Dispatches from Quarantine:
Young People on Covid-19

We launched Dispatches from Quarantine in the spring of 2020 immediately following the first Covid-19 lockdown. Below, you will find the six original prompts that we used to inspire students to write about their lives in the pandemic. We are keeping this page open as a resource for teachers and students. Feel free to submit anytime!

DIRECTIONS

This is a three-step process:

1. Read the diary entry and prompts below.  
   
   

2. Write your response in a separate document or reply to the prompt using any creative medium you choose. Some suggestions include written journal or diary entries, poems, personal reflections, letters, photos, art, graphic work, songs, audio or video diaries, or images of objects that you’ve made.
   
   

3. When you have finished, come back, click on the “submit your work” button at the bottom of the page, upload your response, and fill out the form to complete your historical record.
   
   

We hope you will participate many times and that this project will encourage you in the practice of observing, reflecting, and recording your experience of the Covid-19 Pandemic for yourself and posterity.

Just about a year before the end of WWII, a young Jewish writer whose name is unknown began a journal in the Łódź ghetto in German-occupied Poland. In his first entry, he wrote:

May 4, 1944
I decided to write a diary, though it is a bit too late. To recapitulate the past events is quite impossible so I begin with the present.

Perhaps, like this writer, you find it overwhelming to explain everything that has happened since the pandemic began. So, let’s “begin with the present.”

BEGIN WITH THE PRESENT

(Please feel free to respond to one, several, or all of these.)

• Where are you? How long have you been in quarantine? What happened so far today?  What are your main concerns right now?

• Are you writing by hand in a notebook or are you writing on a device? Sketch, draw, or snap a photo of your “journal” — even if you are working on a device — so we can see how you are documenting your experiences. 

About the Anonymous Boy, Łódź Ghetto

This writer kept his diary from May to August, 1944, writing in four languages (English, Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish) in the margins of a French novel. He and his 12-year-old sister were orphaned and lived together. In August 1944, the Germans forced all the surviving Jews in the Łódź ghetto to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He and his sister are presumed to have perished in the Holocaust.

His diary was found after the war in an abandoned apartment building. It was eventually donated to the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel. His diary remains one of the most important and valuable journals of the Holocaust. 

Excerpts of the Anonymous Boy’s diary can be found in Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust.

A fifteen-year-old Iraqi girl who wrote under the name “Hadiya” started a blog in July 2004 documenting her family’s experience living under American occupation in the city of Mosul.  

Friday, July 1, 2005

OH GOD
I have written many posts but I don’t have the courage to publish them, I haven’t gone out of the house in nine days so I have no new news.
“Day after day, the situation is getting better,” That’s what a high-ranking military man said. But the reality shows the opposite. […]
I forgot what peace looks like.
What the street looks like.
What the sky in the night looks like. 
What my relatives look like. 
Sometimes I just think that if you could see what my eyes see, if you could hear what my ears hear, you would be able to understand what I mean.

You can choose one, some, or all of these:

• When was the last time you went outside? What was it like and what did you see or do?

• Are there things that were a part of daily life for you that you have, like Hadiya, “forgotten?” Or are there things that you vividly remember? What are they?

• What news are you hearing about the spread of Covid-19? How do you know what to believe?

• What do your eyes see and your ears hear? Do you think sharing this helps people understand what you are feeling? (PS. It’s OK to say no. Just tell us why not.)

Many young writers who picked up diaries or journals in times of distress were responding to a sudden change in their circumstances. As fifteen-year-old Yitskhok Rudashevski in Vilna, Lithuania, wrote after the German invasion, “All this has happened too suddenly. It is hard to comprehend that everything has actually come to a dead stop. I approach the school. The school is sealed up. . . . Weeks drag on. I returned from the summer, from its surroundings, chained to the house, to the yard. We do not see our gang. There is absolutely no contact among our gang.”

This dramatic interruption of normal life was often the very reason young people started to write.  Over time, they would remember the past and grieve all that they had lost or, as in Hadiya’s case, lament times that seemed so far away that she could barely remember them. These reflections help us grasp the nuances of loss in times of crisis.

