Yossel Rakover’s Appeal to God

Zvi Kolitz

1946

In the ruins of the Ghetto of Warsaw, among heaps of charred rubbish, there was found, packed tightly into a small bottle, the following testament, written during the ghetto’s last hours by a Jew named Yossel Rakover.

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Creator Bio

Zvi Kolitz

1913–2002

Born in Alytus, Lithuania, the writer Zvi Kolitz produced screenplays and Broadway shows, and wrote one much-anthologized story, “Yossel Rakover’s Appeal to God,” a searing tale set amid the rubble of the Warsaw ghetto. Soon after World War II ended, Kolitz went to Palestine and joined the underground anti-British resistance. He remained in Israel; he cowrote the country’s first full-length film. He later immigrated to New York, where he wrote fiction and philosophy, lectured at Yeshiva University, and, like his character Yossel, retained a deep connection to God and religion.

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