Sample Sources
The sources below are those contained in our three curated collections—covering themes of Passover, Gender Roles, and Holocaust Resistance. They represent a fraction of the thousands of sources that will be available when the full site launches in 2024.
Letters from the Ghettos
The two hundred and fifty letters presented here require no preliminaries or commentary. No human language is adequate to the task. Even the account of our people’s history, drenched as…
A Diary of the Nazi Ghetto in Vilna
This morning I was in the children’s nursery. Women who work leave their children from 7 to 6. There are 150 children between the ages of three months and two years, [one…
The Testamentary Instructions of Marc Bloch
When death comes to me, whether in France or abroad, I leave it to my dear wife or, failing her, to my children, to arrange for such burial as may seem best to them. I wish the ceremony to be a civil…
Universitas Vitae
[ . . . ] I have always felt it as a particular honor that a man of such outstanding importance as Theodor Herzl was the first to champion me publicly from his exposed and therefore responsible…
Haman’s Downfall
Mordecai:A Judgment Day on you and all the Hamans, today and forevermore—
Haman:Amen! Mordecai, I think you and I will yet be good friends—yes, Motya? [Maudlin.] Come closer, Motya, and I’ll tell you…
The Only One in the Town
Meylekh Snitkever takes the heavy shears and looks at them silently. He holds them in both hands as if to weigh them. Then he shifts his stare to me, the muscles moving in his jaws, which are covered…
Silence, and a Starry Night
Silence, and a starry night
Frost crackling, fine as sand.
Remember how I taught you
To hold a gun in your hand?
In fur jacket and beret,
Clutching a hand grenade,
A girl whose skin is velvet
Ambus…
Blessed Is the Match
Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart’s secret places.
Blessed is the heart that knows, for honors sake, to stop its beating.
Blessed is the…
Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel
Eretz-Israel [The Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural…
On Literature and the State
Our state is young, with a girl’s years, just fourteen. Still without her shoes, as the poet says. But she seems old, many generations old. In these few years, old age has pounced on her. No one is…
A Common Grave
To the sacred memory of dear Shmulik and his comrades who fell in the battle to liberate Yeḥi‘amHe rose from the bed shading his eyes with his hands as if it was light although it was still dark. His…
The Brigade
I was sitting next to Brodsky, and Sonnenshein was sitting opposite us, near the back of the truck. From the moment we had crossed into Germany, something had happened to him. His pipe never left his…