BREAD OF THE AFFLICTED
‘Eating Matzo’ from a Haggadah published in Vienna in 1928, and included in the National Library of Israel’s “Passover Memories” project, which shares personal memories from prominent figures who have celebrated Pesach under “normal” and not-so-normal circumstances. The project includes Natan Sharansky’s recollections of his first Passover Seder, held under the watchful eye of the KGB, and a subsequent “celebration” in the Gulag, where he was a political prisoner for nearly a decade. Sharansky, who would go on to serve in four Israeli cabinets, remembered his spirit being strengthened in solitary confinement as he recalled one particular line from the Passover Haggadah, “This year we are slaves, next year free men; this year we are here, and next year in Jerusalem.”