heyman was born in Nagyvarad, Hungary (now Oradea, Romania) in 1933. Her parents divorced when she was very young and she went to live with her grandparents, while maintaining occasional contact with both her mother and father. Her mother remarried a famous Hungarian author, Béla Zsolt. Eva began her diary in February 1944 and ended it in May. She was deported to Auschwitz a short time later, and was gassed in October 1944.

Eva's mother and stepfather survived the war. Her mother found and published Eva's diary, then committed suicide.