The Boy Whose Life Was Saved by Hannah Senesh

One of the heart-wrenching facts about Hannah Senesh, the paratrooper-poetess who died so tragically at the age of 23, is that she wasn't able carry out her mission. She received military training and was sent to Yugoslavia in an effort to save Jews from the Nazis – but she was ultimately caught at the border, imprisoned, and executed. Was her death in vain? The story of one little boy and his mother reveals something of Hannah's unique personality, as well as those she did manage to save, despite everything.

Hannah Senesh, aged 17 or 18, from the Senesh Family Archive, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, alongside an image of Baruch Galtstein, the boy born thanks to her. Photo courtesy of his family.

On the border between Slovakia and Hungary is a large forest, the kind that brings to mind the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, a forest so thick that when you enter it, the sun disappears, even in the middle of the day.

In 1942, this forest was infiltrated by a small group made up primarily of Jews trying to flee Nazi-occupied Slovakia, where the first train to Auschwitz had just left the station. They were attempting to escape to Hungary, which at the time was still relatively free.

This was not their first attempt; a few days earlier, they had reached the area with the aid of professional smugglers – who promptly betrayed them to soldiers stationed on the border. Most of the group were killed or caught by the Nazis, but under cover of darkness and in the chaos of the moment, some of them managed to run away to temporary safety. Now, they tried again to escape the country.

Among the fugitives were Matilda and Eliezer Galtstein, together with their two-year-old daughter Tova and Matilda’s sister Hilda. Their son Baruch, who would become one of the heroes of the amazing family story he would share with us more than eighty years later, had not yet been born.

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Right: The parents, Eliezer and Matilda, on their wedding day. Left: Tova, aged five. Photo courtesy of the family

This time they managed to make it into the forest before the shooting started, but the darkness and tangled overgrowth turned out to be a double-edged sword: The gunfire forced them to all disperse, and when they later regrouped deep inside the forest, they were horrified to learn that Tova wasn’t with any of them. What were the odds of a small girl, not even three years old, surviving in a terrifying forest, filled with monsters that were all too real?

For three days, they scoured the forest, calling their little daughter’s name, alternately shouting and whispering as they grew more and more desperate. Then, finally, they found her – frightened and exhausted but healthy and whole – waiting for them under one of the trees.

Was this miracle the end of their travails? Not really.

They arrived in Budapest with forged papers, mourning everything and everyone they’d lost and fearing what the future might bring (Matilda and Hilda’s parents had already been sent to Auschwitz and murdered there on the day they arrived). For two years, they lived in relative safety in the city, but then came the day they had feared the most: on March 19, 1944, German forces entered Hungary, bringing with them all the terror and horrors of the Holocaust.

For the sake of their own survival, Eliezer and Matilda decided to temporarily break up their small family. Tova, who was now almost five years old, was handed over to a convent which also served as an orphanage, while Eliezer and Matilda each lived in separate hiding places. Every so often they would meet at a predetermined location in one of the city’s public parks.

One day in July 1944, Matilda did not show up at their meeting place. Eliezer learned later that she’d been arrested a few days earlier. Her forged papers, combined with her broken Hungarian, marked her out as a foreigner trying to hide her own identity and therefore – a suspected spy. She was thrown in prison. Matilda was certain that her fate and that of her unborn child was sealed, but she hadn’t taken into account her new cellmate.

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[Hannah Senesh with her brother Giora (George) in Tel Aviv, shortly before leaving on the mission from which she would not return. Photo courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, the Senesh Family Archive, the National Library of Israel]
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Writing behind the picture (above). Photo courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, the Senesh Family Archive, the National Library of Israel

The 23-year-old young Jewish woman who welcomed her introduced herself as “Aniko, or Hannah.” She was younger than Matilda, but had spent more time in prison – she’d arrived a month and a half earlier – and had received training for dealing with such situations. She extended a hand to Matilda and quickly became her support.

