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.
Reflections on V-E Day
Not with surprising suddenness did it come; it did not come—as in the dark days we had hoped it would—as a miraculous flash on a radio, a startling announcement lifting us from the depths of despair…
Donna Donna
On a wagon, bound for market
There’s a calf with a mournful eye
High above her, there’s a swallow
Winging swiftly through the sky
How the winds are laughing
They laugh with all their might
Laugh…
Things
From Hoza Street and Marszalkowska
carts were moving, Jewish carts:
furniture, tables and chairs,
suitcases, bundles
and chests, boxes and bedding,
suits and portraits,
pots, linen and wall…
Jewish Folk Songs
At the beginning of the present century a whole constellation of Jewish composers and musicians studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under the beneficial influence of Rimski…
The Non-Jewish Jew
There is an old talmudic saying: “A Jew who has sinned still remains a Jew.” My own thinking is, of course, beyond the idea of “sin” or “no sin”; but this saying has brought to my mind a memory from…
Letter to Gershom Scholem
Berlin-Grunewald
Tauberstr. 16
February 26, 1970
Dear Mr. Scholem,
Writing this letter does not come easily to me; hence the long delay. And now you know already that I have not been able to decide in…
Post-War Years 1945–1954
The months of which I am about to write are probably amongst the most painful in my whole life; I interrupted my work on the book for a long time trying to summon up the courage to embark on this…
Doctor Zhivago
[Gordon and Zhivago were on their way home in the evening. The sun was going down.] In one village [they passed through] they saw a young Cossack surrounded by a crowd…
Her Lover (Belle du Seigneur)
Behold the Valiant, the five cousins and sworn friends, newly come unto Geneva, mark them well, these men of silver tongue, these Jews of sunnier climes and even finer words, proud to have remained…
Amputation
And so its pain is unremitting, like an amputated leg
This ash and feathery void chafes at us,
They say two willows were seen in Mazowsze
wearing green prayer shawls also a market stall
in the middle…
The Colonizer and the Colonized
The body and face of the colonized are not a pretty sight. It is not without damage that one carries the weight of such historical misfortune. If the colonizer’s face…
Their Canada and Mine
My grandfather, like so many others, came to Canada by steerage from Poland in 1900 and settled down not far from Main Street in what was to become a ghetto. Here, as in the real America, the…