Included within the Melbourne Holocaust Museum’s exhibition of Underground: The Ringelblum Archives, a display case of artefacts has been included to connect Melbourne to Warsaw. These historically significant objects originate from Warsaw, and include a range of correspondence from Jews incarcerated in the ghetto sent to relatives in Melbourne.

Dr Anna Hirsh, MHM’s Manager of Collections & Research will present and discuss the contents and meaning of these letters, as last connectors to the world outside.

This talk is presented as part of the public programming running alongside the Melbourne Holocaust Museum’s inaugural special exhibition in the new Alter Special Exhibitions Gallery – Underground: The Secret Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. On display for the first time outside of Europe, Underground exhibits rare artefacts from the hidden archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. This archive was led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum who initiated an unprecedented campaign to collect material in the ghetto—the collection today known as the Ringelblum Archive. This collective of academics, writers, and activists working secretly in the first attempt to document the German-initiated mass murder of European Jews as it was happening. The exhibition brings home to the viewer the act of resistance that the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto constituted—a never-ending, arduous, harrowing but ultimately successful attempt to write the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of its victims.

Underground is on display at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum from 17 November 2024 to 30 March 2025.

Underground: The Hidden Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto is presented in partnership with the Jewish Historical Institute, Poland, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, and the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, Germany.