In the aftermath of World War II, some 300,000 Jews found themselves in displaced-persons (DP) camps administered by the Allies in Germany and Italy. The largest of these was located in what had previously been the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Researching the life of the DPs there, Henry Abramson came across a curious and moving document:

[W]ithin months [of liberation, Bergen-Belsen] became the epicenter of a furious revival of the Jewish population, as survivors engaged in what the historian Atina Grossman called “biological revenge”—Jews affirming life in the most elemental manner by marrying and bearing children. By 1948 . . . the DP camps witnessed a birth rate of 36 children per 1,000 Jewish women, approximately seven times the rate for German women. . . .

Many [DPs who were] married before the war could not determine whether their spouses were still among the living. Neither divorced nor widowed, the survivors remained agunot, “chained” to their former husbands (or wives), unable to remarry under Jewish law until the fate of their spouses could be ascertained. . . .

The document I found . . . was something I had never seen before: a sobering prenuptial agreement for a prospective groom who wished to remarry after his wife disappeared in the maelstrom of the Holocaust. Addressed to the “Honorable Court of Justice Established to Address Agunot in the Central Office of the British Zone (in Germany),” the form has the groom agreeing to abide by the dictates of the court should his first wife somehow emerge from the ashes of the Holocaust. The text reads in part: “I, the undersigned, accept upon myself without any duplicity and with good will, without being coerced in any way, that if my first wife returns home . . . I, and the woman that I will marry, will abide by the ruling of the bet din [rabbinic court], whether it requires divorce and the division of assets, or any other matter.” . . .

One can only imagine the tearful conversations between groom and bride, poised on the cusp of their blissful future together, as they reviewed the implications of this painful document. Hope inescapably mixed with tragedy, rebirth entwined with death.

Information about a supposedly near-finalized hostage deal continued to trickle out yesterday. While it’s entirely possible that by the time you read this a deal will be much more certain, it is every bit as likely that it will have fallen through by then. More likely still, we will learn that there are indefinite and unspecified delays. Then there are the details: even in the best of scenarios, not all the hostages will be returned at once, and Israel will have to make painful concessions in exchange, including the release of hundreds of hardened terrorists and the withdrawal from key parts of the Gaza Strip.

Unusually—if entirely appropriately—the president-elect’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has participated in the talks alongside members of President Biden’s team. Philip Klein examines the incoming Trump administration’s role in the process:

President-elect Trump has repeatedly warned that there would be “all hell to pay” if hostages were not returned from Gaza by the time he takes office. While he has never laid out exactly what the specific consequences for Hamas would be, there are some ominous signs that Israel is being pressured into paying a tremendous price.

There is obviously more here than we know. It’s possible that with the pressure from the Trump team came reassurances that Israel would have more latitude to reenter Gaza as necessary to go after Hamas than it would have enjoyed under Biden. . . . That said, all appearances are that Israel has been forced into making more concessions because Trump was concerned that he’d be embarrassed if January 20 came around with no hostages released.

While Donald Trump’s threats are a welcome rhetorical shift, part of the problem may be their vagueness. After all, it’s unlikely the U.S. would use military force to unleash hell in Gaza, or could accomplish much in doing so that the IDF can’t. More useful would be direct threats against countries like Qatar and Turkey that host Hamas, and threats to the persons and bank accounts of the Hamas officials living in those counties. Witkoff instead praised the Qatari prime minister for “doing God’s work” in the negotiations.”