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Oneg Shabbat
Oneg Shabbat biographies

Oneg Shabbat biographies

This story began on a Saturday. In Autumn 1940, a group of several dozen people living in the Warsaw Ghetto began to collect and edit an extensive account of the fate of Polish Jews under German occupation. At that time they weren’t yet aware that increasing persecution will develop into mass extermination of their nation, and that the work which they decided to pursue will become the most important testimony of the Holocaust. They held their meetings on Saturdays, hence the name Oneg Shabbat – "the joy of Sabbath" in Hebrew. Find out about the biographies of the group's members – the creators of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Emanuel Ringelblum

The man who started it all. Emanuel Ringelblum was born in 1900 in Buczacz, Galicia, in a traditional, petty-bourgeois Jewish family. His father was a grain merchant. In 1920, Ringelblum passed the matura exam with honors at the gymnasium in Nowy Sącz. In 1922, he began his studies in history at the Faculty of History at the University of Warsaw, where in 1927 he obtained his doctorate on the basis of the dissertation: "Jews in Warsaw from the earliest times to 1527".

Rachela Auerbach

Journalist, writer, and translator. From mid-1941, she belonged to Oneg Shabbat, compiled documentation, and wrote reports.

One of the most important members of Oneg Shabbat. As the archive’s first secretary, Wasser kept a register of documents and authors. After the war, he initiated the search for the archive.

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.

Merchant and a founder of YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute) in Vilna, provided financial support to Oneg Shabbat and to the Jewish Fighting Organization for the purchase of arms, He worked for the ghetto’s Supply Authority and was active in the underground Jewish Cultural Organization IKOR.

Eliasz Gutkowski

Historian, teacher, and writer, belonged to the Right Po’ale Tsiyon. In the Warsaw ghetto, he taught Jewish history in an underground middle school. He was one of Ringelblum’s closest associates and the archive’s second secretary.

Menachem Mendel Kohn

A wealthy merchant, he was able to support Oneg Shabbat financially. He wrote a journal during the Great Deportation of 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka in the summer of 1942.

Gela Seksztajn-Lichtensztein

An artist, graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and showed her work in several exhibitions. In the Warsaw ghetto, she taught drawing at the school at 68 Nowolipki Street. Her works were buried with the Oneg Shabbat archive.

Israel Lichtensztajn

In the Warsaw ghetto, Israel was a teacher and principal of the Jewish school at 68 Nowolipki Street. He was responsible for protecting the materials collected by the Oneg Shabbat team. He and two young helpers hid the first cache of the archive. He probably also took part in hiding the second cache.

Bluma was married to Hersh Wasser. As a member of the Oneg Shabbat team, she copied documents and conducted interviews. She and Hersh jumped out of a train bound for Treblinka. After the war, she took part in the search for the archive. She eventually left for Israel with her husband.

His moving testament was included in the first cache of the archive. Before the war, he attended the Borokhov School and was active in Yungbor, a Left Po’ale Tsiyon youth organization. In the ghetto, he was a laborer and worked in the children’s soup kitchen at the school at 68 Nowolipki Street. He was one of the three people who hid the first cache of the Archive.

Nachum Grzywacz

Studied in a heder, apprenticed to a tailor, and worked for a printing house before the war. Active in a leftist youth organization in the Warsaw ghetto, he printed an illegal newspaper, "Yugntruf", and worked in the children’s soup kitchen at the school at 68 Nowolipki Street. He was one of the three people who hid the first cache of the archive.

Henryka Łazowertówna

Poet, writer and translator. After the outbreak World War II, she became involved in social work, including on behalf of the charity organization CENTOS and the Jewish Social Self-Help, for which she prepared publicity materials. For the Oneg Shabbat, she wrote the history of the ghetto’s poorest and most precarious inhabitants, a story of individual Jewish families’ struggle to survive.

Aleksander Landau

An engineer, managed a wood workshop in the Warsaw Ghetto – one of the forced labor companies working for the German army. Supported the Oneg Shabbat group and the Jewish Social Self-Help. During the Great Deportation to the Treblinka death camp, he offered shelter to intellectuals in his factory.

Bernard 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.

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).

