On Passover two years ago, Carol Moskot’s mother handed her an envelope containing five postcards sent by Moskot’s grandfather to his wife. She tells the story behind them:

As my husband begins to recite the story of our enslaved forebears, my thoughts drift to a more recent story of slavery and one person in particular—my maternal grandfather, László Braun.

Almost 80 years ago, in 1943, the Nazis made him a slave when they sent him to the copper mines of Bor, Serbia. He never returned. For Elizabeth, his wife and my grandmother, the trauma of losing her beloved László drove a permanent wedge into her heart. Although I would sometimes see a smile on her Revlonned red lips, it always quickly faded. It pained me that my mother, Agnes, affectionately known as Ágika, had never met her father.

László and Elizabeth married in a Budapest synagogue on March 16, 1942. Not long thereafter, László and other able-bodied Hungarian Jewish men were conscripted into slave-labor battalions, a fate only slightly better than that endured by their brethren elsewhere:

Following France’s defeat in 1941, Europe’s largest copper mine in Bor, Serbia, was transferred from French ownership to the Germans. Nazi civilians operated the mine and used Jewish slave labor. Bor provided 50 percent of the copper requirements for the Reich’s war industry to make cannonballs, cartridges, machine guns, and tanks. The problem was that by 1942, the entire Jewish population of occupied Serbia had fled or been killed, so the Nazis turned to the remaining Jews of Budapest to supply that labor.

László sent the postcards, which Moskot presents in translation, to Elizabeth from Bor. He survived inhuman conditions, a death march, and a massacre, only to die in a second death march.

Israel’s goals of freeing the hostages and defeating Hamas (the latter necessary to prevent further hostage taking) are to some extent contradictory, since Yahya Sinwar, the ruler of the Gaza Strip, will only turn over hostages in exchange for concessions. But Jacob Nagel remains convinced that Jerusalem should continue to pursue both goals:

Only consistent military pressure on Hamas can lead to the hostages’ release, either through negotiation or military operation. There’s little chance of reaching a deal with Hamas using current approaches, including the latest Egyptian proposal. Israeli concessions would only encourage further pressure from Hamas.

There is no incentive for Hamas to agree to a deal, especially since it believes it can achieve its full objectives without one. Unfortunately, many contribute to this belief, mainly from outside of Israel, but also from within.

Recent months saw Israel mistakenly refraining from entering Rafah for several reasons. Initially, the main [reason was to try] to negotiate a deal with Hamas. However, as it became clear that Hamas was uninterested, and its only goal was to return to its situation before October 7—where Hamas and its leadership control Gaza, Israeli forces are out, and there are no changes in the borders—the deal didn’t mature.