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More Important Than Life: The Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto | exhibition
From June 29, 2023, to January 7, 2024, the National Socialism Documentation Center in Munich will host the exhibition "More Important Than Life: The Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto", organized in cooperation with the Jewish Historical Institute.
September 1939: ‘Something broke in the entire world’
‘I could not grasp the immensity of our misery’. The beginning of the great deportation from the Warsaw ghetto
June 26, 1942. BBC informs about the extermination of Polish Jews
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Three years of the Oneg Szabat Program. What are we preparing for fall 2020?
The Oneg Szabat program will soon be celebrating the third anniversary of its foundation. In fall 2020 we will invite you to listen to a series of podcasts about the people who formed the Oneg Shabbat group and created the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto.
“The Archive more important than life” available in English
Prepared by educators from the Jewish Historical Institute, a popularizing work devoted to the Warsaw ghetto and the activities of the Oneg Shabbat group is now avaliable in English.
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.
August 15, 1942: Eliasz Gutkowski sends his son to the Czerniaków farm
August 15, 1942 was the 25th day of the great deportation from the Warsaw ghetto. Eliasz Gutkowski, the second secretary of the Oneg Szabat group, decided to hide his son on a farm in the Czerniaków suburb of Warsaw. It was an exceptionally friendly place for Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. Icchak Cukierman recalls.
“In Nowolipie, Smocza streets, hunting takes place at noon.” The Warsaw Ghetto one week after the start of the great deportation
July 29, 1942. A week has passed since the beginning of the great deportation in the Warsaw Ghetto. Every day 5,000-10,000 Jews are transported from the Umschlagplatz to the gas chambers in Treblinka. With the formation of the Jewish Combat Organization, an armed resistance movement slowly begins.
Menachem Mendel Kohn, Oneg Shabbat treasurer
Treasurer of the Oneg Shabbat group, before the war he was a businessman. In the Warsaw Ghetto, he saved many people from typhus and death from famine. The Ringelblum Archive contains his diary and messages from people whose lives he had saved, or who at least managed to stay alive in the ghetto a bit longer thanks to his help.
An individual’s spiritual resistance. Interview with the authors of „The Archive More Important Than Life”
Writing a book about people who were the first to describe the Holocaust of European Jews was not an easy task. Read an interview with the authors of „Archiwum ważniejsze niż życie. Losy Żydów polskich w czasie II wojny światowej w dokumentach konspiracyjnej grupy Oneg Szabat” („The Fate Of Polish Jews During World War II In The Documents Of The Oneg Shabbat Clandestine Group”).
Eliasz Gutkowski, Oneg Shabbat's second secretary
Teacher, social and political activist, second secretary of the Ringelblum Archive, member of the Oneg Shabbat leadership. In the Warsaw Ghetto, he helped fellow Jews, despite difficulties with supporting his own wife and son. Co-edited accounts by defectors from the Chełmno nad Nerem and Sobibór extermination camps.
Eliezer Lipe Bloch
One of Emanuel Ringelblum’s closest associates. His organizational skills were essential for the Two and a half years of war – a great historical project which recorded the life of Polish Jews under German occupation. He was collecting food and clothing for the poorest people in the Warsaw ghetto, as well as money for the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB). Having been arrested by the Germans, Bloch decided to stay with his comrades until his death, despite an opportunity to escape from the labour camp.
Szmuel Szajnkinder
Szmuel Szajnkinder was a footballer and sports journalist. In 1939, he participated in the defense of Warsaw, and later worked at the Jewish Social Self-Help Public Kitchen Central, where he met Emanuel Ringelblum. He began his work for Oneg Shabbat probably in early 1942 by donating his diary and a few personal accounts, including one from the September Campaign. Szajnkinder was killed during the Great Deportation in the summer of 1942.
Mordechaj Szwarcbard
Szwarcbard was one of the most hard-working members of Oneg Shabbat. His manuscripts appear in about 170 documents in the Archive. He left his own writings and a selection of copies of other documents, including notes by Emanuel Ringelblum.
