keeping the memory of
Oneg Shabat group and Ringelblum Archive alive
“The world will one day ask: what were the people from the Warsaw Ghetto thinking when they realised they wouldn’t escape death?”
(Emanuel Ringelblum’s “Chronicles of the Warsaw Ghetto”)
September 18, 1946. Warsaw. An area of the former ghetto, specifically on 68 Nowolipki Street – a place where the Borochov School once stood. A ton of rubble, through which a digger is ploughing its way through. No one believes in miracles, yet everyone somehow has hope. However, the shovel finally ends up hitting the metal boxes. Inexplicable joy. In the destroyed capital, in a graveyard which will be rebuilt for many years to come, a real treasure is being discovered.
The boxes are filled with papers, all sorts of documents which, due to the improper sealing of the containers, have turned into a moldy pulp. They contain the first part of the Underground Warsaw Ghetto Archive, which was the idea of Emanuel Ringelblum – a historian and social activist. In October 1939 he made the decision to collect materials which exposed what Jews’ lives were like during the war. In order to fulfill this aim, he set up a group of co-workers who accumulated all sorts of sources until 1943,
mainly from the Warsaw Ghetto: diaries, essays, photographs, memories, magazines, posters, personal documents, works of art, drawings and other items.
The group worked very covertly. They would meet in the building at 5 Tlomackie Street, where the Jewish Social Co-operative officiated during the war. The meetings took place on Saturdays, which is why the group took
the name Oneg Shabat – “The Joy of Saturday”.
July 22, 1942. The Germans have started their deportation action, with the aim to exterminate the entire Jewish Nation. The work of Oneg Shabat, which initially collected evidence of life in the ghetto, has become a dramatic attempt at saving the memory of the Jewish nation brutally murdered in extermination camps.
Anna Majchrowska