A few days later the permission to carry out excavation works arrived from the Warsaw Reconstruction Office.
In 1945, the area of the former ghetto was a stony dessert stretching out to the horizon of a hill of bricks. How do you locate a pre-war address in the heap of dust and debris?
The engineer, Marian Pliszczyński was brought in, who calculated based on a map, the location of the former school. Under his supervision, slow and careful work was commenced with archaeological caution. Tunnels were dug, and ventilation shafts installed under the debris.
“Finally - a kind of chimney was rammed into the underground area of the former Nowolipki Street, where once stood the tenement house marked number 68, accomplished by removing a mound of bricks. Only two cells in the basement, which the ceiling somewhat endured were accessible; the rest were completely buried. Where was the archive buried? My friend Wasser present during the works was once present during the concealing of the boxes. At the time, however, it was accessed differently: it prevents orientation. After "stamping" the ceiling, the digging began: we knew that the archive might be located a meter below the lower surface. The shovels were throwing out one decimetre of soil after another. We stand - employees of the Historical Commission - Wulf, Blumental, Wasser and myself look at each other, and in a mutual glance we had the same thoughts: if at all...? Suddenly - the shovel hits “something hard”. After a while, the first metal box appears. After that in layers: eight. In the second cell - a further two...” - wrote Michał M. Borwicz.
Bulletin of the Jewish Press Agency, Warsaw, 20 September 1946
On Wednesday 18 of this month [1946], a sensational discovery was accomplished at the site of the former Warsaw ghetto. The long sought-after archive of Dr Emanuel Ringelblum, the renowned Jewish historian and outstanding social activist was discovered at the site of the former ghetto. (...) Until now, 8 boxes have been excavated from the dungeons. It turned out that moisture in the cellar had eaten through the packaging and it was necessary to instantly secure the documents, photographs, sets of newspapers, published conspiratorial books and so forth.
The excavated Archive was transported to the head office of the Historical Commission and laid out in the day-room. A group of persons under the guidance of the Wasser’s worked to salvage the contents of 10 metal boxes. The employees of the Commission were supported by Polish experts from the museum and library, helping to unpack materials and dry paper. Initially, it seems as though the documents have been preserved in a terrible condition: water found its way into the boxes, the paper swelled and stuck to the walls, the inferior war ink was washed away, the emulsion of the photo was washed out. The materials glued to together, forming dangerous fungi, the paper clips corroded while the box was covered with mould.
However - gentle unglueing, drying with a thin absorbent paper and the documents spring back to life, “Work progresses. Rescued items begin to speak. Here we find diaries of various kinds of people and not just Warsaw inhabitants. They include notebooks that found their way to the archive from Białystok, Cracow, Nowy Sącz, Lviv, from cities and towns, from villages and camps. There are also notebooks filled with a series of articles and reports. Numerous correspondence (...) Then German posters, copies of ghetto announcements, invitations, notifications. It even includes a bus ticket (...) extensive collections of literary works - poems and prose, written predominantly by people who died a long time ago. Rich collections of minutes and reports. Numerous copies of secret press published in the ghetto” - Michał M. Borwicz wrote in the introduction to anthology “Pieśń ujdzie cało…”
According to Prof. Tadeusz Epsztein, a renowned expert on the Ringelblum Archive and creator of his inventory, the 10 galvanised boxes contained 25,540 pages of materials. The documents also include preserved Testaments of persons buried under the Archive.
“I do not want acknowledgements, no monuments, no songs of praise. I only wish to be remembered...” Izrael Lichtenstein.
Hersz Wasser. JHI Archives.