Memoria [EN] No. 25 (10/2019) | Page 37

Today, the last Jews who were raised in the language are dying. It made us all the more responsible for these texts. Furthermore, we were fully aware that the mission that united the people of Oneg Sabbath was guided by the idea of telling the whole world about what happened there and then, in the ghetto. We wanted to do so to the best of our ability.

Sara Arm: The world ought to have known and remembered them. That's why I took up the task. (...) It was really difficult. I lost a lot of people, friends because I was constantly occupied with this topic. Of all the things I've done, this is the most important to me.

Prof. Tadeusz Epsztein: We had no doubt that if they were to live and function, they had to be translated into Polish, and in the future into English. We were well aware that if they were not developed, translated and made public, people would not reach for them. And this whole legacy will lie, perhaps well secured, but useless. These sources have a wider meaning than just material for professional historians. I don't want to use lofty terms, but we have been given the task of making it available not only to people who understand these rare languages.

Listening to people involved in the translation and publication of the full edition of the Ringelblum Archive - even though they mainly concern the mastery of a translator's work - it is difficult not to succumb to the temptation to think of them as continuators of the will of the creators of the Archive. During the presentation of the Polish Pen Club Editorial Prize, Prof. Jacek Leociak said in a laudatory speech: In my opinion, it is an award for the entire great group of people, who had been working for years, and whom I would like to call, after Emanuel Ringelblum: “Oneg Shabbat was a fraternity, an order of brothers who carried a banner of readiness to sacrifice and remain faithful to the service of society“. (...) They committed to fulfilling the testament buried in the basement of the house at Nowolipki 68. Years of work. Nights and days spent on texts so that the letters could begin to speak. And they spoke. We thank them for that.

Work is currently ongoing on the English translation - in 2017 the first volume of “Warsaw Ghetto. Everyday life”, ed. by Katarzyna Person was published; a year later, another was issued titled “Accounts from the Borderlands, 1939-1941”, ed. by Andrzej Żbikowski. The full edition is to be translated within 15 years.

The text is based on interviews with coordinators, translators and editors of the full edition of the Ringelblum Archive, which appeared on the website of the Jewish Historical Institute and the Oneg Shabbat Program on the occasion of the International Translation Day.

The full version of the interviews:

http://www.jhi.pl/blog/2019-09-29-nad-jednym-slowem-siedziec-calymi-dniami

All volumes of the full edition of Ringelblum Archive:

https://onegszabat.org/pelna-edycja-archiwum-ringelbluma/