The Secret Archive: The Intellectual Resistance Against Nazi Germany. by Hannah Southern

The new central government of occupied Poland established nearly 600 ghettos across the country, of which the largest ghetto not only in Poland, but in Europe was the Warsaw Ghetto. The Ghetto was established in November 1940, and sealed on November 15th 1940 imprisoning Warsaw’s Jewish population within its walls. It was guarded heavily, and any civilian passing would be searched, with the death penalty awaiting anyone attempting to hide or help Jews. Life changed drastically for the people of Warsaw, with the establishment of the Ghetto over 113,000 Polish people living in Warsaw were forced to move into designated parts of the city. The Ghetto covered an area of 307 hectares, and at its greatest density the Ghetto imprisoned about 450,000 people meaning that 33% of the population was packed into 3% of the city. Even Jewish converts to Christianity, and other Jewish individuals who did not consider themselves Jewish, were forced to live within its walls. Life in the Ghetto robbed people of their security, health and pre-war life. Despite this, the yearning for normality; a life with friends and loved ones led to the formation of communities in the form of underground school groups, social kitchens, theatre productions, lectures and intellectual groups all within the walls of the Ghetto. It was within the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto the underground archive was founded and led by historian, public figure and activist Emanuel Ringelblum. Ringelblum had been documenting the events of Warsaw shortly after the occupation of Poland. He chronicled not only the everyday changes for residents of Warsaw, but the social, economic and political changes for Jews under Nazi rule. “In the evenings I noted everything down I had heard during the day and added my own comments. The war produced rapid changes in Jewish life in the towns of Poland. Each day was different from the next. It was therefore important to capture every event in the heat of the moment. When it was still fresh and pulsating”. Shortly after Ringelblum, his wife and child were forcibly resettled at the ghetto, he established a team estimated at 60 people which made up the secret archive group. Of 30 of its members, unfortunately nothing is known. However, all members risked their lives to contribute to the archive and though their names have been lost, their deeds are remembered. Of the 30 members that information has survived, we see a varied group of expertise, skills and contributions, among them: Hersz Wasser; Ringelblum’s closest colleague. Wasser survived the war and made it possible for the first cache of documentation to be unearthed in 1946; Rachela Auerbach who contributed to the archive through her skills as a journalist, writer and translator-she was essential in compiling documentation and writing reports. Szmuel Winter who financially supported the Oneg Shabbat, and made it possible for a telephone to be installed and connected to the ‘Aryan’ side of Warsaw; Henryka Lazowertowna who wrote about the poorest families in the ghetto and helped refugees, Eliasz Gutkowski a historian who in addition to his work with the Oneg Shabbat also taught Jewish history in the underground middle school; and Israel Licthensztajn and David Graber who in 1942, together hid the first part of the archive in 10 metal boxes buried in a cellar. The group meetings were held on Saturday’s hence the name Oneg Shabbat –the Joy of Sabbath. The aim of the Oneg Shabbat was to provide the world with a picture of the Jewish population and their experiences, and suffering under the Nazi regime. Members of the Oneg Shabbat risked their lives to collect as much documentation as possible. Not only did they risk death at the hands of the Nazis if they were caught, but they would have been in close proximity to diseases while interviewing people. The Nazi’s were prolific in the documentation of the Jews through photographs, propaganda videos (The Eternal Jew 1940), and written accounts; the Oneg Shabbt challenged this biased account, and were not only determined to document and show the world and future generations the side of the Jewish people, but to preserve Jewish memory and history that the Nazis were eradicating.

Their aim was to reveal the whole truth. Newspapers, letters, medical reports detailing the spread of typhus, early testimonies from Jewish soldiers fighting in the first days of the offensive, letters and diary entries from children detailing the abduction of parents forced to work at labour camps; details of smuggling, and schedules of school classes were collected as evidence. Everyone wrote and documented from teachers, writers and artists. Gela Seksztajn painting’s were discovered in the Oneg Shabbat and are somewhat unique in the archive’s collection as she avoided writing about death and the struggle Jews faced in the ghetto; she instead painted children. As rumours of liquidation and mass deportation spread, she was tasked with choosing the art that would survive the war, and to encase them in metal boxes as part of the Oneg Shabbat legacy. It is thought that Gela and her family perished in the Ghetto uprising. The aim of the archive was not only to collect documentation but to inform the world of the atrocities happening in occupied territories. Found within the archive was a transcript of a BBC broadcast programme. Documentation from the Oneg Shabbat (amongst other organisations), reached BBC broadcasting agencies, through the Polish government in London. In response the BBC broadcast a programme describing the atrocities and the Holocaust of Jews. Members of the archive listened to the programme together and Eliasz Gutkowski (one of the secretaries of the archive), wrote of the event in his diary 1942. “A very sensational news has reached the ghetto today. Yesterday, on Friday, at five in the morning, the London radio broadcast a special program about the disappearance of Jews in Polish and Russian territories. The names of cities (such as Vilnius, Rivne, Hancewicze and many others) are given with numbers that amount to tens of thousands of victims. The broadcast ended with a call to Jewish society and a deep faith that the moment of deliverance and revenge is near". The archive also contained examples of acts of resistance within everyday life in the Ghetto. In his diary entry from March 1941, Emanuel Ringelblum notes ‘In a Jewish courtyard there is a secret apartment, where they are studying the secret texts. One is reading a collection of ethical teachings, another recites psalms, the third is going through pages of the Talmund. The Nazi’s had banned and burnt literature since the 1930’s, and life in the ghetto was no exception. Anti-Nazi publications resulted in death and imprisonment; to keep a diary and compile evidence was equally punishable. Libraries were forbidden as was reading Jewish texts and producing any form of literature. Ringelblum described in his personal diary the response of the ban on information and the distribution of literature “Political publications sprouted like mushrooms after the rain ”. People printed underground publications that were distributed across Warsaw and the entire country offering people information on the ghettos and camps. Reading and writing was not only an act of resistance but a form of escape from the brutality of life in the Ghetto. Reading, writing and saving literature was an act of culture and salvation, something that people were prepared to die for.

Basia Temkin-Bermanowa, who ran a children’s library in the ghetto witnessed him walking the ghetto streets hoping to find a book to rescue. Szur’s home was filled with books. In 1942 he received a relocation order; unable to leave his books behind he committed suicide. The discovery of the archive also provided testimonies from people outside of Warsaw; from towns and smaller villages which provided the archive with valuable information on what was happening outside of Warsaw and the ghettos. Testimonies arrived from people who had escaped from transportation and death and labour camps. Jakub Krzepicki was of one of 300,000 Jews transported to Treblinka. He escaped from the camp and made his way back to Warsaw, where he re-entered the ghetto. Jakub had been assigned the job of removing and burying the remains of those who had perished in the gas chambers. He had managed to escape when he was assigned the additional job of loading a train with the clothes of those who had been murdered. He managed to hide in one of the train compartments; jumping out of the transport a safe distance away from Treblinka, and made his way to Warsaw. He provided the Oneg Shabbat with 320 pages worth of information on the death camps including a hand drawn map of Treblinka. He described how ‘’the camp was filled with mass, omnipresent death supported by terror. Treblinka resembled a monstrous, corpse-producing factory. Most victims would not undergo a selection. Sentenced in bulk, they were stripped of what little dignity they had left”. His account was written down by Rachela Auerbach, who included her own additional notes. It was hidden in the second cache of the archive along with the map of Treblinka and with a photograph of Jabuk. Jakub’s testimony can only have served as a confirmation for the members of Oneg Shabbat, on how important the archive was. The account must have illustrated what may remain of them all would be the words that they had collected in the archive. It must have shown them a glimpse into the fate that possibly awaited them all. By 1942 the first collection of the archive was placed in metal boxes and was buried in a cellar. The rumours of mass deportation and liquidations meant that it was essential for the group to start hiding everything they had worked so hard to gather. Ringelblum assigned the first part of the collection to his trusted friend and Oneg Shabbat member Israel Licthensztajn. “I have been charged with the roll of the guardian of the access gate. I hid the material. Only I knew and my friend Hersch Wasser (Oneg Shabbat member) know where the place is. It is well hidden. I do not ask for thanks. Only to be remembered”. By February 1943, the second part of the archive was packed and stored into two large mental milk cans. The third part of the archive (supposedly containing documents about Jewish fighters and preparations for the uprising) was hidden the night before the Ghetto Uprising, however, unfortunately it has not been found. On 20th April 1943 (the date of Hitler’s birthday), the Ghetto was completely surrounded. Himmler, as a gift to the Fuhrer wanted to offer the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto as a birthday present. For some time civilians in the ghetto had begun to construct bunkers some of which had enough supplies to last several months, others had according to accounts several exits. As the resistance groups and civilians of the ghetto fought against the Nazis', Emanuel with his wife and small son hid in the Bunker at 81 Grojecka Street along with 40 other Jews. Alicja Iwanska a Polish civilian wrote in a letter describing Warsaw at the time of the Ghetto Uprising. ‘The Ghetto is burning. Continuous explosions-yet people calmly go about their business. No one even looks around on hearing gunfire and the explosions’. By March 1944, after months of hiding, Emanuel and the others were betrayed. The Nazi’s surrounded the bunker, ordering everyone out. They were led to the ruins of the Warsaw Getto, where Emanuel, his wife and his son were shot. Of the 60 people that made up the Oneg Shabbat members, three survived the war: Herz Wasser, his wife Bluma and Rachela Auerbach. September 1946, a team of researchers along with Herz Wasser and Racheal Auerbach unearthed the first part of the Oneg Shabbat archive. Many documents and photographs in the archive were lost to water damage and mould. Nonetheless, about 25,000-35,000 documents have survived. The second part of the archive was found accidentally in 1950, when road works were taking place. The archive sealed in milk cans survived in much better condition that the first. The archive has not only provided accounts of the appalling conditions people faced in the ghetto, it provided an archive that preserved Jewish life, intellect, history and testimony all of which the Nazis were trying to eradicate. Emanuel considered it a great achievement that during the years it was being created, the Nazis never discovered the Oneg Shabbat. Today it survives as the most important testimony to the Holocaust and Polish Jews, and has been inscribed on the UNESCO memory of the world list. The Oneg Shabbat Program works to preserve the archive which is available to the public, and continues their work on educating people of the importance, and uniqnuess of the archive, its creators and the Jewish voice. The archive is now on permanent display at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the very building that the group would meet every Sabbath day.