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.
Consider Iwo Jima
This is perhaps the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D-Day. Here before us lie the bodies of…
Meyer Landshaft
He, Meyer, during all the days when they prepared Wanda for the journey (according to regulations, the women had to take along shoes, clothing…
A Short History of Israel, Notes and Glosses
A hundred generations, yes, a hundred and twenty-five,
had the strength each day
not to eat this and that (unclean!)
not to say this and that,
not to do this and that (unjust!),
and with all this…
Black Flakes
Snow has fallen, with no light. A month
has gone by now or two, since autumn in its monkish cowl
brought tidings my way, a leaf from Ukrainian slopes:
“Remember it’s wintry here too, for the…
A Load of Shoes
The cartwheels rush,
quivering.
What is their burden?
Shoes, shivering.
The cart is like
a great hall:
the shoes crushed together
as though at a ball.
A wedding? A party?
Have I gone blind?
Who…
The Third Reich and the Jews
Without the appropriate distance, writing history is particularly difficult and thorny in this case. And there is an additional element of complexity. Forced into the thankless role of the prosecutor…
Applause for Anne Frank
The Satisfied One:I am gratified by the success in Vienna of The Diary of Anne Frank. It is a harrowing play. And it…
The Chatham House Version
This appraisal of the west has remained Toynbee’s considered judgment. “In my eyes,” he states in the last volume of A Study of History, published in 1961, “the west is a…
Family Conflicts
My childhood, if we’re speaking of relations at home, was exceptionally easy; I never felt a need to rebel against my parents’ conservatism. I encountered no gates to break through—they were all…
Of Bombs and Mice: A Novel of Wartime Warsaw
Some two years ago Nata had been deported from Warsaw to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Now she was free, but still unable to come to grips with life, so newly regained, though in the first breath…
A Story about a Name
Older people still remember it. Younger people know about it from reading our classic writers of the older generation: how Jews once gave much thought to naming a child, long before it was born and…
God Hid His Face
All roads led to death,
Every road.
All winds breathed betrayal,
Every wind.
In every doorway, vicious dogs barked,
In all the doorways.
All the waters laughed at us,
All the waters.
Every night grew…