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.
What Makes Sammy Run?
Three weeks before Sammy’s thirteenth birthday Papa came in too upset to eat.“Tonight when I come out of schule the rabbi wants to talk to me. ‘Max, my heart is like lead to tell you this,’ he says,…
Yellow Star and Swastika: A Story of Servitude
We learn upon waking that Admiral Esteva was brutally kidnapped during the night by some Germans who apparently forced him onto his plane.
A friend attached to Civil Defense, who was…
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…
Letter to the Art Editor of the New York Times
June 7, 1943Mr. Edward Alden JewellArt EditorNew York Times229 West 43 StreetNew York, N.Y.Dear Mr. Jewell:To the artist, the workings of the critical mind is one of life’s mysteries. That is why, we…
The Killers of the Fields
In ascetic silence, in stony skirts,God’s handmaid falls on her face—Flash of an empty night, a forlorn desert waste,Shards of sunset upon the rocks.This land. Trodden, just like this, by a wandering…
Itzik’s Midrash
The first man, Adam, lies in the grass,And spits at a passing cloud,Humbly, the cloud says, “Adam,Please, would you cut that out.”But Adam sticks out his tongueAnd says to the…
About St. P.
Spitting poison and frothing at the mouthHe spits, snorts and spluttersAnd writes that I am a butcherA yid and bolshevikJewboy, bacillusA baboon and a SkamandriteThat I sell out the FatherlandThat I…
Dirge for a Bar That Has Closed Down
The slow and green river that winds throughthe blanched street of the Jewish Quarterkept watch over your agony.From my old tableI used to see himapproach your windows withrestless eyes. And as he…
Midnight
A late crescent drips, its blood still red,
And the tranquil grasses of the night
Bend their small heads, one upon another,
Slumbering, arm beneath cheek,
In its peaceful light.
A weary wanderer…
Ruth
On these night fields of pure silence
My feet tread, light and sure, as upon
A homeland’s holy soil from the day
My star led me here.
How loving are the night’s wings! My eye
Discerns every bush here…
The Mound
After you, the killed of the Ukraine;After you, butcheredIn a mound in Gorodishche,The Dnieper town . . .KaddishNo! Heavenly tallow, don’t lick my gummy beards.Out of my mouth’s brown streams of…
Song of My Indifference
For some the now is good enough—and that is fine for them!But what shall I dowhen I alwayssee before mephosphorescent questions flashing:Where?Where to?I am ready tiredof hovering,of flickering,of…