Publishing Department

The 8th volume of documents from the Ringelblum Archive (The Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto) consists of two parts. The first one is a journal of Abraham Lewin – teacher, writer, social activist. He described his reality as a Warsaw Jew, but also collected information from refugees and people resettled from other ghettos. The second part contains twenty one diaries and notes of various authors, among them many collaborators of Emanuel Ringelblum – Eliyahu Gutkowski, Yekhiel (Jechiel) Górny, Menakhem (Menachem) Mendel Kohn. Those documents are very varied and show the multitude of voices gathered in the Warsaw Ghetto. Some focus on facts, others on emotions and personal reflections. (excerpt from the Preface)

27 November 1942

The issue of survival, that is, the question of bread, is very pressing in the ghetto. Those who work in the factories or for the Germans in the placówki or in the WE receive a quarter or half a kilo of bread and one or two portions of soup six times a week. A working person can’t live on this, especially if he has dependent children or elderly parents who by some miracle have not been killed and have not been deported to Treblinka. What are those Jews who are still alive supposed to do and how are they supposed to live?...

– excerpt from the Abraham Lewin’ diary  

Publication co-financed by the Claims Conference and Taube Philantropies