Creating the Archive
Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum established the archive in 1940. Already imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto Ringelblum knew that the Nazi persecution of the Jews was unprecedented. He was determined to create a historical record for the outside world, and for posterity.
To help him with this enormous project he mobilised a group of Jewish academics, writers and activists. This clandestine group of sixty plus members was called Oneg Shabbat (the Joy of Sabbath). They collected documents during the day, wrote their own notes at night, and met secretly on Saturdays to discuss the progress of the archive. Over a two year period, up until the ghetto uprising in April 1943, Oneg Shabbat members collated tens of thousands of items documenting life and death in the ghetto.
Despite appalling conditions and being shut off from the rest of Polish society, cultural activity inside the ghetto continued. The archive reflects this with items such as drawings and posters, songs, poems and plays, invitations to events, and even lolly wrappers. These accompanied more familiar representations of ghetto life such as food ration cards and work passes.
Individually, Oneg Shabbat members wrote about daily life in the ghetto, the policies of the Judenrat (Jewish Council), religious life, the work of social welfare institutions, underground schools and the fate of Jewish children, smuggling and armed resistance.
When the members learned about the Final Solution their focus turned to documenting the mass murder of European Jews. They assembled accounts of deportations, executions, torture, and the destruction of entire Jewish communities.
Burying and Retrieving the Archive
Many archive members were caught up in the deportations to Treblinka in 1942. Those who remained continued their work. In August 1942 the first cache of documents, stored inside metal boxes, was buried below the ghetto. The second and third caches were buried in February and April 1943 respectively.
Only three members of Oneg Shabbat survived the Holocaust, including Hersz Wasser, who was the only one who knew where the caches had been buried. The first cache was retrieved in 1946 and the second in 1950. Sadly, the third has never been found.
More Important than Life
One of the metal boxes unearthed will also be on display in the exhibition. This specific box included the final will of David Graber, a teenager who helped bury the archives. An excerpt from his will, dated 3 August 1942, reads:
“We have decided to write our wills, to collect our little material about the deportation, and to bury it all. We must hurry because we are not sure how much time we have. We felt the responsibility. We were not afraid of taking a risk. We were aware that we were making history. And that was more important than our lives.”
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