The woman’s full name, as you’ve already guessed, was Hannah Senesh (Szenes). The talented writer was born in Hungary, made Aliyah to the Land of Israel and then volunteered to serve in the British Army and joined the group of volunteer-paratroopers dropped over Nazi-occupied Europe. On March 15, 1944, she parachuted into Yugoslavia together with Reuven Dafni, Yonah Rosen, and Abba Berdichev.

At first, she joined a local partisan group, but in June it was decided to move forward with her main mission, which was supposed to take place on Hungarian soil. She attempted to cross the border and was caught by Hungarian soldiers. She was then transferred to a Budapest jail, where she was charged with treason against the Hungarian motherland and tortured to reveal the identities of the other paratroopers.

She refused.

Senesh shared her burning faith in the justice of their cause with Matilda, as well as her experience in dealing with Gestapo interrogators. She listened to her, encouraged her, and gave her strength, especially after the endless rounds of torture Matilda endured. She advised her to steal and destroy her forged identification papers, so that the government would have no physical proof against her.

“In the end, it didn’t really change anything,” said Baruch, Matilda’s son, “Lemke (the Gestapo commander in charge of the prison) would always tell her ‘I don’t need this document to execute you, I will execute you, anyway.”

Did Senesh really believe that they would get a fair trial? It’s hard to know, but when Matilda revealed that she was pregnant, it was clear to Senesh that she could not wait for the final outcome of Matilda’s arrest – she needed to escape, and soon.

In Hannah Senesh’s writings, which are mostly preserved in the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel (courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen) – in poems, diaries, and letters – we see the strong relationship she shared with her mother Katherine, but also her special attitude towards motherhood in general:

If there exists in the world a token of honor and respect,
a wreath of loyalty, of love,
there is only one worthy of it:
Your good mother!
Let your heart harbor gratitude,
and let your lips sing a prayer,
Hear now the most beautiful word in the world:
Mother!

(Hannah Senesh, “Mother,” 1933)

“I would like to erect a monument to my mother—a mother who, from my childhood to this day, allowed my brother and me to set sail into the world to seek our own paths, forgoing her right to hold us back. This is not just the image of my mother; many Jewish mothers of our generation share this fate.”

(From Hannah Senesh’s diary, December 14, 1940)

When Senesh explained her escape plan to Matilda, the latter panicked. The route sounded too complex and the odds of success too low. But Senesh insisted and encouraged her to do it – if not for herself, then for the child in her womb.

Was this an escape plan meant for Senesh herself? Was young Hannah, who was far more fit than the pregnant woman living in inhuman conditions, capable of using this route herself? We’ll probably never know, but many believe that she didn’t try to flee since she was certain she would be released – which, as we know, she wasn’t.

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Farewell letter from Hannah Senesh to her mother, likely written on the day of her execution. It was found in the pocket of her dress, which was handed over to her mother. Photo courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen, the Senesh Family Archive, the National Library of Israel

Matilda followed every stage of the plan, step by step: When they came to take her for interrogation (again), she feigned falling down the stairs. She needed to be precise in her fall – not too hard, so as not to harm her baby, but hard enough to have her sent to the infirmary.

The infirmary was on the third floor of the building. It was much quieter than the rest of the prison and its windows weren’t barred. Matilda waited for the nurse to leave the room. When the coast was clear, she tied some sheets together and carefully climbed down out of the window, down to the street which was still part of war-torn Budapest but still safer than being in Gestapo custody.

Hannah Senesh was executed not long after, on November 7, 1944.

On February 13, 1945, Budapest was liberated by the Red Army. Immediately after being freed, Matilda turned to the convent where she had put the thing most dear to her – her daughter, Tova. She was told they had no such girl.

But by now, Matilda knew a thing or two about how useful windows could be. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she climbed up to the convent’s rear window and forced it open. There, she immediately identified Tova, who in turn recognized her mother. They left together, to meet Eliezer who had been switching between dozens of hiding places in the last few months.

Shortly afterward, Matilda gave birth to her son, Baruch. His body was covered in bruises, a result of the tortures suffered by her mother, but was otherwise healthy. Following his birth, the Galtstein family made Aliyah after much suffering and not a few miracles, where they could finally raise their children in peace and happiness.

