page_title: Ringelblum Archive
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ringelblum Archive / History
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Trzy z dziesięciu metalowych skrzynek oraz dwie bański mleczarskie, w których ukryto Archiwum Ringelbluma (Oneg szabat)
context_page_description: The Ringelblum Archive is a collection of documents from the World War II Warsaw Ghetto, collected and preserved by a group known by the codename Oyneg Shabbos, led by Jewish historian Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum. The group, which included historians, writers, rabbis, and social workers, was dedicated to chronicling life in the Ghetto during the German occupation. They worked as a team, collecting documents and soliciting testimonies and reports from dozens of volunteers of all ages. The materials submitted included essays, diaries, drawings, wall posters, and other materials describing life in the Ghetto. The collecting work began in September 1939 and ended in January 1943.
  Today the discovered part of the collection, containing some 6,000 documents, is housed in Warsaw at the Jewish Historical Institute.
context_section_description: The members of Oyneg Shabbos initially collected the material with the intention that they would write a book after the war about the horrors they had witnessed. The Warsaw Ghetto was sealed on November 16, 1940. As the pace of deportations increased, and it became clear that the destination was the Treblinka death camp and few Jewish Varsovians were likely to survive, Ringelblum had the archives stored in three milk cans and ten metal boxes, which were then buried in three places in the Ghetto. Two of the canisters, containing thousands of documents, were unearthed on 18 September 1946 and a further ten boxes on 1 December 1950. The third cache is rumored to be buried beneath what is now the Chinese Embassy in Warsaw but a search in 2005 failed to locate the missing archival material.
  On January 19, 1942, an escaped inmate from the Chelmno extermination camp, Jacob Grojanowski, reached the Warsaw Ghetto, where he gave detailed information about the camp to the Oneg Shabbat group. His report, which became known as the Grojanowski Report, was smuggled out of the ghetto through the channels of the Polish underground, reached London and was published by June.
  All but three members of the Oyneg Shabbos were murdered in the genocides. Emanuel Ringelblum escaped the ghetto, but continued to return to work on the archives. In 1944 Ringelblum and his family were discovered and were executed along with those who hid them. After the war, Rokhl Auerbakh, one of the three surviving members of Oyneg Shabes, initiated the search for and excavation of the buried chronicles.
caption: Three boxes and two milk cans used to store the archive
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