The question of the genre of The Kolyma Stories continues to perplex readers: the tales resemble fiction and are at the same time intended to serve as document, evidentiary proof of the evils of Stalinism. In this article I reconsider Walter Benjamin’s “Storyteller” essay, arguing that Shalamov is, in significant ways, a Benjaminian storyteller, updated to catastrophically unfree conditions minus any nostalgic lens. Taking Shalamov’s prose not just as document and fiction, but more specifically, as document and story allows for a deeper understanding of his creative process, aesthetics, and how his prose is intended to act on the reader. Shalamov becomes a storyteller in part to break free from what he saw as the didactic tradition of the Russian novel. I compare Benjamin’s notions of storytelling to Shalamov’s concepts of “new prose,” and then scrutinize Shalamov’s contradictory stance on whether his stories contain “lessons” (advice is central to Benjamin’s framework). I touch on the fusion of document and folktale in several stories, referring to Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. Finally, I examine “Galina Pavlovna Zybalova” (1970–71), which, I argue, demonstrates how skazka and story function in relation to memory and advice.

In the late-nineteenth century, a bookbinder from Bratislava named Stefan Illés relocated to the city of Jerusalem in Ottoman Palestine. There he produced what came to be known as the Illés Relief, a miniature three-dimensional model of his adopted city. In an age of ever-expanding colonial interests in the region and popular curiosity about the Holy City, the Illés Relief toured Europe to great fanfare, leading interested parties in Geneva, Switzerland to arrange its purchase and permanent display in the city, which had been cast by Jean Calvin as the “Protestant Rome.” Presently, the Illés Relief is on view in the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem, nominally on loan since 1984 but without a defined return date. The following is an interview with the art historian and founder and director of ARCH Jerusalem, Maryvelma O’Neil. Our conversation moves from the history and trajectory of the Illés Relief to her own digital humanities work stemming from the Relief, specifically the Virtual Illés Relief Initiative and the Mughrabi Quarter Virtual Archive.1,2 Although the themes of the interview, memory and cultural heritage, suggest agents and events long past, as our conversation reveals, these issues remain relevant today, in the ongoing disposition of Palestinians and destruction of Palestinian life and culture.

Epidemiological research supports a correlation between increased strength of democracy and improved population health. In their recent article, “Democracy Matters for Child Health,” Hoops and colleagues build on this existing evidence base to demonstrate that democracy improves child health in particular. We agree and further argue that public health and child health advocates should be particularly concerned with antidemocratic threats to women’s rights and policies that undermine gender equity.