Emanuel Ringelblum
Emanuel Ringelblum (born November 21, 1900 in Buchach; died March 10, 1944 in Warsaw) was a historian, teacher, social activist and creator of the clandestine Oneg Shabbat group. He entered history above all as the initiator of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, known today as the Ringelblum Archive.
Historian and social activist
Ringelblum grew up in Galicia. After World War I he became connected with Warsaw, where he studied history at the University of Warsaw. In 1927 he defended his doctorate on the history of Jews in medieval Warsaw.
Before the war he studied the history of Polish Jews, taught, published and worked as a social activist. He was connected with the Poale Zion-Left movement and with institutions researching Jewish history and culture. He also worked in social welfare, including within the structures of the Joint. In 1938 he helped Jews expelled from Germany and detained in Zbaszyn.
In the Warsaw Ghetto
After the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, Ringelblum worked in Jewish Social Self-Help. This work gave him contact with many circles and access to information about the situation of the Jewish population under occupation.
From the beginning of the war he kept notes on the fate of Jews. In the autumn of 1940 he organized the clandestine Oneg Shabbat group, meaning “Sabbath Joy”. Its members met secretly and gathered documents about life in the ghetto: diaries, letters, testimonies, orders, press, drawings and studies.
Oneg Shabbat
Ringelblum did not want to create only a chronicle of events. He cared about as broad a record as possible of the life of a community being destroyed: hunger, work, resettlements, resistance, mutual aid, culture, religion and everyday attempts to survive.
The collaborators of Oneg Shabbat were historians, teachers, writers, economists, rabbis and social activists. Their work was a form of intellectual resistance. It was meant to preserve testimony written by victims and witnesses before their voices were drowned out by German propaganda and physical annihilation.
The archive on Nowolipki
Ringelblum’s most important work was the Ringelblum Archive. The two parts of the archive found after the war were hidden in the cellars of the Ber Borochov school at the former 68 Nowolipki Street.
The first part was placed in metal boxes in the summer of 1942, during the great deportation action. The second, placed in milk cans, was hidden in February 1943. After the war they were recovered from the ruins of Muranow: the first part on September 18, 1946, and the second on December 1, 1950.
The final months
In February 1943 Ringelblum, together with his wife Judyta, left the ghetto and hid in the “Krysia” bunker at 81 Grojecka Street, built by the Wolski family. His son Uri also joined them in hiding. Ringelblum still returned to the ghetto to observe events and rescue documents.
On March 7, 1944, the hiding place was discovered. The Jews in hiding and their protectors were taken to Pawiak prison. Probably on March 10, 1944, Emanuel Ringelblum, his wife Judyta, their son Uri and the other prisoners were shot in the ruins of the ghetto.
Legacy
Ringelblum did not survive the war, but the work to which he devoted the last years of his life did. The Ringelblum Archive is today one of the most important testimonies to the Holocaust of Polish Jews. In 1999 it was entered on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, and the collection is held by the Jewish Historical Institute named after Emanuel Ringelblum in Warsaw.