Metal boxes hidden at 68 Nowolipki Street contained thousands of documents, including accounts, diaries, photographs, official letters, and everyday items. This collection stands as one of the most significant testimonies to the lives and extermination of Jews in occupied Poland.
The archive consists of three parts:
- The first part was discovered on 18.09. 1946.
- The second -accidentally 1.12.1950
- The third part is still missing
Today, the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto forms an essential part of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute's collection.
It represents a unique collection of documents that serves as one of the most vital testimonies to the Holocaust of Polish Jews.
In November 1940, historian Dr Emanuel Ringelblum initiated the establishment of
a group known as Oneg Shabbat (Joy of the Sabbath - referring to the meetings held on Saturdays). This small group, made up of around a dozen individuals, took on the crucial task of gathering and documenting the experiences of Jews living under German occupation. The activities of Oneg Shabbat were shrouded in secrecy; the residents of the ghetto were entirely unaware of its existence. To disguise their activities, Oneg Shabbat operated under the auspices of the Jewish Social Self-Help (ŻSS), an overt organisation tolerated by the occupiers, but also engaged in extensive underground activity. The ŻSS offices were situated in the building housing the Main Judaic Library, right next to the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street. Since 1947, this building has served as the home of the Jewish Historical Institute and as the repository for the Ringelblum Archive.
At the beginning of 1942, as news of mass murders of Jews began to emerge in Warsaw, the activities of Oneg Shabbat took a significant turn. Rather than collect material for a comprehensive monograph about Jewish life in Poland, the group redirected its efforts to document the extermination of Jewish communities and disseminate this crucial information to the public. They maintained connections with the Polish resistance movement (including the Government Delegation for Poland) and provided them with copies of the documentation they had gathered. By 1942, Oneg Shabbat's reports on the Holocaust had reached the West through various Polish and Jewish organisations.
Oneg Shabbat employed modern methods for collecting scientific materials. The team prepared questionnaires and outlines in advance, which served as the basis for accounts and studies. Care was taken to ensure that the collected information provided a complete and objective picture of reality, including all relevant facts and details. For selected localities, efforts were made to gather various types of documents and reports. Notes were taken during interviews and later used to write more detailed reports. The Archive included original documents or detailed copies, as well as files from official institutions. Additionally, the collection featured press materials, posters, leaflets, tickets, invitations, food ration cards, correspondence sent to the ghetto, and personal documents, among others. Diaries and memoirs were also welcomed. Many members of Oneg Shabbat were active in underground political parties, which contributed to the collection of documents related to the emerging underground movement in the Warsaw ghetto. The Archive also housed several dozen photographs and over 300 drawings and watercolours (some of which were created before the war).
At the turn of July and August in 1942, during the first deportation operation in the Warsaw ghetto, three of Emanuel Ringelblum's colleagues buried the initial part of the Archive (10 tin boxes) in a cellar located at 68 Nowolipki Street. By early February 1943,
a further batch of documents, which included materials gathered since July 1942, was concealed in two milk cans at the same site.
Tragically, Ringelblum and many of the Archive's creators did not survive to witness the end of the war—those who did made efforts to locate the hidden materials. In September 1946, the first portion of the Archive was unearthed, while a second section was discovered by chance in December 1950. To this day, however, the third part of the Archive, supposedly hidden on April 19, 1943—the night before the ghetto uprising—at a brush-making workshop on 34 Świętojerska Street (now the site of the Chinese Embassy), remains lost. Despite being buried underground for several years, most of the documents have survived intact.
The entire preserved Archive comprises over 35,000 documents, many of which have no equivalents in other archival collections around the world. These invaluable records stand as the last testimonies of the lives, suffering and deaths of individuals as well as entire communities from cities and towns scattered across Poland. They serve as an essential source for Holocaust research.
Unique sources of information include
a variety of materials such as a collection of personal accounts, letters sent to the Warsaw ghetto, studies compiled by the "Oneg Shabbat" team, a wide array of underground publications from the ghetto, literary works created during the war, and private documents (legacies), among others.
From the late XX century to the early XXI century, efforts were made to conserve and digitise the Archive's documents. Between 2001 and 2003, a comprehensive inventory of the collection was developed. Although the Ringelblum Archive has been invaluable to historians for more than 60 years, much of it is still not widely known. In 2020, thanks to the dedicated work of specialists from the Jewish Historical Institute, we are set to finalise the publication of the last volumes of the complete edition of the Archive in Polish. The compilation and release of the materials from the Oneg Shabbat group are opening up new avenues for Holocaust researchers.
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