Instruct: Classify the given review as either positive or negative.
Query: exceptional first-hand account of life in Westerbork

Philip Mechanicus uses his journalist's powers of observation to paint a painfully real portrait of life for people who were so soon to be robbed of theirs. I do wish he had written more about himself, his personal torment as he watched his friends deported week after week, but the book is nonetheless an exceptional account. So many voices were lost to history during the Holocaust; Philip Mechanicus brings those voices back to us in his diary. You must read this book, if you have any interest in the Holocaust.