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.
Shira
The woman in charge came out of the children’s house and stationed herself on the grass, holding an infant in each arm. Children stood behind and in front of her, waiting for their parents, who were…
Portrait of a Jew
I was born in Tunisia, in Tunis, a few steps from that city’s large ghetto. My father, a harness maker, was somewhat pious, naturally somewhat so, as were all men of his trade and his station in life…
Ascension
He did not object to their unending walk, on and on until they reached a quiet spot. He did not complain of feeling tired. He did not insist that the blanket should be spread somewhere nearer to other…
The Investigation: A Play
Witness 4:When we had crossed the tracksand were waitingat the entrance to the campI hearda prisoner say to a womanThe Red Cross van is only usedto carry gas to the crematoriaYour…
O the Chimneys
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.—Job 19:26O the chimneysOn the ingeniously devised habitations of deathWhen Israel’s body drifted as smokeThrough the…
The Faith Healer
I got up and stepped out of the hotel. The early-morning breeze was moist and cool—pure refreshment after a night of suffering.
Everything seemed reborn, and the small-town, good-natured Cubans…
A War Has No “Good End”
In 1943, the nights were black. The country was at war with Germany and a blackout was instituted, perforated from time to time by fifth-columnists lighting cigarettes to reveal Bom Fim’s defensive…
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
[ . . . ] Without Jewish help in administrative and police work—the final rounding up of Jews in Berlin was, as I have mentioned, done entirely by Jewish police—there would have been either complete…
The French Enlightenment and the Jews
The era of Western history that began with the French Revolution ended in Auschwitz. The emancipation of the Jews was reversed in the most horrendous way. For a short while after 1945 the reigning…
Gentleman’s Agreement
Every article you’ve done for us, Phil,” Minify had said, “has a kind of human stuff in it. The right answers get in it somehow.”
Sure. But he hadn’t asked for them and pried for them. When he’d…
The Last Mohican
Behind him, a short distance to the right, he had noticed a stranger—give a skeleton a couple of pounds—loitering near a bronze statue on a stone pedestal of the heavy-dugged Etruscan wolf suckling…
Even the Heavens Tell Lies
When I crossed the ocean, I carried with me the habit of speaking to the shadows, and it became my way of life. I look up at the stars that were extinguished long ago. For me they still shine with the…