Founded in 1930 in the Polish city that gave it its name, the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva was one of the first such institutions to be established outside the historic boundaries of Lithuania, and soon became the largest in the world. Shira Li Bartov tells how a non-Jewish woman came to make a pilgrimage to the site where it once stood:

When Karla McCabe was a child in East Germany in the 1970s and 80s, she knew her grandfather had been a German soldier in World War II. But exactly what he did during those years was not a topic of discussion in her family.

Nine years after his death, when McCabe was eighteen, she inherited part of his proud stamp collection. She rifled through relics of a lifelong hobby, including his first stamp album from 1926, an assortment of envelopes and, finally, 36 postcards that made her shudder. Though she could not read them, she recognized Hebrew letters and Jewish names. All the postcards were addressed to one place: the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva. . . . She soon learned that as the Jews of Lublin were murdered, her grandfather—stationed in the district until 1941—fished some of their letters from a trash bin to augment his stamp collection.

On April 11, more than 80 years later, McCabe finally returned the postcards to their home in a ceremony at the former Lublin Yeshiva. . . . Already, Jews from disparate corners of the world have identified family members in the postcards.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.