About the Oneg Szabat program

 

The Oneg Szabat Program was founded by the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. It was initiated to give access to the original documents, disseminate knowledge of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto and to commemorate the members of the Oneg Shabbat group.

The Oneg Shabbat group had preserved the memory about Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto and about their death in the extermination camps. They decided to combat Germans through intellectual resistance and work. Their work – the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto is the most important testimony of the Holocaust.

We have initiated the Oneg Szabat Program to continue the mission of Ringelblum’s associates – to preserve the memory about Polish Jews. We would like for the knowledge about the Archive and its creators to become commonly recognized. The Ringelblum Archive is a part of the „memory of the world”, and the Oneg Shabbat group is one of its ethical leaders.

Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, the so-called The Ringelblum Archive was inscribed in 1999 on the UNESCO Memory of the World list.

Book series Ringelblum Archive

In 2017, researchers from the Jewish Historical Institute concluded their work on the complete edition of the Ringelblum Archive (38 volumes in the printed version). This unprecedented endeavour was initiated by the Institute – a depositary of the Ringelblum Archive – in 1993. Since then, we have been continuing the works on conservation and digitalization of the original documents. The project engages historians, sociologists, philosophers, literature scholars, editors and renowned translators. Their shared effort helped rediscover many unclear or previously undeciphered documents; these documents, ordered by subject, make the materials collected by Oneg Szabat a commonly accessible source of knowledge about the life of Jews in occupied Poland. In the future, we intend to translate the entire edition of the archive to languages such as English, German and Spanish.

More about the book series Ringelbum Archive

All the volumes of the Ringelblum Archive are available online at the Central Jewish Library site and portal DELET. The CJL is a digital repository of the JHI – a base of Jewish visual and text resources, sourced from the archives, museum collection and library of the JHI.

See the Archive at Central Jewish Library

Translation of the complete edition of the Ringelblum Archive

An important element of the program is the translation of all volumes of the full edition of the Ringelblum Archive into English and the publication of the translations online. In 2017, we published the first volume of the Ringelblum Archive in English. Polish and English studies will be linked to digital copies of the original documents and in the long term, based on their content, a virtual Encyclopaedia of the Warsaw Ghetto will be created.

Work on the translation of the complete 37-volume edition was planned for 10 years.

„What we’ve been unable to shout out to the world” permanent exhibition

As s key point of the program and a tribute to the Oneg Shabbat group, we opened a permanent exhibition dedicated to the creators of the Ringelblum Archive (November 2017). The exhibition includes – for the first time open to the general public – original documents from this special collection which became a form of resisting violence, and saved the victims of the Holocaust from anonymity.

The main theme of the exhibition is the activity of the secret group named Oneg Shabbat in the Warsaw Ghetto and the unique Archive, which resulted from their work: from its beginnings until present day. The goal of the exhibition is to present this special collection and to tell the story of the group which witnessed and archived the history.

The title of the exhibition, What we’ve been unable to shout out to the world, is a quote from the last will of 19-year old David Graber, one of three people who hid the first part of the Archive in the basement of the Nowolipki 68 (Ber Borochov Jewish secular primary school before World War II). The archive was buried in the ground during the extermination action in Warsaw.

We are also working on a mobile version of the Archive, which will be available in the most important museums in the world.

DELET portal

In early October 2017, we launched the DELET webportal – a shared project of the Association of the JHI of Poland and the Jewish Historical Institute. The goal of the project is to present online the most valuable resources of the Institute and the Association, including scans of original documents from the Ringelblum Archive. The materials are accessible in highest quality. Aside from scans, the portal includes lessons and curatorial guided tours.

The project is being implemented thanks to funding from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage resources, as a part of the DIGITAL CULTURE programme.

Publications

The opening of the permanent exhibition was accompanied by the publication of book “Letters to Oneg Shabbat” edited by Professor Paweł Śpiewak, “Who will write our history” – the second completed and corrected edition of Samuel Kassow’s book and publication of the first volume of the Ringelblum Archive in English. We also publish – as separate book publications – journals and reports that are part of the Ringelblum Archive.

Encyclopedia of the Warsaw Ghetto

By the end of 2017, we will begin works on the Encyclopedia of the Warsaw Ghetto – a long-scale project undertaken by historians. It will be a semantic database, which – using the documents from the Ringelblum Archive – will make available online — at DELET portal — the most important subjects related to the Warsaw Ghetto, retrace its topography, publish information about people who were living there, their life conditions, terror and the forthcoming Holocaust.

Ambassadors of the Oneg Szabat Program

At the beginning of 2018, we started a communication campaign addressed to students from Poland, the United States, Canada and Australia. We have prepared a special educational program for Polish and foreign students that will also be available online. The pilot project was conducted at the beginning of March 2018.

Students from the USA spent couple of days visiting remembrance places of Cracow, Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Warsaw. They saw permanent exhibition at the Jewish Historical Institute dedicated to the Ringelblum Archive and the Oneg Shabbat group, took part in walks and educational workshops prepared by the JHI educators. As Ambassadors of the Oneg Szabat Program at their home universities – together with us – they will popularize history of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto and their creators. In the near future, we are planning next editions of the Program.

Education

A team of educators assisted by historians and philologists has developed workshops for students based on the journals in the Ringelblum Archive. Working with a text written down by the Oneg Shabbat, students discover the dramatic conditions of life in the ghetto: overcrowded streets, chronic hunger and diseases decimating the inhabitants, the terror and fear of death raging during the Great Deportation of 1942, despair after the loss of loved ones and attempts to cope with the suffering.

For lecturers at higher education institutions and secondary school teachers we have prepared the ONEG SZABAT PROGRAM Academy — over the course of three days led with seminars and lectures by JHI staff, the participants learn about the history of the Warsaw ghetto and the extermination of Polish Jews at the Treblinka death camp based on documents from the Ringelblum Archive.

Not everyone can come to Warsaw to take part in the activities organized at the Jewish Historical Institute, so we would like to develop a special educational package — a set of tools based on which school teachers as well as educators from di erent institutions will be able to conduct classes about the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Oneg Shabbat. We will also send our educators to present the history of the Ringelblum Archive at di erent meetings and seminars in Poland and around the world.

Commemoration and revitalization of the building

The Main Judaic Library building at ul. Tłomackie 3/5, where the Archive is kept, survived the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. It was in that building that Emanuel Ringelblum worked during World War II and where the Oneg Shabbat met secretly to work on the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. The building was renovated just after the war. It is currently home to the Jewish Historical Institute and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. To commemorate the Place we want to revitalize and modernize it. In 2017, the main hall was revitalized and the burn marks on the floor – traces of a re that engulfed the building on the last day of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – were conserved.

 

See also:

A short history of the JHI. Watch the 70th anniversary film

 

The Program needs resources – join us!

For the first time in history, everyone can contribute to popularisation and commemoration of the Ringelblum Archive. Via the http://onegszabat.org/en/ website, everyone can submit a donation (among others – for the purposes of preservation and translation of the Archive), read the history of the Oneg Shabbat group and the biographies of its members.

Further information about the Ringelblum Archive and the Oneg Shabbat group can be found at: http://onegszabat.org/en/ as well as on the Oneg Szabat program Facebook and Twitter profiles.

The Oneg Szabat Program is implemented by the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, within a public-private partnership.