The Ringelblum Archive on Nowolipki

The Ringelblum Archive, also known as the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, was a clandestine collection of documents created in the Warsaw Ghetto from the autumn of 1940. It was initiated by the historian Emanuel Ringelblum, and the work was carried out by the secret Oneg Shabbat group, meaning “Sabbath Joy”.

The group’s aim was to document Jewish life under German occupation: the daily life of the ghetto, hunger, resettlements, forced labor, resistance, deportation actions and the Holocaust. They collected testimonies, diaries, letters, official documents, underground press, drawings, photographs and studies prepared especially for the archive.

Oneg Shabbat

Oneg Shabbat operated in strict secrecy. Ringelblum’s collaborators were historians, teachers, writers, social activists and people involved in welfare work. Their work was a form of resistance: since German propaganda falsified the image of the Holocaust, the archive was meant to preserve testimony written by the victims and witnesses.

Over time the documentation began to cover not only Warsaw, but also the fate of Jews in other parts of occupied Poland. For this reason, the Ringelblum Archive is today one of the most important sources for the history of the Holocaust.

Nowolipki 68

The archive’s connection with Nowolipki is direct. In the cellars of the Ber Borochov school at the former 68 Nowolipki Street, two parts of the collection found after the war were hidden. The first part, packed in metal boxes, was hidden in the summer of 1942 during the great deportation action from the ghetto. The second, placed in milk cans, was secured in February 1943.

The building at the former address of Nowolipki 68 did not survive the war. Its location corresponds to today’s area of the square between the blocks at Nowolipki 28 and 30.

Nearby, at 18 Nowolipki Street, the Church of St. Augustine survived among the destroyed buildings of the ghetto. Both places belong to the same postwar layer of Muranow’s memory: ruins, surviving landmarks and stories hidden under the new housing estate.

Discovery

The first part of the archive was recovered from the ruins on September 18, 1946. The search was guided by surviving collaborators of Oneg Shabbat. Ten metal boxes of documents were found.

The second part was discovered by chance on December 1, 1950, during construction work on the new Muranow housing estate. Workers came across two milk cans containing further documents.

The third part of the archive has never been found.

Significance

The preserved documents amount to about 25,000 pages. They include official materials, testimonies, private correspondence, literary texts, children’s work and records of social life. Their uniqueness lies in the fact that they were created from within a community being destroyed, often at a moment when the authors already knew that they themselves might not survive.

In 1999 the Ringelblum Archive was entered on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. The collection is held by the Jewish Historical Institute named after Emanuel Ringelblum in Warsaw.

Commemoration