More than eight decades after the end of World War II, a 101-year-old Holocaust survivor has donated a collection of about 100 wartime letters to Yad Vashem, preserving a deeply personal story of love and endurance. The letters, exchanged between Idit Papa and Meir Hirschfeld while they were a young Orthodox couple in Hungary, sustained them through forced labor, ghettos, escape, and months in hiding.

The couple became engaged in 1942 before Meir was sent to a forced labor battalion. After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, they continued corresponding through couriers even as conditions worsened. In their letters, they expressed devotion and hope, with Meir writing that their bond tied him to life and that Idit’s messages restored his will to live during his darkest days.

Idit later escaped from a deportation train and eventually reunited with Meir in Budapest, where they survived the final months of the war in hiding. After liberation, they married and immigrated to Israel, raising a family and carefully preserving their correspondence. Now part of Yad Vashem’s Gathering the Fragments initiative, their archive offers future generations an intimate testament to resilience, faith, and enduring love.