Likewise, times of political or social upheaval often cut people off from trusted sources of information and cause them to question what authorities are telling them. Hadiya struggled to reconcile the reassurance she heard from a member of the military with the ongoing difficulties she was experiencing herself. 

Our prompts ask students to reflect on the sudden change in their lives brought on by the Covid-19 Pandemic, the things they remember and miss, and how news of the world is reaching them in quarantine.

To read Hadiya’s blog, published under the title, IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq, visit here.

DRAWING FROM THE DIARY OF STANLEY HAYAMI

Stanley Hayami was a teenager when he and his family were incarcerated in Heart Mountain Japanese American Internment Camp in Wyoming during World War II. He kept a written diary and made many pen-and-ink drawings, sketches, and cartoons during his imprisonment. He drew this picture of the camp at night, capturing its loneliness and desolation.

Many young people writing diaries in the past described their immediate surroundings in words or painted, drew, or sketched them. It was a way of documenting where they were living and how their physical environment related to their experience of upheaval or hardship. We would like to know where you are physically and what your surroundings reveal about your experience of quarantine.

You can choose one, some, or all of these:

• Draw, paint, sketch, photograph, or create an image in any medium of your home, your street, the view out your window, or anything that reflects your surroundings during this pandemic.

• If you prefer, describe where you are spending your time in writing or record your observations on audio or video. What is your room, apartment, house, street, or community like? Give us details that help us to have a window into your life in quarantine. 

After years of discrimination by the U.S. Government because of his Japanese ancestry, Stanley was drafted into the U.S. Army to fight in World War II. He died in battle at age 19.

Stanley’s diary and works of art can be found at the Japanese American National Museum. 

To purchase a copy of Samer’s diary, visit here. 

To watch a documentary film about Stanley Hayami, see here.

Yitskhok (pronounced Yitz-hok) Rudashevski turned fifteen years old in the Vilna ghetto in Lithuania during the Holocaust. An only child, he lived in poverty with his parents and his aunt, uncle, and cousins in a small apartment. Life in the ghetto was filled with hardship and fear but Yitskhok found escape in attending school and participating in creative and intellectual projects with other students. He had a vision for the young people living in the ghetto that through creative and intellectual effort, they could build a strong foundation for a new life of freedom and peace after World War II ended.

Wednesday the 10th of December [1942]

            It dawned on me that today is my birthday. Today I became fifteen years old. You hardly realize how time flies. It runs ahead unnoticed and we realize, as I did today, that days and months go by, that the ghetto is not a painful, squirming moment of a dream that constantly disappears, but is a large swamp in which we lose our days and weeks.

Today I became deeply absorbed in the thought. I decided not to waste my time in the ghetto on nothing and I feel somehow happy that I can study, read, develop, and see that time does not stand still as long as I progress normally with it. In my daily ghetto life it seems to me that I live normally but often I have deep regrets. Surely I could have lived better. Must I day in and day out see the walled-up ghetto gate, must I in my best years see only the one little street, the few stuffy courtyards?

Still other thoughts buzzed around in my head but I felt two things most strongly: a regret, a sort of gnawing. I wish to shout to time to linger, not to run. I wish to recapture my past year and keep it for later, for the new life. My second feeling today is that of strength and hope. I do not feel the slightest despair. Today I became fifteen years of age and I live confident in the future. I am not conflicted about it, and see before me sun and sun and sun. . . .

On his fifteenth birthday, Yitskhok wrote about the passage of time and how he felt that his youth was being stolen from him. At the same time, he reflected on how he could make the most of his days even with so many restrictions on his life.

You can choose one, some, or all of these:

• Is time passing slowly or quickly for you? Does time seem different now than it did during your “normal” life?

• How are you spending your time? Are you taking on any projects or trying to use your time in any special way?

• Do you have any regrets?

• Do you feel hope or despair? Both?

