Open Access“Whoever Has Seen Jackals on the Ruins of Our Mountain Will Yet See How They Build There”: Der Nister on Jewish “National Building” after the Holocaust
Author(s) -
Ber Kotlerman
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
judaic-slavic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2658-3364
DOI - 10.31168/2658-3364.2018.1.2.4
Subject(s) - judaism , the holocaust , theme (computing) , narrative , newspaper , history , the renaissance , population , nazism , religious studies , literature , ancient history , classics , art history , art , law , sociology , philosophy , political science , archaeology , demography , german , computer science , operating system
The article examines Der Nister’s writings from the final years of his life in which he challenged the notion of Jewish homelessness. It begins with an analysis of the short essay “Hate”, published in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee’s newspaper, Eynikayt, in the summer of 1944. The essay was inspired by the author’s Moscow meeting with a Polish Jewish teenage partisan who had miraculously survived the massacre of the Jewish population of Volhynia. Moved by this tragic and passionate story, Der Nister constructed his narrative around the theme of Tisha B’Av, the traditional Jewish day of mourning for the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. However, the essay also expresses hope for a national renaissance. Der Nister urged his readers to rise up from the ruins and play an active part in the reconstruction of Soviet Jews as a nation.