Who Will Write Our History?: Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive

Notes

401 introduction 1. In Yiddish Oyneg Shabes (Oneg Shabbat in Hebrew) literally means the “Joy of the Sabbath.” Ringelblum used this code name for the archive, because the staff usually held its meetings on Saturday afternoons. 2. See Rachel Auerbach, “Vi azoy iz oysgegrobn gevorn der Ringelblum Arkhiv,” Arbeter vort, June 27, 1947. 3. Rachel Auerbach, Varshever tsvoes (Tel Aviv, 1974), p. 196. Ringelblum had told Auerbach that someone on the Aryan side had been informed about where the archive had been hidden. But sources indicate that after the war no one came forward except Wasser to locate the archive. Auerbach herself recalls that during this meeting with Ringelblum, which took place in early 1943, Ringelblum did not reveal where the archive was buried and she did not ask. “Legende” was a term historians used to indicate the description and location of a historical document. But it also meant “legend.” 4. The organization was founded in 1925 in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), as the Yiddish Scientific Institute and is now the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, headquartered in New York City since 1940. 5. Letter from Emanuel Ringelblum to Adolf Berman, March 1, 1944, Berman File, no. 358, Ghetto Fighters Museum Archive (Arkhiyon Beit Lohamei Ha-getaot); henceforth , GFMA. In this same letter Ringelblum expressed the hope that the archive would eventually be sent to the YIVO: “W razie gdyby nikt z nas nie przeżył wojny należałoby już teraz wymienić Rafała oraz ciocię IWO jako spadkobierców. Niech przynajmniej to po nas zostanie, naturalnie że włączam tu skład pod 68” [If none of us survives the war, then it would be good to appoint Rafał or Aunt YIVO as the heirs. At least let that remain after we are gone, and of course I am including the collection under 68]. The number 68 refers to where the archive is hidden, and Rafał to the Jewish historian Rafael Mahler who was then in New York. At the height of the Great Deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto, the Oyneg Shabes discussed the possibility that the archive might find its way to the YIVO after the war. See Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto (Oxford, 1988), p. 141; diary entry of July 29, 1942. notes The originals of the Ringelblum Archive are in the ZIH in Warsaw, with copies of most documents in Yad Vashem Archive in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Often a particular copy might be more legible in one archive than in another and in some cases, to read a particular file, one needed to consult all three archives. Therefore, all cites from the Ringelblum archive will follow the ZIH citation system, explained in note 8, page 402, even though documents actually came from all three archives. 6. Auerbach, “Vi azoy iz oysgegrobn gevorn.” 7. Israel Lichtenstein, like Ringelblum, was a longtime member of the Warsaw Left Poalei Zion organization. Born in Radzyń in 1904, Lichtenstein studied in the Vilna Yiddish Teachers Seminar. After moving to Warsaw in 1932, he headed the Borochov school and contributed to several Yiddish journals including Literarishe Bleter and the children’s magazine Grininke Boymelekh. 8. Ringelblum Archive, part I, no. 132. Reprinted in Joseph Kermish, ed., To Live with Honor and Die with Honor: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives Oyneg Shabbath (Jerusalem, 1986), p. 66. Loyal to his political movement until the very end, Graber asked that those who find the archive send it to a Borochov Museum in a “United Soviets of Palestine.” (Hereafter, AR I refers to the first part of the Ringelblum Archive; AR II refers to the second part. The document numbers were those established by the catalogue of the Jewish Historical Institute [ZIH] in Warsaw. Although a new catalogue is being issued, with some new numeration, it has appeared too late to be used in this present work.) 9. Gele Sekstein grew up in a poor Warsaw neighborhood and was orphaned at an early age. Her artistic talents attracted the attention of her teachers at the Bund’s Grosser school, where she received her primary education. The noted Yiddish writer I. J. Singer also noticed her gifts and helped her exhibit her work. Eventually she became an art teacher in the Borochov school in Warsaw. Her prewar portraits of Jewish children, many drawn in the famous Medem Sanitarium, earned her a growing reputation. As her husband emphasized, she...