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.
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…
Blood from the Sky
The only garden left in our walled-up town was the old cemetery, whose earliest graves dated back to the thirteenth century. It was densely overgrown. Picking one’s way to its remoter corners meant…
Bread for the Departed
He felt a gnawing sensation. He knew it was hunger. Nothing in his mouth since morning except for those slops, the slops from the Judenrat kitchen, a watery soup that was almost free, just fifty…
I Do Not Feel at Home Here
I went to see to my sister in Berlin.
She wants me to consider moving in.
Her husband’s passed away now, a schlemiel,
He left her too much money in his will.
Her residence is filled with precious…