Rachel Auerbach’s Warsaw Testament, recently published in an English translation by the American scholar Samuel Kassow, is a memoir of her time in the Warsaw Ghetto, her efforts to nurture its residents both physically and spiritually, and her involvement in an underground project to create a historical record of what happened there. After the war ended, Auerbach devoted herself to collecting and studying the testimonies of survivors. Matt Lebovic writes:

Leveraging her position in a soup kitchen that fed 2,000 Jews daily, Auerbach was able to interview hundreds of Jews about their experiences before and during the war. She was particularly fond of the ghetto’s artists, many of whom saw their work as a bridge to the future. . . .

“While there was a widespread belief [after the war] that encouraging survivors to speak about the past only deepened their pain, Auerbach believed that the opposite was the case, and that delving into their experiences, especially with an interlocutor who was also a survivor, had therapeutic value,” wrote Kassow.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.