The guests at the event were people associated with the research of Jewish history from both the American and the Polish milieu. Among them were Ronald Lauder with his wife, Prof. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, or donor Irene Pletka. Also attending were Mateusz Sakowicz – Poland’s Consul General in New York, Jakub Świetlik – Director of the Polish Cultural Institute New York, and representatives of other Polish institutions based in NYC.
Our Institute was represented by the Director, Dr. Michał Trębacz, and Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz, the curator of the exhibition and Deputy Director for Programme.
“Our exhibition marks this moment when exactly 80 years ago those documents that you’re going to see in a moment in the central part of the exhibition miraculously survived, were found by the survivors, among the Hersz Wasser and Rachel Auerbach – who together with Bluma Wasser were the only members of the whole Oyneg Shabes group that survived, excavated and restored with a great care and attention,” said Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz, the curator of the exhibition and Deputy Director for Programme.
“Please imagine postwar Warsaw, a city almost completely destroyed – marked by the tragedy of two uprisings. Amid this sea of ruins, a handful of Holocaust survivors search for – as they called it – a treasure. Hidden beneath the ruins of the ghetto is an archive they helped create. They search for it because they recognize its value. ‘Remember! A national treasure lies there under the ruins. The Ringelblum Archive is there. [...] Even if there are five floors of ruins, we must find the Archive,’” remarked Dr. Michał Trębacz, Director of the JHI.
The title of the exhibition “Will these words reach you?” is a quote from the diary by Lejzor Czarnobroda, who in the middle of the mass extermination action of the WG wrote:
Will these words reach you who have remained?
Faithful Friend, will you bring them to light?
Because for you I write.
From the diary of Lejzor Czarnobroda, August 28, 1942
Lejzor wasn’t a key member of the Oyneg Shabes group. He was one of the contributors of testimonies preserved in the Archive.
In this short passage he grasped the essence and one of the main ideas of the Oyneg Shabes outstanding work. The idea of bearing witness to the fate of Jews condemned to annihilation, preserving that testimony, and passing it on to future generations recurs throughout the Archive’s documents.
The exhibition presents original artefacts from the Ringelblum Archive accompanied by the story of how this unique collection of documents was assembled, buried, and recovered after the war, as well as the fates of the people who created it. The exhibits include a page from Ringelblum’s diary written in Yiddish or the German ordinance of July 22, 1942, on the mass deportation of Jews from Warsaw. Officially, the campaign was described as “resettlement to the East,” but in reality it entailed mass transports to the death camp in Treblinka.
The exhibition curators are Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz, Deputy Director for Programme at the JHI, and Marta Janczewska, Deputy Head of the Research Department at the JHI. The managing curator is Marta Sarnowska, Head of the Education Department at the JHI.
The exhibition will be on display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York until February 14, 2027.
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