Ringelblum Archive at MHM
The AJN was given a rare view of the Ringelblum Archive at Warsaw's Jewish Historical Institute during an in-person study mission in Poland organised by the Polish government.
UNDERGROUND: The Hidden Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto, an exhibition chronicling the activities of Emanuel Ringelblum, a Jewish historian who died in the ghetto after documenting Nazi horrors, will have its first airing outside Europe at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum (MHM) this month.
From 1940 onwards, Ringelblum and others in the ghetto initiated a clandestine campaign, codenamed in Yiddish, “Oyneg Shabbes”, meeting on Saturdays, ostensibly for small observances of Shabbat, masking a courageous compilation of eyewitness dossiers.
In September, The AJN was given a rare view of the Ringelblum Archive at Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute (JHI) during an in-person study mission in Poland organised by the Polish government.
We were shown comprehensive typewritten notes detailing daily life and Nazi atrocities, alongside primary documents such as SS notices – and their draconian orders and death penalties. The archive features drawings, posters, songs, poems and plays.
The material was hidden in 10 metal boxes. Two milk cans with further reports were later hidden and there is speculation about a third unfound can.
The AJN also visited the Warsaw Ghetto Museum (WGM), due to open in 2027 on the site of a hospital where Holocaust martyr Dr Janusz Korczak and others tried saving ghetto children who were among 100,000 who died of starvation, even before deportations to Treblinka and Majdanek. (Many of the archivists perished at Treblinka). When the archives were uncovered after the war, they were initially brought to the hospital.
Katarzyna Person, the WGM’s deputy director, exhibition programming, said one of the Ringelblum boxes will be on loan to it, with accounts from the archive forming the backbone of the WGM’s galleries.
“The Ringelblum Archive tells the stories through the voices of the victims,” said Person. “The archive not only told about the Warsaw Ghetto but unearthed the voices of people who would otherwise now be silent.”
The Melbourne exhibition will include artefacts “to highlight local Holocaust survivors’ lived experiences of the Warsaw Ghetto”, said MHM senior curator Sandy Saxon.
The exhibition coincides with a visit by JHI Warsaw’s director Dr Michal Trebacz and operations director Michal Majewski. Trebacz will address the Australian Society of Polish Jews and their Descendants (ASPJ) in Melbourne on November 19.
One of the Ringelblum containers to be featured at the MHM carried the will of David Graber, 19, who helped bury the archives. “We have decided to write our wills, to collect our little material about the deportation, and to bury it all,” wrote Graber.
“We were not afraid of taking a risk. We were aware that we were making history.”
For information on the MHM exhibition visit
For information on the ASPJ event, contact Lena Fiszman at
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