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.
A Stubborn Back—and Nothing More
Come, let us hide ourselves in caves,
in stony crevices, in graves
where stretched full length on the hard ground
we lie, backs up and faces down.
We shall not record, we shall not say
why we’ve…
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…
The God of Israel
The God of Israel is not rich.
I saw the Sistine Chapel,
Notre-Dame, the Cathedral of Cologne—
You can feast your eyes on them, you can enjoy.
The God of Israel is stingy.
He won’t fill his museum…
The Language of the Third Reich
People are forever quoting Talleyrand’s remark that language is only there in order to hide the thoughts of the diplomat (or for that matter of any other shrewd and dubious person). But in fact the…
European Judaism
Christianity and the cult of Mithras were once in a competition which made the outcome a fifty-fifty chance. Both appealed equally to the Roman soldier who had to fight the endless wars of the Roman…
If This Is a Man (Survival in Auschwitz)
Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering…
Hope against Hope: A Memoir
The death of an artist is never a random event, but a last act of creation that seems to illuminate the whole of his life under a powerful ray of light. [ . . . ] Why are people surprised when poets…