This book deals with the cultural and emotional world of Jewish schoolchildren in the “Tarbut” school network in Poland between the two World Wars. It is based on a unique corpus of about 80 letters, written between 1934-1935 by 10-11-year-old fifth graders in the Tarbut school in the town of Nowi Dwόr in Poland to their beloved teacher who had immigrated to Eretz Israel – the place and destination they too dreamed about. In these letters – all composed in Hebrew – the children write about their class, their school, but also about themselves and their families. The pupils’ letters are analyzed in light of the educational practice of pen-pal culture which was developed in and encouraged by “Tarbut” schools, especially between pupils in the Diaspora and their cohorts in Palestine. The letters are also examined as ego-documents that reveal personal stories about the intimate and private world of children, their experiences, fears and hopes, their relationship with their teacher, their families and their friends. Studied as a corpus, they reflect the complexities of the educational experience in a Hebrew Zionist school in Poland. The uniqueness of this book is that it is attentive to children – not teenagers or adults – in their own voice and in real time, telling about their lives, and not from a place of retrospection or later memory. Sources that allow us to hear the authentic voice of a child in real time are very rare indeed. The letters, which were critically edited and published in full next to a clear photograph of the letter, are discussed from various perspectives including Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education, the history and culture of the child, and the relationship between the Diaspora and Eretz Israel. The book also offers a short history of the influential, now almost forgotten, school network – Tarbut. Finally, the book presents a detailed history of one class in one town in Poland a few years before this world vanished.

Literature for children written in pre-state Israel played a major role in shaping the young generation's values, experiences and conception of the world. Up until the 1940s, the hegemonic current of this literature's related the tale of the Zionist-Socialist accomplishments and presented the Hebrew generation growing up in the country as the opposite of the Diasporic Jew. During World War II, with the arrival of the news of the Holocaust transpiring in Europe, as well as at the period of conflict with the British, the story for children had changed dramatically. This shift has left a considerable mark on Hebrew culture as a whole. In her book From the School Desk We Were Taken Yael Darr describes how writers for the young committed themselves toa new story, focusing on the battle and sacrifice of youths. In this new narrative the Hebrew children were portrayed as skillful fighters serving role models even for the parents' generation. Yet, Darr also suggests that the literature for children did not ignore the news about the destruction of the European Jewry. While it might be expected of literature aimed at young readers to spare them exposure to such a catastrophe, it was in fact precisely that literature which was quick to tell the story of the disaster. Furthermore, in its varied and numerous references to the Holocaust the children's literature even preceded the Holocaust literature for adults. Darr's book recounts the military-national story as well as the tale of the devastation of the European Jewry in all its complexity. The writer also shows how some of the literary forms dealing with the Holocaust during the British Mandate were abandoned, when towards the founding of the state the children's literature fused the heroism of the country's youth and the story of the Holocaust weaving them into a pronounced national lesson. The book uncovers a wide range of literary works for children and youngsters written in the nineteen forties both by mainstream, center-stage, authors and by those in its margins. It closely analyzes several establishing works of fiction thus shedding light on the society and culture of those years while undermining conventions concerning the position of the Israeli based Jewish community concerning the Holocaust and its survivors.