Oneg Shabbat

The secret archives of the Warsaw ghetto, organized by the historian Emanuel Ringelblum, was known by its code name, Oneg Shabbat. The term, which refers to the traditional Sabbath gathering of members of the community, was applied to the archives because its organizers held their regular, clandestine meetings on the Sabbath. Begun as a chronicle by Ringelblum in October 1939, the archives were transformed into an organized underground operation with several dozen contributors after the sealing of the ghetto in November 1940. Financed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), its main objective was to document the events transpiring in the Warsaw ghetto and in occupied Poland in general by means of descriptive reports, summaries of oral testimony, minutes of meetings, diary entries, newspaper articles, and German proclamations. The holdings of the archives were buried in three parts. The first set of documents was placed in 10 tin boxes by the teacher Izrael Lichtensztajn and two of his former students, Dawid Graber and Nachum Grzywacz. On August 3, 1942, the boxes were buried in a bunker beneath the former public school building where Lichtensztajn had taught at 68 Nowolipki Street.

“In February 1943 Ringelblum and Lichtensztajn placed the second part of the archives in two large milk cans and buried them beneath the same building.” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) On April 18, 1943, just one day before the start of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the third and final part of the archives was placed in a cylindrical metal box and buried beneath a building located at 34 Swietojerska Street.