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The Galtstein family, at their Ramat Gan apartment. Photo courtesy of the family

The story of the rescue of Matilda and Baruch by Hannah Senesh has accompanied the family for many decades. Senesh became a national hero in Israel after her death, but their connection was personal.

“Mother would tell of it, again and again, to anyone who would only listen,” Baruch said, adding that every year, on the Hebrew anniversary of Hannah’s execution, the 21st of Cheshvan, he would say the kadish prayer for the clever, brave, young woman who saved their lives.

A few years ago, Baruch traveled to Budapest with other relatives to explore the family’s roots in Hungary. They had their picture taken in front of the building which once served as the Gestapo headquarters, where Matilda fled through the window while carrying Baruch in her womb.

Above them was a sign placed there shortly after the war:

“Thousands suffered in this building.

In the dark days of 1944, between March 19 and December 31, they were arrested by the German Gestapo and most were sent to the death camps.

The few who remain alive remember them.

Budapest 1946.”

הכלא בבודפשט
The sign on the former Gestapo building in Budapest. Courtesy of the Galtstein family

October 7, Mariampol, and Me: Living in the Shadow of Trauma

When Sharon Taylor first heard the term “intergenerational trauma,” she was oddly filled with a sense of relief - finally, a phrase that could describe the familiar anxiety that had always been there. Here, she shares some of her own family history, the kind of history that is familiar to many of us.

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Jews being deported from their homes during the First World War, 1914-1915, the National Library of Israel collections

On October 7, 8, and 9, I mostly sat in front of the television. In my pajamas. Safe in my suburban American home, the horrific images were painful to watch. Still, I couldn’t move. I needed to bear witness, to see so that I could tell. And throughout those three agonizing days, I couldn’t shake a nagging feeling about the viciousness and gleeful display of barbarity. None of this is new. I’ve been here before.

A couple of years ago, I first heard the term “intergenerational trauma,” a mental health condition where the shadow of extreme trauma is passed down through the generations. I know this sounds odd, but a sense of relief washed over me, and I dashed to my computer to investigate its full meaning. Finally, a name for these nebulous feelings of anxiety and vulnerability that are so easily triggered. But where did it start?

As an adult, I’ve felt compelled to uncover my family’s almost lost stories, particularly, the stories of the strong women who changed our family’s destiny. Research is my time machine, transporting me into the past to walk along the paths my ancestors traveled. As a Jew, most of the time it’s a dark journey.

All four of my grandparents were naturalized Americans before the start of World War II. But there was something in the shadows of our history, the faces missing at our Passover Seders, faces that belonged to my grandparents’ siblings and their children, great-aunts, uncles, and cousins murdered by the Nazis. The trauma cut so deep that their names were never mentioned. I’m still looking for the names of many of my family’s Holocaust victims, but this search led me to an earlier trauma. Its similarity to October 7 is striking.

According to the family tale, between 1913 and 1921, my maternal grandmother’s sister Dora brought our family to America. None of my maternal grandmother’s immediate family died in the Holocaust. No trauma there.

That’s what I thought. In the beginning.

Digging deeper into the history of Austrian Galicia and Mariampol, the little town where they lived, (known today as Mariyampil, Ukraine), I discovered that my family’s final years in Mariampol were defined by almost constant violence. Winston Churchill dubbed the First World War’s Eastern Front, “The Unknown War.” Before starting my research, it was certainly unknown to me. And yet, somehow, the trauma experienced by my family at that time lives within me, as integral to me as my sense of taste or smell.

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An Austro-Hungarian cavalry force moves through a town in Eastern Europe during the First World War. The National Library of Israel collections

Researchers are just beginning to explore how what happened, and what didn’t happen, during and immediately after the First World War, became the foundation for the destruction of European Jewry during the Shoah a generation later.

My ancestral shtetl Mariampol had the misfortune to be situated on the front lines during much of World War One. Shortly after the Russian invasion of Austrian Galicia started, on September 9, 1914, London’s Daily Telegraph reported, under the headline “Murderous Girdle of Fire,” that Russian General Brousilloff’s army “completely defeated the Austrians . . . at Mariampol . . .” My great-grandmother Hudia survived the “Murderous Girdle of Fire” in Mariampol. Like the other members of my family that survived the war in Mariampol, her wounds were on the inside. For the rest of her life, she was terrified during thunderstorms.

We know from recent news what Russian bombardment and occupation looks like. Destroyed towns, slaughtered civilians, abducted children, followed by starvation, and during World War I, there was also cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery.

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Jews being deported from their homes during the First World War, 1914-1915, the National Library of Israel collections

It was even worse for the Jews. Added to this litany of suffering, homes and businesses were looted and burned, and Jews across the region were murdered, and subjected to torture, and rape.

To understand my family story, I began searching for histories and first-hand accounts of what happened in Jewish communities surrounding Mariampol. My search revealed a history of mass suffering that looked a lot like October 7.

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The Jewish cemetery in Buchach, photographed in 1995 by Boris Khaimovich, the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, digitally available on the NLI website

Ethnographer S. Ansky traveled the area as an aid worker. He recorded in his diary how he was told that in the nearby town of Buchach, 40 “girls” were raped. In Burshtyn, 19 miles northwest of Mariampol, one source records that “…women were raped in the presence of their husbands, parents, and children.” When the Russian Army finished their looting, murdering, and raping, they typically burned the town’s marketplace and Jewish homes. In Buchach, Russian soldiers let the Jewish section of the town burn for three weeks.

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The market square in Buchach, photographed in 1995 by Boris Khaimovich, the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, digitally available on the NLI website

In Tlumach, the Russian army rounded up all Jewish males between the ages of 10 and 70. They were marched out of town and on the first night, were forced to surrender their clothing to keep them from escaping. After marching over 90 miles under Cossack whips and rifle butts, the men were forced to dig trenches for the Russian army.

Like in nearby Tlumach, my great-grandmother Hudia’s nine-year-old son, Nathan, was taken captive by the Russians. The family sat Shiva for Nathan and continued to mourn him for the next three years. Nathan’s return to Mariampol three years after his abduction was remembered as a miracle. His return was announced when a neighbor ran up to the family’s doorway shouting in Yiddish, “There’s a red-headed soldier coming up the road.” Did I mention that my grandmother’s brother Nathan had red hair? October 7, children in captivity, and Mariampol collide, the painful past and the painful present swirling within me.

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The Maryampoler Sick and Benevolent Association helped support the town of Mariampol following the First World War. This photo of the association’s 30th anniversary event was taken in Brooklyn in 1930. The author’s relatives are seated on the left, behind the sign for table 3, including her great-grandmother Hudia, who can be seen on the far left. Photo courtesy of Sharon Taylor

Looting, torturing, murdering, raping, burning, and taking captives was more than just war. As we witnessed on October 7, this was intended to inflict the maximum amount of pain and humiliation on a specific group of people, my people. As in most pogroms, no one came to rescue the Jews, and no one was punished. The war and the brutality directed at the Jews simply rolled on.

In 1915, the battlefield returned to my ancestral town, and in fierce fighting, Germany took control of Mariampol for its ally, Austria-Hungary. The victory was short-lived. The following summer, Russian Cossacks attacked and once again occupied Mariampol. Cossacks and Jews in the same sentence is almost never good.

This isn’t “Intro to World History.” This is my history, suffering passed down from one generation to the next. It is wrapped around my chromosomes and expressed in every aspect of my life, in how I think, and in how I feel.

World War One ended in November of 1918 and was optimistically dubbed “The War to End All Wars.” It was a hopeful time. But for my family still in Mariampol, the suffering continued. In December of 1918, a leading Jewish aid organization sent a desperate “Cablegram” to its headquarters in New York, “Tenthousand [sic] war orphans are left penniless . . .” In Grodno, Poland, aid workers resorted to creating clothes for orphans from donated flour sacks.

Fighting continued as Poland, Ukraine, and the Soviets battled for control of Galicia, the region that had been the easternmost province of the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian Empire. It’s hard to imagine, but during the conflicts that followed World War One, the suffering of the region’s Jews intensified.

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The ruins of the Great Synagogue in Brody, Eastern Galicia, photographed in 2011 by Vladimir Levin, the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, digitally available on the NLI website

By this time, many of the region’s Jewish towns were struggling to survive. Synagogues, study houses, Jewish schools, and mikvehs had been desecrated or destroyed in the war. People were living in cellars, or in the few structures that escaped the shelling, the looting, and the fires. Jews in the affected towns were totally dependent on foreign aid to survive. This included Mariampol. And things were about to get worse.

In September of 1920, Ukrainian hetman Symon Petliura and his militias passed through Mariampol during their struggle to create an independent Ukraine. Pinkas Hakehillot Polin, published by Yad Vashem, describes what happened in Mariampol that September: “. . . four Jews were murdered, including a pregnant woman, and 16 were injured. The hooligans raped four women and five girls (including two young girls) . . .The Jewish town did not recover from its destruction…” My family was there, and the wounded, raped and murdered were their
friends, neighbors and relatives.

Mariampol wasn’t the only town decimated by Petliura’s militias. In her book, Gendered Violence: Jewish Women in the Pogroms of 1917 to 1921, academician Irina Astashkevich, used the term “carnival of violence” to describe the intentionally public cruelty, and unbridled viciousness of what happened in Jewish communities across Ukraine at that time. In those pogroms, as in most of the pogroms that our European ancestors experienced, no one was punished. The perpetrators brushed themselves off, had a good laugh, and went on with their lives as our ancestors wrapped their wounds and buried their dead. And the women who were raped? In keeping with the mores of the time, they kept their mouths shut and their anguish to themselves.

A short time later, after witnessing that no one came to the aid of Europe’s Jews and that there weren’t any consequences for the perpetrators of the World War One era pogroms, the Nazis replicated their murder and barbarity on an industrial scale.

This brings us back to intergenerational trauma, to wounds on the inside that can be passed down through the generations. The pogrom in Mariampol that my great-grandmother Hudia experienced in 1920 looked a lot like October 7. That day, which should have been a joyous celebration of Simchat Torah, I sat paralyzed in my pajamas in front of my television.

And I was also in Mariampol, watching the carnival of violence, live and in color in my living room. I wasn’t alone. Instead of dancing with the Torah in synagogue, Jews around the world were thrown back into their own Mariampols, watching the carnival of violence with me.

Kafka’s Secrets: The Missing Page of “The Castle”

A page torn from the manuscript of Franz Kafka’s "The Castle" has been revealed for the first time. What is written on that missing page? Who tore it out? Why would anyone want to keep it hidden?

הטירה קפקא

A portrait of Franz Kafka and an AI-generated castle

Franz Kafka passed away from tuberculosis in a sanatorium in 1924, leaving behind a note addressed to his best friend, Max Brod.

Kafka’s “will”, which was found on that note, was unequivocal: Brod was to collect all of his writings and burn them. He was not to leave a trace behind. However, when the moment came, Brod betrayed Kafka. Though Kafka’s suffered from low self-esteem and did not think much of his own writing, Brod recognized Kafka’s genius from the very first time they met as university students. Not only did Brod not burn the manuscripts – he began editing them and preparing them for publication.

One of these was the manuscript that would become the novel The Castle, a story that would change the way we write about and describe modern life. Had it not been for Brod’s intervention, it would have vanished into oblivion.

Just as Brod and Kafka were intertwined in life, so too were their archives – both of them eventually arriving at the National Library of Israel, after a lengthy legal saga. Among the many items now being revealed to the public for the first time in the exhibition “Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author“, is a rare page containing a scene that was omitted from The Castle, shedding further light on this influential work.

חתימתו של קפקא על הצוואה הראשונה שכתב.הספרייה הלאומית, ארכיון מכס ברוד צולם על ידי ארדון בר חמא, בתמיכתו האדיבה של ג'ורג' בלומנטל, ניו יורק.
Kafka’s first will.The Max Brod Archive at the National Library of Israel, photographed by Ardon Bar-Hama, with the generous support of George Blumenthal, New York.

Behind the Castle Walls

The plot of The Castle focuses on K., a land surveyor who is sent to take up a post in a tiny village nestled in a mountainous landscape. The village is located at the foot of a high castle that manages all the bureaucracy of the village and its surroundings but is completely inaccessible to the villagers.

K. tries to figure out who he needs to speak with in order to carry out his duty but finds himself running around between various strange functionaries– from the village council chairman to a clerk named Klamm, and to the other villagers who are all completely disconnected from what goes on in the castle but are eager to offer their own speculative interpretations. K. becomes increasingly convinced that he must approach the castle, but his ideas are not well-received by the villagers, who believe that the people in the castle must be justified in their actions and should not be disturbed with trivial matters. K. continues to try, in vain, to understand what exactly he is expected to do, why he was sent to this village, and who he is supposed to speak with in order to understand these details.

דמות רוכבת על סף תהום, צוייר על ידי פרנץ קפקא, הספרייה הלאומית, ארכיון מכס ברוד, צולם על ידי ארדון בר חמא, בתמיכתו האדיבה של ג'ורג' בלומנטל, ניו יורק.
A figure riding on the edge of a cliff, drawn by Franz Kafka, the Max Brod Archive at the National Library of Israel, photographed by Ardon Bar-Hama, with the generous support of George Blumenthal, New York

The Wheels of Bureaucracy Grind Slowly

A torn page found in the archives describes a scene that was omitted from the Kafkaesque plot of The Castle. In this scene, K. arrives at the home of the village council chairman, who is there lying in bed because he is ill. The chairman delivers a speech about the importance of bureaucracy, which cannot make mistakes because the entire bureaucratic system is designed to facilitate the best possible decision being taken. And if it does not produce the best decision, the oversight office is there to ensure that the bureaucratic mechanism continues to grind on. Or, in Kafka’s sharp words, the purpose of bureaucracy is to continue striving toward the most correct decision, but never actually reach it:

Then K. said, as he rose and held in his hand the crumpled letter from Klamm: “I wish I had enthusiastic supporters or enthusiastic enemies up in the castle, but unfortunately, there is no one from whom I can hear an unequivocal ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ And even so, I must find such a person. You’ve already given me a few ideas about how I can do so.”

“I had no such intention,” the village chairman said to K. with a laugh, as he shook hands in farewell. “But it was very nice to talk with you. It really eases my conscience. Perhaps we will meet again soon.”

“It’s safe to assume that there will be a need for me to come,” K. said, bending down toward Mitzi the cat. He cautiously reached out to pet her, but Mitzí backed away with a small meow of fear and hid under a pillow.

The chairman petted Mitzi lovingly. “You’re always welcome,” he said, perhaps to help K. cope with Mitzí’s behavior, but then he added, “Especially now, when I am ill. When I recover and can return to my desk, we can assume that my official work will require all my attention.”

“Do you mean to say,” K. asked, “that you weren’t speaking with me officially even today?” The chairman replied, “Of course I wasn’t speaking with you officially. You could call it a semi-official conversation.”

“You don’t appreciate unofficial matters enough, as I’ve already said, but you also underestimate official matters,” the village chairman said. “An official decision is not like this bottle of medicine that sits here on the table. You can’t just take it and get your answer. A true official decision requires countless small considerations, deliberations, and checks. That requires years of work by the very best clerks, even if in some cases, the clerks already know at the start what the final decision will be.

And will there even be a final decision? That’s why there are oversight offices, to prevent the possibility of one appearing.”

“Well, fine,” said K., “everything is exceptionally organized, who could doubt that? You described it in such an enticing manner that now I can’t help but make every effort to learn about it to the finest detail.”

K. left after saying goodbye to the staff, and as he did, a wave of whispers and hushed laughter was heard behind him.

He returned to the inn. In his room, he found a surprise: The room had been thoroughly cleaned. Frieda had worked diligently and greeted him with a kiss on the threshold of the door. The room was well-ventilated, the stove was emanating heat, the floor had been washed, the bed was made, and the servants’ belongings, including their pictures, were gone. A new picture was now hanging on the wall above the bed.

K. approached the new picture hanging on the wall.

עמוד של כתב היד מהרומן "הטירה", 1922, הספרייה הלאומית, ארכיון מכס ברוד, צולם על ידי ארדון בר חמא, בתמיכתו האדיבה של ג'ורג' בלומנטל, ניו יורק.
A page from the manuscript of the novel The Castle, 1922, the National Library, Max Brod Archive, photographed by Ardon Bar-Hama, with the generous support of George Blumenthal, New York

“We believe that the person who tore out the page was Max Brod himself,” says Stefan Litt, curator of the Humanities Collection at the National Library of Israel. “Because it was torn out at a very early stage. You can understand why—the scene is a bit subversive and strongly criticizes the bureaucratic apparatus.”

The scene not only describes the futility of the bureaucratic system as a whole but also criticizes the oversight mechanisms that are supposedly there to prevent mistakes but in reality, only feed into the inefficient process that crushes and tramples the average citizen.

“The reason why this scene wasn’t included in the final work,” says Litt, “might be that Brod was trying to ensure the draft remained faithful to the final product, and therefore, this page was torn out of Kafka’s notebook.”

Despite the attempts to erase it, the torn page and the omitted scene were preserved in the archives, and are now being displayed to the public for the first time, as part of the unique exhibition entitled “Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author” at the National Library. The exhibition showcases rare handwritten items, drafts and letters by Franz Kafka, an author who changed the very face of Western literature.

Ghosts, Evil Spirits and Kabbalistic Teachings: A Very Ashkenazi Christmas

"Nittel Nacht" is an Ashkenazi Jewish term for Christmas Eve. Although it is certainly not a Jewish holiday, it has, in very particular Jewish communities, become a night marked by strange and even provocative customs. Where did these Nittel Nacht traditions come from, and how are they connected to historical attempts to protect oneself from the forces of darkness?

יהודים משחקים בקלפים בניטל נאכט, נוצר בבינה מלאכותית.

Jews playing chess on Christmas Eve, image: AI

As much of the world celebrates Christmas, certain Hasidic communities will mark “Nittel Nacht.” The term “Nittel” derives from the Latin natalis for “Christmas.” These Nittel customs were once widespread among Ashkenazi Jews and have been documented for at least 500 years. However, following immigration to Israel, these traditions have mostly been preserved by only a handful of Hasidic groups.

Centuries ago, on Christmas Eve, Ashkenazi Jews would typically gather in brightly lit communal spaces, play cards until sunrise, eat garlic, and avoid studying Torah. Even those who didn’t make it to the communal events and stayed home refrained from engaging in marital relations, and in some places, ritual baths (mikvehs) were locked beforehand. Another custom involved avoiding going to the outhouse, which was a separate and distant structure from one’s home back then.

הרבי מילובביץ' משחק שחמט עם חותנו הרבי הריי"צ בעיירת המרפא פרכטולדסדורף
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, playing chess in his youth with his father-in-law Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohnin in Perchtoldsdorf, Austria, a resort town near Vienna, 1937.

Playing Cards Until Dawn

If you’re wondering where these customs originated, you’re not alone. For centuries, rabbis, scholars, and even anonymous antisemites on the internet have tried to understand them. The most common explanation is that they were intended as a display of contempt for the Christian holiday and the birth of Jesus, though he was generally not mentioned by name. However, upon deeper reflection, there are probably many more effective ways to show contempt for Christmas, even more effective than playing poker all night.

Interestingly, some of those who actually practiced “Nittel” traditions often cited a different reason: Kabbalistic teachings suggested that on that night, unholy spiritual forces were at the height of their powers, making it a very dangerous night indeed. The gatherings, light, games, and garlic were meant to repel these dark forces. It was also important to avoid engaging in Torah study during such times, because doing so when these impure forces were in the ascendance could inadvertently empower them even more.

