A writer in the Warsaw ghetto. Listen to the podcast about Rachela Auerbach

Written by: Przemysław Batorski
We invite you to listen to the third episode of the Oneg Szabat Podcast. Dr. Karolina Szymaniak (Jewish Historical Institute/University of Wrocław) tells about Rachela Auerbach, writer, journalist and social activist, associate of Emanuel Ringelblum.
auerbach_szymaniak.jpg

Rachela Auerbach. Dr. Karolina Szymaniak

 

Rachela Auerbach was one of three people from the Oneg Shabbat group who managed to survive the war. During the difficult period of the reconstruction Warsaw, when the importance of the hidden documentation of the Oneg Shabbat group was not yet realized, Auerbach contributed to the discovery of the Ringelblum Archive in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Dr. Karolina Szymaniak is a literary scholar, Yiddish scholar, and translator. Winner of the 2016 “Polityka” Historical Award for editing the writings of Rachela Auerbach from the Warsaw ghetto. Among the subjects of her research is modern Yiddish literature and the history of Polish-Jewish cultural contacts.

zupa_arg_zw.jpg [438.67 KB]
“Giving out soup”. Warsaw Ghetto, photo from the Ringelblum Archive, Central Judaic Library

Ringelblum didn’t actually want professional writers as contributors. Auerbach was a professional writer, a journalist and this was her job. (…) Auerbach was asked to write a diary. This was also a genre used by the group, the group commissioned several diaries (…) and Auerbach’s diary certainly belongs to the most powerful documents of the kind.

The monograph of the soup kitchen is a monograph of people, clients who visited the kitchen, people who she tried to save and was unable to. And she was very disappointed during the war with her achievements. She had the sense that this work helps nobody. After the war she looked at it differently.

 

Listen to the podcast on:

Spotify https://spoti.fi/3sVnEiu

Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3dQvd5Z

Google Podcasts https://bit.ly/3u0nIiE

 

 

OS_belka.jpg [57.58 KB]

 

koret_logo.jpg [20.68 KB]

Przemysław Batorski   JHI Web Editor
< Back to list of articles

More articles from this category

26_czerwca_zw_1.jpg
26.06.2022
June 26, 1942. BBC informs about the extermination of Polish Jews
Eighty years ago, the BBC broadcast a program about the Holocaust of Polish Jews, based on materials donated to the Polish government in London by Jewish organizations in Poland. It was an important day for Emanuel Ringelblum's associates. Unfortunately, the ordeal of Jews in occupied Poland continued.
lejkin1zw1.jpg
29.10.2021
October 29, 1942. Assassination of Jakub Lejkin
79 years ago, the Jewish Combat Organization carried out its first execution in the Warsaw Ghetto. Eliahu Różański shot Jakub Lejkin – the chief of the Jewish police in Gęsia Street. Read how reports from the Ringelblum Archive describe the circumstances.
huberband_main2.jpg
18.08.2020
Kiddush Hashem. In memory of Szymon Huberband
On August 18, 1942, Szymon Huberband, a rabbi, who, according to Emanuel Ringelblum, was one of the most important collaborators of the Oneg Shabbat group, was deported to Treblinka. We present a fragment of his written accounts about saving the Torah from destruction by the Germans.
More articles >