A Century-Old Postcard and the Forgotten Victims of a Pogrom

Besides being a distinguished scholar of ancient Judaism, Shnayer (Sid) Leiman is also one of the great collectors of, and experts on, Jewish books and ephemera. Herewith, his account of his efforts to identify a photograph of an aged Jew in pious garb on a postcard:

The [postcard] presents a black and white photograph, also standard for its time. It features a tombstone with a Hebrew inscription; a mausoleum behind the tombstone, with a brief Hebrew inscription; and what appears to be a cemetery attendant, with his hand atop the tombstone. Most important, it contains a German heading under the photograph, which reads in translation: “From the Eastern Front of the theater of war, Wilna, an old Jewish tombstone.”

The reverse prints the name of the publishing company that produced the postcard: “The Brothers Hochland in Königsberg, Prussia.”

In terms of historical context, the information provided by the postcard—a German heading; Vilna is defined as the eastern front of the theater of war; the postcard was produced in Königsberg can lead to only one conclusion, namely that the postcard was produced on behalf of the German troops that had occupied, and dominated, Vilna during World War I. The German military seized Vilna on September 18, 1915 and remained there until the collapse of the Kaiser’s army on the western front, which forced the withdrawal of all German troops in foreign countries at the very end of 1918.

Thus, our photograph was taken, and the postcard was produced, during the period just described. Its Sitz im Leben was the need for soldiers to send brief messages back home in an approved format. The ancient sites of the occupied city made for an attractive postcard. (This may have been especially true for Jewish soldiers serving in the German army.)

Leiman explains at length his quest to establish the identity not only the tombstone, but also the cemetery attendant. The quest leads him to October 8 to 10, 1920, during the unstable period that followed World War I’s end, when Polish soldiers seized Vilna and raped, robbed, and beat local Jews, murdering six. One of them was Meir Zelmanowicz, the man in the photograph.

Read more at Seforim

More about: Anti-Semitism, East European Jewry, Vilna

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict