Nitzotz: The Spark of Resistance in Kovno Ghetto and Dachau-Kaufering Concentration Camp

Religion, Theology and the Holocaust

by Laura M. Weinrib (Editor), Estee Weinrib (Translator )

Under the brutal conditions of the Dachau-Kaufering concentration camp, a handful of young Jews resolved to resist their Nazi oppressors. Their weapons were their words. Beginning with the Soviet occuption of Kovno, the members of Irgun Brith Zion circulated an underground journal, Nitzotz (Spark), in which they debated Zionist politics and laid plans for postwar settlement in Palestine. When the Kovno ghetto was destroyed, several contributors to Nitzotz were deported to the camps of Dachau. Against all odds, they did not lay down their pens. Nitzotz is the only known Hebrew-language publication to have appeared consistently throughout the Nazi occupation anywhere in Europe. Its authors believed that their intellectual defiance would insulate them against the dehumanizing cruelty of the concentration camp and equip them to lead the postwar effort for the physical and spiritual regeneration of European Jewry. Laura Weinrib presents this remarkable document to English readers for the first time. Along with a translation of the five remaining Dachau-Kaufering issues, the book includes an extensive critical introduction. Nitzotz is a testament to the resilience of those struggling for survival.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 2009

About the author

Laura Weinrib is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Ms. Weinrib is a 2003 graduate of Harvard Law School. She completed her Ph.D. in history at Princeton University in 2011. In 2000, she received an A.B. in literature and an A.M. in comparative literature from Harvard University. After law school, Ms. Weinrib clerked for Judge Thomas L. Ambro of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In 2009–2010, she was a Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History at the New York University School of Law.

Ms. Weinrib's teaching and research interests include American legal history, civil liberties, constitutional law, labor law, and family law.