Bernard (Berisz) Kampelmacher
A teacher and a social activist. The Ringelblum Archive contains more than a dozen sketches he wrote about the Jewish community in Grodzisk Mazowiecki and selected locations in the Sochaczew county: Podkowa Leśna, Wiskitki and Sochaczew. He was also involved in attempts to improve the critical condition of education in the Warsaw Ghetto. In early 1942, he died due to typhus infection.
Szyja Rabinowicz
Before the war, he was an owner of a roof tile factory. He donated a significant part of his income to the cause of supporting Jewish culture, such as the YIVO Institute. In the Warsaw Ghetto, he was an active contributor of Oneg Shabbat and an informal connection between Oneg Shabbat and Bund. After the death of his wife and younger daughter in 1943, he tried to save himself by buying a false passport to one of South American countries. From the Polski Hotel, he was transferred to the the Bergen Belsen transitional camp. On 11 October 1943, the Germans deported him to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was murdered immediately after arrival.
For the memory of future generations, and for the entire world. Abraham Lewin
The fate of the Jewish nation is so difficult to grasp and convey in writing – such a reflection keeps reappearing in Lewin’s „Diary, in fact becoming its main thread. Lewin writes the daily chronicle of the ghetto, documenting worsening conditions of living, famine, diseases, increasing terror, eventually – the Great Deportation and the stories of survivors, who „lead a bitter life”, with „wings of death waving above them”. He had continued his work even after his wife Luba was sent to Treblinka.
Nechemiasz (Nechemia) Tytelman
One of the closest associates of Oneg Shabbat, activist of Poale Zion-Left, co-founder of the Sztern (Star) sports club. Tytelman’s most important contribution to Oneg Shabbat was collecting the folklore of Warsaw Ghetto – jokes, anecdotes, popular street songs. He was killed in 1943. The circumstances of his death remain unknown.
Icchak Giterman
Icchak Giterman had been a dedicated social activist and the director of Joint in Poland for many years. Ringelblum, who co-organized with him aid for Polish Jews displaced to Zbąszyń due to Polenaktion, wrote about him that he was a man of extraordinary thought, who had his own opinion about every issue. During the war, he supported resistance, organized aid for other ghettos, and since May 1940, he joined the board of Oneg Shabbat, supporting the group financially as well. In the Warsaw Ghetto, he lost his wife and son. He managed to obtain a false Argentinian passport but abandoned the idea of escaping. He was shot by Germans on 18 January 1943.
With God’s help. Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro, rabbi from the Warsaw Ghetto
Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro was a charismatic tzaddik from Piaseczno near Warsaw, an outstanding public speaker, an innovative teacher. Despite his personal tragedy which „had bereft him of all hope”, he didn’t abandon his mission to reinforce faith in his listeners. His sermons in the ghetto „were making a great impression and inspiring Jewish hearts”. Shapiro’s legacy in the Ringelblum Archive, which comprises textbooks for youth, sermons and private notes, remains one of the last testimonies of Hassidism in Poland.
Natan (Nusen) Koniński
Natan Koniński was a refugee from Kalisz. The Ringelblum Archive contains many reports written by him, such as "The Face of the Jewish Child", where he described the fate of Jewish children during the occupation. He was also a copyist – in general, 27 pieces of text written by him were preserved. We don’t know almost anything about Koniński’s life and circumstances of death.
We must find the Archive!
„Remember! A national treasure is buried in the ruins. The Ringelblum Archive is there. Even if the ruins reach five storeys high, we must find the Archive”, called Rachela Auerbach during the commemoration of the third anniversary of the Ghetto Uprising. Thanks to the determination of people aware of the significance of documents hidden in the Borochov school, the first part of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto was unearthed on 18 September 1946.
How did the Jews make a living in the Warsaw Ghetto? Jerzy Winkler
Oneg Shabbat gained access to statistical data and important official documents from the Jewish Council thanks to Jerzy (Icchak) Winkler. He was also the author of several works written especially for the Archive, such as The Ghetto fights against economic oppression. Jerzy Winkler was murdered in Treblinka in August 1942. He was in his thirties.
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