SPENDING DAYS
ON
A SINGLE WORD
Anna Majchrowska, Jewish Historical Institute
Over the years, several dozen people have been involved in the project of translating more than 35 thousand pages of documents collected in the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto into Polish. The result of their efforts is a 38-volume publication available today in printed and digital form - the full edition of the Ringelblum Archive.
The translation of the entire Ringelblum Archive from Yiddish, Hebrew and German into Polish is without precedent. Its scope, the degree of difficulty in terms of content and organisation, make it a unique translation and editing project on a global scale.
As many as 58 people participated in the project - coordinators (Eleonora Bergman, PhD, Katarzyna Person, PhD, scientific editor Prof. Tadeusz Epsztein), translators, editors. They were involved in the project to varying degrees: some translated huge parts of the text, others assumed the challenge of translating specific, sometimes individual, thematic materials. It is also a great editorial work, as the full edition often relied on older translations. It is also worth noting that the people working on individual texts are not professional translators - they are scientists, academic lecturers, writers, archivists, employees of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, who often helped with the project by working on weekends, days and nights.
Their effort was recognised by distinguished circles: in 2016 the editorial team was awarded the Juliusz Żuławski Editorial Prize of the Polish Pen Club; in 2017 Eleonora Bergman, PhD, and Prof. Tadeusz Epsztein were awarded the Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska Prize, and a year later Monika Polit, PhD, received the Clio Award for editing the 31st volume of Peretz Opoczno's Writings. The decision seems obvious. Owing to their work, readers - non-academicians alike - received one of the most important archival resources on the history of the Holocaust in general, and certainly on the history of the Holocaust in Poland.
Work on making the content of documents preserved in the Archive available to readers began shortly after the first part of the archive was excavated on 17 September 1946. (in December 1950, the second part of the Archive was discovered). The materials hidden in 10 boxes were in terrible condition - they required the immediate attention of the conservator. However, there were no doubts that once their physical safety had been ensured, sorted and inventoried; the next step would be to make them available as quickly as possible to the readers.
All images in this article: JHI