Photoessay #2885 - Ringelblum's archives

I continue to value my UW class about The Holocaust taught by Devin Naar.  I already knew a lot about this subject but I thought I could always hear more.  Another example that, as time goes by, seems closer and closer.  Though I was born seven years after the 'end' of this horrible era in Europe safely in the US, I know that some aspects are intertwined with my own life course.

Yesterday, I learned about something I had never heard of.  The Oynes Shabbat archive headed by historian Emanuel Ringelblum which clandestinely collected information about what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1940-1943.

As Prof. Naar says "everybody in the Warsaw Ghetto kept a diary."  A little joking but almost true.

This team worked together tirelessly to collect everything, memoirs, diaries, official notices, photographs,  When the team realized that deportation was coming in 1943, they buried their archive in milk cans and metal boxes.  Some 35,000 pages were found in 1946 and 1950.  The original estimate was of 90,000 pages.  The whereabouts of the rest is unknown.  I read one rumor that they were buried under the present day Chinese embassy but a search in 2005 found nothing.

Many Jews felt they needed to bear witness about what was happening to them.  The world needed to know and, if they were unable to escape, they could contribute to the world's knowledge.  Remembrance and knowledge speak loudly in Jewish culture.  If nobody knows about a tremendous evil, then it will continue to haunt the world and those killed died in vain.  But if a light is shown on it, the world can judge and learn.

That's what I was taught and, though it might be the same as armed resistance, many Jews felt they could die in some sort of peace if somehow the word could get out.  To save others.  To expose the Nazi's genocide.  Sadly, we know that the word did get out; the government of the Allies knew but did nothing.

I had never heard of this project before but it speaks to me.  I can see that this would give purpose to some who were trapped in the ghetto enduring sadistic cruel policies designed to dehumanizing them.  They could do this, they could document and bear witness.

A quote from a young participant:

“What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world we buried in the ground….I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and scream the truth at the world. So the world may know all….We would be the fathers, the teachers and educators of the future….May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened…in the twentieth century….May history attest for us.”
— Dawid Graber, age 19, August 2, 1942, Warsaw Ghetto

A picture of Emanuel Ringelblum who led the effort.  Same age as my grandparents.  A picture of some of the archive being discovered after the war.

Where's the rest of the archive?  Was it found and discarded or destroyed.  Or is it still in Warsaw?

We must all be alert about dehumanizing language.  Even in our own time.  Think of "Illegal alien" or "Islamist terrorist."  Is this language used to label people in such a way that they are not human, that they are a plague and must be destroyed?