Over the centuries, various Christian authorities often censored and erased unflattering or disrespectful references to Christian doctrine within Jewish texts, such as the Talmud. But some of these sources which remained untouched by Christian censorship explicitly stated that these forces of darkness included none other than Jesus himself. According to these traditions, on that night, Jesus would rise from the dead to roam the world and try to harm Jews who weren’t cautious. He could hurt anyone wandering alone or heading to the outhouse. They warned that a child conceived on that night would be under Jesus’ influence for life. Jesus was particularly drawn to Torah study, having been a Torah student himself during his lifetime. Therefore, since learning Torah could attract him, it was avoided on Nittel Nacht. He was said to lurk in darkness and recoil from light, laughter, and the smell of garlic. Anyone particularly observant will identify the link between classic vampire traits to the image of Jesus, as one rising from the dead.

And yet, there is something a bit strange about the description of Jesus as a vampire.

משחק קלפים אצל לובה. ארכיון בוריס כרמי, אוסף מיתר, האוסף הלאומי לתצלומים על שם משפחת פריצקר, הספרייה הלאומית
A card game at Luba’s. Photo by Boris Carmi, the Meitar Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

The Ghost of Christmas Past?

According to scholar Rebecca Scharbach, the solution to these mysteries lies in medieval and early modern Christian Christmas customs. The cheerful, family-oriented Christmas we know today is a 19th-century British invention. Until then, Christmas Eve was considered a time when the spirits of dead sinners returned to the earth, a night when witches and demons haunted the streets trying to harm people.

On that night, Christians avoided churches and holy sites, believing these spaces were where the spirits held their own holiday services. Prayer, in general, was deemed ineffective and even dangerous. Instead, Christian believers gathered in well-lit public spaces, eating garlic and playing card games until the morning light to ward off spirits. They avoided intimacy, but a popular belief also spread that children conceived on Christmas Eve would belong to the forces of darkness or possess supernatural powers, like the ability to see ghosts.

In many places, these beliefs gave rise to some odd customs, with selected townsfolk dressing up as ghosts, witches, and various “resurrected” sinners. They would go house to house ringing bells, testing children’s knowledge of religious texts. Good children received sweets, while rumor had it that bad children were dismembered and cooked in boiling water. If this reminds you of Halloween, that’s no coincidence – the customs are indeed related. And if this brings to mind an early version of Santa Claus, that’s because it likely is.

It might seem that the unique Jewish element in these customs was the linkage of Jesus with demonic, impure forces. But surprisingly, even this was not a Jewish invention.

In many countries, a custom was practiced according to which one person would dress up as the Christkind (the Christ-Child or Baby Jesus) and roam about on Christmas Eve. In certain villages, these customs blended with local traditions, and the figure dressed as Jesus would join the demons and spirits in the streets. While Jesus would often be dressed in white, this was not always the case, as described below by Max Toeppen and cited by Scharbach in her article:

On Christmas Eve, the so-called ‘Holy Christ’ goes around – that is, a fellow dressed in a fur pelt turned inside out and armed with a club …[or] very often he appears as a Bear, likewise wearing an inside-out fur with a sleeve left dragging as a tail. […] [He] examines the trembling children [ as to whether they know their prayers]. Those who are studious […] and can answer him well receive gifts upon his departure.

ארכיון דן הדני, האוסף הלאומי לתצלומים על שם משפחת פריצקר, הספרייה הלאומית
From the Dani Hadani Archive, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Baby Jesus Will Catch Your Big Toe

It appears that Jewish folklore recognized, adopted, and even preserved the older Christmas traditions long after they had faded from most of the world.

The German Reformation, the English Industrial Revolution, and American capitalism transformed Christmas into the holiday we know today, almost unrecognizable from what it once was, and almost all of the customs known today only go back to the last 200 years or so. Ironically, some of the only people who still observe these ancient holiday traditions belong to certain Ashkenazi Jewish communities, for whom the practices of their ancestors remain sacred. After all, as the old Jewish joke goes – what do Christians know about Christmas?