Exhibitions

It is a new traveling exhibition created by the Jewish Historical Institute. Its international route started in New York, launched on the day marking the 80th anniversary of discovering the first part of the Archive in the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto. 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. 

Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto faced a daily struggle for their lives and had to fight to survive and see the next day, week, or month. They lacked any stability, uncertain of what further forms of oppression and discrimination awaited them at the hands of the Germans. They feared for their own and their close ones’ lives. As the time passed, they started to realize ever more clearly that they were unlikely to survive. They were unable to stop the Holocaust, but they could leave behind a record of their existence. 

The Oyneg Shabes group founded by Emanuel Ringelblum decided to document the suffering and death of the Jewish community. Working in the tragic reality of the Warsaw ghetto, several dozen brave men and women found enough strength and determination in themselves to tell the story of Jews in their own words. They refused to let the only surviving version of their fate be written by their oppressor. They were people from disparate backgrounds, often with conflicting beliefs and worldviews. They overcame these differences to work together, united by a single idea. 

The exhibition will be displayed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York until February 14, 2027.  

The traveling exhibition titled “Will These Words Reach You? The Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto” was developed by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw in cooperation with the Museum of Jewish Heritage – a Living Memorial to the Holocaust, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland. The project was financed by Taube Philantrophies, Irene Kronhill Pletka, and the Kronhill Pletka Foundation, with additional support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Polish Cultural Institute New York. 

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. 

Exhibition curators: Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz, Marta Janczewska 

Managing curator: Marta Sarnowska 

Photos: Fot. Rebecca Greenfield