5.1

9. September 2019

The King David Hotel in Jerusalem, bombed by the Irgun in 1946, with the British flag flying on the left. Source: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

A Bomb in the Archive

For most of us, trawling through files at archives combines two main feelings: excitement at what we may find in our search, and crippling back pain from hours hunched over desks. It was certainly extraordinary to feel a flush of fear upon pulling an item from an envelope in the National Archives in London.

Aufruf für die Errichtung einer jüdischen Abteilung im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Dezember 1912 (excerpt). Quelle: Markus Brann Archive, National Library of Israel, ARC. Ms. Var. 308 398.

Marcel Müller

Volksfamilie oder Vaterland?

Ende Dezember 1912 wandten sich der Reformrabbiner Max Freudenthal und der Pädagoge Jakob Seifensieder aus Nürnberg mit einem Brief an den Historiker Markus Brann. Sie baten ihn um Unterstützung eines Aufrufs, »dem Germanischen Museum in Nürnberg eine Sammlung solcher Altertümer anzugliedern, die für das Leben der Juden in Deutschland charakteristisch und wertvoll sind«.

First issue of »Di Goldene Keyt«, winter 1949 (detail).

Jowita Panczyk

Is the War Over Yet?

In winter 1949, the first issue of Di Goldene Keyt (The Golden Chain) was published in Tel Aviv. Founded and chief-edited by Avrom Sutzkever, the prominent Yiddish poet who had fled the Vilna Ghetto in 1943 and settled in Tel Aviv in 1947, the literary journal served as an international forum for Yiddish writers from across the borderless, world-spanning Yiddishland.