Izrael, a teacher and journalist for the "Folkstsaytung", was a Bund activist. He served Oneg Shabbat as a copyist and wrote the report "Leyb Dembkowski’s Departure", about a refugee and his family, in 1941.

Salomea Ostrowska

Her fate is largely unknown. Salomea conducted interviews for Oneg Shabbat and annotated them meticulously. Thanks to her efforts, direct accounts of former prisoners of the transit camp in Pomiechówek have survived.

Cecylia Słapakowa

A Vilnius-born translator, founder of a Warsaw literary salon, in 1942 carried out 17 interviews with Jewish women from various social backgrounds and professions. This priceless source for research on daily life in the Warsaw Ghetto shows a shift in the social role of women during the war, but above all, it praises their versatility, courage and sacrifice.

Szmuel Szajnkinder

A football player and sports journalist before the war. He was a soldier in the September Campaign and was taken prisoner. He returned to Warsaw in November 1939 and worked at a dry goods distribution point and then in the People’s Kitchens section of the Jewish Social Self-Help department in the ghetto. Shmuel collected accounts of former soldiers and prisoners-of-war for Oneg Shabbat, kept two journals, and wrote literary pieces.

Icchak Giterman

A native of Warsaw, he had worked with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he left for Vilna, where he organized assistance for refugees from western Poland. Imprisoned by the Germans in Stockholm, he returned to Warsaw in April 1940. He continued to work at the Joint office and supported the activities of Oneg Shabbat financially.

Jakub Zylberberg

Philosopher, teacher, scholar associated with the political left wing. He was submitting education-themed writings by various authors to the Archive. His greatest contribution to the Archive was an insightful study written in Yiddish, dedicated to the wartime fate of teachers and students from the Jewish schools in Warsaw.

Activist of Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth organization; wrote a book about it. He also helped found a kibbutz in Żarki, near Częstochowa. During the war, he was a member of the Jewish Combat Organization command.

Szmuel Bresław

Journalist and editor of youth newspapers, was a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization’s first command. He conducted interviews for Oneg Shabbat.

Natan (Nusen) Koniński

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 total, 27 pieces of text written by him were preserved.

Mordechaj Szwarcbard

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.

Gustawa Jarecka

A writer who wrote in Polish, worked in the Judenrat and copied its documents for Oneg Shabbat. She wrote "The last stage of resettlement is death".

Nechemiasz 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.

Daniel Fligelman

A student and a refugee from Aleksandrów Kujawski, Daniel Fligelman transcribed, edited and copied testimonies about persecution of Jews in the ghettos, in the Eastern Borderlands, in labor camps. A „biting sense of humor” was a distinctive feature in his writings.

An economist and graduate of the University of Vienna, wrote numerous essays on economic life in the ghetto, compiled statistical and demographic reports, and copied Judenrat documents for Oneg Shabbat.

He was writing down and editing first-hand accounts. His diary provides a priceless record of the Great Deportation and the battles of January 1943. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he was a member of Hersz Berliński’s combat unit.

Perec Opoczyński

A journalist; in the Warsaw Ghetto, he managed to find a job as a postman. His daily wanderings through the walled district and observing the nightmare of daily existence there inspired a series of detailed reports, which he contributed to the Ringelblum Archive.

Menachem Linder

A talented scholar, dedicated with his entire heart and soul to the development of Jewish culture, founder of YIKOR, the Jewish Cultural Organization. Collected materials on the ghetto economy and prepared the economic section of Oneg Shabbat’s comprehensive report, “Two and a Half Years of War”.

Szymon Huberband

A rabbi and historian, supervised the religious section of the Jewish Self-Help department in the ghetto. Wrote essays on Jewish religious life for Oneg Shabbat.

A teacher at the Warsaw middle school Yehudiya, was a historian and Zionist activist. In the ghetto, he worked for the Jewish Social Self-Help department. He kept a journal and conducted interviews with escapees from Treblinka.

Nothing is known about at least 30 other courageous individuals who worked for Oneg Shabbat in the Warsaw ghetto. Although we do not know their names, their efforts have not been in vain. They have made an invaluable contribution to preserving the memory of the Holocaust.

© The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute