Zydowski Instytut Historiczny, Ulica Tlomackie 3/5
The neo-classical Judaic Library buildings at 3/5 Tlomackie Street, east of the Tlomackie synagogue, survived the war. They now house the Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH). There is a museum here, as well as a 60,000 volume library and a small bookshop.
Between 1940 and 1942 the building, which had accommodated the Institute of Jewish Sciences, was the base of the Jewish Social Self-Help Organisation (for more on this institution see the Jewish Aid Organisations box on the War & Occupation page). It was also used for cultural events.
An important figure here during those years was Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, who is commemorated on a plaque attached to the wall. Born in 1900 into a middle-class family in eastern Galicia, in 1927 Ringelblum was awarded a doctorate by the University of Warsaw for a thesis on the history of the Jews of Warsaw in the Middle Ages. He was also a member of a left-leaning Zionist organisation. In 1930 he worked part-time with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and in November 1938 went to the Zbaszyn camp, where 6,000 Polish Jews who had been expelled from Germany were waiting to be allowed into Poland. The Polish government had taken away the passports of Polish Jews residing abroad. In 1939 a Kindertransport train took a number of children from the Zbaszyn camp to safety in England.
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During the war Ringelblum stopped teaching and worked for the Jewish Social Self-Help Organisation, for example organising soup kitchens. His work for Self-Help was a dreadful task which forced him to consider starving the majority to save a minority. He also played a part in the cultural underground and set up and ran the clandestine Oneg Shabbes (Sabbath Delight) Archive (also known as ARG). This organisation set out to keep a record of all aspects of life (and death) in the Ghetto, and to this end it began collecting and preserving common everyday objects. Ringelblum also kept a diary. in 1942 and 1943 Oneg Shabbes reports detailing the deportations from Warsaw and an eyewitness account of the Chelmno extermination camp were smuggled to the western Allies.
After the Great Deportation Ringelblum became an advocate of armed resistance. The running of the archive was taken over by the Jewish Fighting Organisation, who eventually buried it in metal containers and milk jugs. Two of the three sections of the archive have been recovered, but the third is still missing. The Oneg Shabbes archive is the most important source we have for the history of the Warsaw Ghetto.
In March 1943 Ringelblum accepted an invitation to escape from the ghetto to the 'Aryan' side. He took his wife and son with him. On the eve of Passover, 1943, he entered the ghetto on his own and walked straight into the Uprising. What happened to him during the fighting is not known, but in July 1943 he was found in the Trawniki labour camp. Two members of the Warsaw underground - a gentile man and a Jewish woman - got him out of Trawniki and back to Warsaw. Together with his family and another thirty Jews he hid in an underground refuge run by the Marczak family at 84 Grójecka Street and continued writing. On 7th March 1944 the hiding place was discovered and all the people who had taken refuge there were taken to the Pawiak prison. According to one report, Jewish prisoners who were working in the prison as skilled (and consequently protected) craftsmen proposed that Ringelblum join their group, but he rejected the offer, as they could not protect his family. A few days later Ringelblum, his wife and child and the others who had been with him were shot among the ruins of the ghetto.
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"Oneg Shabbes is not an association of scholars who compete and strive against each other. It is a single entity, a brotherhood where all help each other and strive to achieve a common goal ..." Emanuel Ringelblum |
Noach Levinson, the main character in John Hersey's novel The Wall, is clearly modelled on Ringelblum.
Much of the information about Emanuel Ringelblum on this page comes from I. Gutman - Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (Macmillan, 1995)