Full English Edition of the Ringelblum Archive

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 1

Warsaw Ghetto. Everyday Life

„Warsaw Ghetto. Everyday Life” is a volume that opens a series of English edition of documents from the Ringelblum Archive – the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. It contains seventy-one scientific documents on various aspects of everyday life in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Edited by: Katarzyna Person
Translation from Polish: TEXTURA Foundation: Anna Brzostowska, Katarzyna Gucio, Jerzy Giebułtowski
Translation from Yddish: Helen Beer, Khayke Beburiah Wiegand, Vincent Homolka, Wojciech Tworek, Lena Watson

 

 

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 2

Accounts From Borderlands, 1939-1941

 

 

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 3

Oyneg Shabes. People and Works

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 4

Children. Clandestine education in the Warsaw Ghetto

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 5

The Last Stage of Resettlement is Death. Pomiechówek, Chełmno on the Ner, Treblinka

The volume The Last Stage of Resettlement is Death (the title taken from Gustawa Jarecka’s essay „Ostatnim etapem przesiedlenia jest śmierć”, ARG II 272 (Ring. II/197)), consists of two separate parts. The first one deals with the transit camp in Pomiechówek. The other one contains testimonies about the death camps in Chełmno nad Nerem and Treblinka.

Edited by: Barbara Engelking, Alina Skibińska, Ewa Wiatr
Translation from Polish: Anna Brzostowska, Jerzy Giebułtowski
Translation from Yiddish: Daniel Kennedy, Miriam Schulz, Ri J. Turner, Janina Wurbs, Sandra Chiritescu

 

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 6

Accounts from the General Government

The sixth volume of documents from the Ringelblum Archive (the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto) contains various accounts, personal testimonies and documents concerning the fate of the Jewish population in the towns and cities of the General Government (GG). This material has been organised in accordance with the administrative division of Poland during the German occupation into four districts: Kraków, Lublin, Radom and Warsaw.

Edited by: Aleksandra Bańkowska
Translation from Polish: Anna Brzostowska, Jerzy Giebułtowski
Translations from Yiddish: Helen Beer Rivka Schiller, Jennifer Bell, Barry Smerin, Vincent Homolka, Wojciech Tworek, Louis D. Levine, Elena Watson, Dianne Levitin

 

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 7

Accounts from the Annexed Territories: Warthegau, Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, Regierungsbezirk Zichenau, Upper Silesia

The 7th volume of documents from the Ringelblum Archive (The Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto), contains personal accounts and official documents relating to the fate of the Jewish population in the Lódź region and other parts of Poland incorporated directly into the German Third Reich. This volume gives a comprehensive and exhaustive account on the Holocaust regarding the inhabitants of the following areas (according to the German occupiers’ administrative division): Warthegau - Regierungsbezirk Hohensalza [Inowrocław], Regierungsbezirk Litzmannstadt [Łódź], Regierungsbezirk Posen [Poznań]; Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreußen - Regierungsbezirk Bromberg [Bydgoszcz], Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder [Kwidzyń]; Provinz Schlesien - Ost-Oberschlesien.

Edited by: Eleonora Bergman, Monika Polit, Magdalena Siek, Ewa Wiatr
Translation from Polish: Anna Brzostowska, Jerzy Giebułtowski
Translation from Yiddish: Jennifer Bell, Barry Smerin, Victoria Dorosz, Wojciech Tworek, Daniel Kennedy, Elena Watson, Fleur Kuhn, Rebecca Wolpe, Dianne Levitin
Translation from Hebrew: Yale Reisner

 

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 8

Diaries from the Warsaw Ghetto

The 8th volume of documents from the Ringelblum Archive (The Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto) consists of two parts. The first one is a journal of Abraham Lewin – teacher, writer, social activist. He described his reality as a Warsaw Jew, but also collected information from refugees and people resettled from other ghettos. The second part contains twenty one diaries and notes of various authors, among them many collaborators of Emanuel Ringelblum – Eliyahu Gutkowski, Yekhiel (Jechiel) Górny, Menakhem (Menachem) Mendel Kohn. Those documents are very varied and show the multitude of voices gathered in the Warsaw Ghetto. Some focus on facts, others on emotions and personal reflections. (excerpt from the Preface)

Edited by: Eleonora Bergman, Katarzyna Person, Michał Trębacz, Zofia Trębacz
Translation from Polish: Krzysztof Heymer
Translation from Yiddish: Jennifer Bell, Christopher Hutton, Dianne Levitin

 

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 9

Letters on the Shoah

This book is based on Listy o Zagładzie [Letters on the Shoah], the first volume of the Polish edition of the materials of the Ringelblum Archive, the underground archive of the Warsaw ghetto. It was published in 1997 and contained letters testifying to the dying ghettos, destruction of Jews in killing centres and mass executions. Although many of the letters concerned the individual persons and families, most often it was a way to convey information about entire communities. The editor of the volume was Ruta Sakowska (1922– 2011), a pioneering researcher and expert in the history of the Warsaw ghetto and the Oyneg Shabes group. She was an initiator of the project to publish the entire Ringelblum Archive in Polish.

