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

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Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, theWarsaw Ghetto, andthe OynegShabes Archive Samuel D. Kassow In 1940the historian Emanuel Ringelblum established a clandestine organization , code named Oyneg Shabes, in Nazi-occupied Warsaw to study and document all facets of Jewish life in wartime Poland and to compile an archive that would preserve this history for posterity. As the Final Solution unfolded, although decimated by murders and deportations, the group persevered in its work until the spring of 1943. Of its more than 60 members, only three survived. Ringelblum and his family perished in March 1944. But before he died, he managed to hide thousands of documents in milk cans and tin boxes. Searchers found two of these buried caches in 1946 and 1950. Who Will Write Our History? tells the gripping story of Ringelblum and his determination to use historical scholarship and the collection of documents to resist Nazi oppression. The Germans, confident of victory, assumed that they would determine how future generations remembered the Jews. Through his heroic efforts, Ringelblum insured that even if he and his comrades perished, future generations would rely on Jewish and not Nazi sources to study the last chapters of Polish Jewry. Holocaust Judaica “Twomajorhistoriansmeetinthisbook: onenamedRingelblum,theothernamedKassow. “Drawing on his passion for the past, his revolutionary ethos, his organizational genius, not to speak of his selfdiscipline , unflagging energy, and courage, Emanuel Ringelblum recorded, compiled, and preserved the last chapter of Polish Jewry. “Drawing on his vast erudition and moral imagination, Samuel Kassow has rescued this incomparable story. Thanks to him, the Oyneg Shabes Archive is revealed to be the single greatest memory site of East European Jewry.” —David G. Roskies, author of Against the Apocalypse “Emanuel Ringelblum was the main architect of the underground archive in the Warsaw ghetto created to record the sufferings of the nearly half a million Jews confined there. This definitive biography illuminates not only his remarkable achievements and charismatic personality but also the tragic fate which he shared with Warsaw Jewry.” —Antony Polonsky, editor of Polin INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis Who Will Write Our History? Kassow $34.95 Samuel D. Kassow is the Charles Northam Professor of History at Trinity College. He is author of Students, Professors, and the State in Tsarist Russia, 1884–1917 and editor (with Edith W. Clowes and James L. West) of Between Tsar and People: The Search for a Public Identity in Tsarist Russia. He has lectured on Russian and Jewish history in many countries, including Israel, Russia, and Poland. The Helen and Martin Schwartz Lectures in Jewish Studies Jacket illustrations: (top) courtesy of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem; (bottom and background) courtesy of Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw http://iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796 INDIANA Who Will Write Our History? The Helen and Martin Schwartz Lectures in Jewish Studies Sponsored by the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program Indiana University Who Will Write Our History? Samuel D. K assow Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive Published with the generous support of the Helen and Martin Schwartz Endowment. This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail iuporder@indiana.edu© 2007 by Samuel D. Kassow All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kassow, Samuel D. Who will write our history? : Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive / Samuel D. Kassow. p. cm. — (The Helen and Martin Schwartz lectures in Jewish studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-253-34908-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Jews—Persecutions—Poland—Warsaw. 2. Oyneg Shabes (Group) 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Poland—Warsaw—History. 4...