The Vilna ghetto existed for two years from September 1941 until September 1943, when the Germans began rounding up the remaining Jews and sending them to the nearby Ponar forest where they were shot to death. Yitskhok and family briefly went into hiding but were caught and taken to Ponar. Yitskhok left his diary in the hiding place and it was found by his cousin after the war.

You can find excerpts of Yitskhok Rudashevski’s diary in Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, see here.

The full English edition of the diary is currently out of print.

Alice Ehrmann was 17 when she wrote her diary during the Holocaust. She was imprisoned in a ghetto called Terezín which was located about 35 miles outside the Czech capital of Prague. Here she is describing the ghetto (which she calls “the city”) and how it was affected by repeated round-up of Jews who were put on trains and sent to unknown destinations.

November 19, 1944

      All the people have disappeared somewhere; here and there an unclear message from somewhere—like far calls from a ship wandering the ocean. The city lives on. It lives with bated breath, a lull between two catastrophes; but it lives on. People carry their heroism masked behind an everyday face; they no longer even talk about it. Every loved one is alone with their—waiting? cares? fears? What should one call it? […] The city is so exhausted; we will bear all this, I and the city and you and you . . .

This week, we reached the milestone of 100,000 American lives lost due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. We live on and we wonder what will happen next. We are isolated and also in this together. This week, we ask you to reflect on the singular and collective aspects of the pandemic.

You can choose one, some, or all of these:

• Is there anything in Alice’s diary entry that sparks reflection or echoes some aspect of your experience of the Covid-19 Pandemic?

• Are you following news of the pandemic in your community, in America, and in the world and, if so, how it is affecting you? If not, why not?

• Do you feel alone or do you think the pandemic is a collective experience?  

Alice and her parents survived the Holocaust but her sister Ruth died shortly after the liberation of Terezin. She was a nurse and had been tending to victims of a highly contagious disease called typhus. Alice married the love of her life, Ze’ev Shek, and they eventually emigrated to Israel and raised a family.

You can find excerpts of Alice’s diary in Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, see here.

To read a smaller sample of excerpt online, see here.

To read an article about Alice online, see here.

In June 2014, the militant Islamic organization known as ISIS took control of parts of Syria and Iraq to enforce Sharia Law, a militant form of Islam that maintains absolute control over religious practice and all aspects of daily life. Starting in 2015, a young man called Samer wrote a diary on his phone and sent encrypted entries to a fellow activist in another country who then sent them on to BBC journalist Mike Thomson in London. Samer wrote about the daily terrors of living under ISIS in Raqqa, Syria.

Samer (undated entry)

The sun is out for the first time in days. The brighter weather makes me feel optimistic. I’m able to push away the gloomy thoughts I’ve had for weeks. […]

The mother of a friend comes into the shop and tells me that they [ISIS] have arrested her son in a raid on her home…I try to calm his mother down, saying they’re probably only questioning him, like they’ve done plenty of times before. But she takes no comfort from this and tells me to leave the city before they come for me too.

Her words have really got to me. I walk around the city with a broken soul, looking at all the other broken souls passing by. Each pair of eyes that passes tells a different story, a different struggle.

In addition to the pandemic, America this week has seen protests, violence, and chaos on our streets sparked by the police killing of a black man named George Floyd. It’s difficult to fully know, understand, or even agree on what is happening but one thing is certain: there is a lot of pain in America. We hope you will share your observations and thoughts on what is happening in this difficult, fragile moment in our history.

You can choose one or both of these:

• Each individual living through these times in America has, as Samer says, “a different story, a different struggle.” We are curious about your own struggles or what you are witnessing across the country. This could be about the pandemic, quarantine, police violence, racism, white supremacy or privilege, protests, or anything else. We want to hear what you are seeing, thinking, and feeling.

• Samer lived under extreme repression and violence carried out by ISIS against Syrian civilians. Do you see comparisons between what we are experiencing on American streets and those that Samer described? In what ways do you think our situation is similar or different?

Samer eventually managed to get out of Syria and make his way into Turkey where was able to resume his college studies.

To purchase Samer’s diary, visit here.