Edited by: Eleonora Bergman, Maria Ferenc
Translation from Polish: Jerzy Giebułtowski, Maria Ferenc
Translation from Yiddish: Eleonora Bergman, Raphael Halff, Michael C. Steinlauf, Lena Watson
Translation from German: Maria Ferenc, Jerzy Giebułtowski, Wojciech Tworek

 

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 10

The Judenrat in Warsaw 1939–1943

This publication is the English version of volume 12 of the Polish edition of the Ringelblum Archive, entitled Rada Żydowska w Warszawie (1939–1943), and contains almost all the documents relating to this institution that have survived in the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Judenrat, which organised the lives of almost half a million Jews, was itself an extremely vast organism. By the end of 1940 it employed some 1,600 officials, three times as many as the Jewish Community on the eve of the war. A powerful organ of the Judenrat was the Jewish Order Service, which had nearly 2,000 people in the summer of 1942.

The documents published in this volume date from the spring of 1940 to January 1943 and relate to the operations of over twenty departments of the Council. They include extensive correspondence between the Judenrat and superior German institutions, as well as internal documents, containing material from various departments, such as the daily orders of Jewish Police Commander Jozef Szerynski and reports prepared by the Statistics Department, in which dry figures show the tragedy of the starving and tormented Jewish residents of Warsaw.

Edited by: Marta Janczewska, Eleonora Bergman
Translation from Polish: Anna Brzostowska, Jerzy Giebułtowski
Translation from Yiddish: Daniel Kennedy

 

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 11

 Forced Labour Camps 

This publication is based on the Polish edition of volume 24 of the Polish edition of the Ringelblum Archive, entitled „Obozy pracy przymusowej”. The Germans used the free (or almost free) Jewish labour from the first days of the occupation, though the forms of its organisation changed over time. The accompanying terror and the primacy of ideology over economic calculus remained constant elements. The development of the camp network in the territory of the General Government was related to three issues: desire to make economical use of the conquered territories (with drainage camps, agricultural camps, factories and mines), preparations for the war with the USSR (with road construction camps) and strengthening the armed potential of the Reich (with camps in armament factories).

According to the brochure Nazi Camps in Polish Territories 1939–1945, there were about 450 forced labour camps for Jews operating in Poland at various times. The vast majority of documents in this volume are accounts of witnesses handwritten or submitted orally, and then edited by the Oyneg Shabes associates. It also includes official documents preserved in the Archives, such as reports and accounts by the ŻSS, the Joint (Reichman and Goldman) and the Warsaw Judenrat (Braff) delegates to the camps. Almost all of the documents date from between the summer of 1940 and the summer of 1941, a time when the Germans were massively setting up temporary labour camps.

Edited by: Marta Janczewska, Eleonora Bergman
Translation from Polish and German: Krzysztof Heymer, Victoria Dorosz
Translation from Yiddish: Jennifer Bell, Dianne Levitin, Raphael Halff, Daniel Kennedy

 

 

The Ringelblum Archive. Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, vol. 12a, vol. 12b

Jewish Social Self-Help in Warsaw (1939-1943)

This publication, divided into two parts, is based on volume 27 of the Polish edition of the Ringelblum Archive, entitled Jewish Social Self-Help in Warsaw (1939–1943).

A welfare organisation operating in Warsaw from September 1939, over time expanded into an enormous structural association. Its aim was to organise the Warsaw ghetto society and was mobilised to bring aid to the neediest. In the field of social welfare, ŻSS also held patronage over educational, cultural and scholarly activities, organised employment, mediated contacts with people’s relatives abroad, supported underground political activities and had its own administration through a system of district and house committees. In contrast to other localities, ŻSS in Warsaw and its agencies were never fully subordinated to the Judenrat, while remaining strongly opposed to its policies.

This volume contains official documentation of various departments and agencies of the KK and ŻSS in Warsaw from the time of its establishment in September 1939 until the winter of 1942/43, when attempts were made to rebuild self-help cells after the so-called Grossaktion. This collection consists mainly of extensive reports, plans, official notes, correspondence, minutes of meetings, financial settlements, leaflets and appeals. The materials provide a full overview of the activities of the ŻSS.

Edited by: Aleksandra Bańkowska
Translation from Polish: Katarzyna Gucio, Krzysztof Heymer
Translation from Yiddish: Jennifer Bell, Ollie Elkus, Daniel Kennedy, Dianne Levitin, Michael Steinlauf
Translations from German: Marta Tycner, Krzysztof Heymer

 

 

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Translated and published with the support of the Taube Philanthropies