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Who Will Write Our History?: Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive
In 1940, the historian Emanuel Ringelblum established a clandestine organization, code named Oyneg Shabes, in Nazi-occupied Warsaw to study and document all facets of Jewish life in wartime Poland and to compile an archive that would preserve this history for posterity. As the Final Solution unfolded, although decimated by murders and deportations, the group persevered in its work until the spring of 1943. Of its more than 60 members, only three survived. Ringelblum and his family perished in March 1944. But before he died, he managed to hide thousands of documents in milk cans and tin boxes. Searchers found two of these buried caches in 1946 and 1950.
Who Will Write Our History tells the gripping story of Ringelblum and his determination to use historical scholarship and the collection of documents to resist Nazi oppression.
Who Will Write Our History tells the gripping story of Ringelblum and his determination to use historical scholarship and the collection of documents to resist Nazi oppression.
568 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2007
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August 22, 2018
The Oyneg Shabes was the codename for a group of individuals who clandestinely chronicled life in the Warsaw Ghetto. The secret cache of documents was buried in milk cans just before the great deportation action took place when the Nazis murdered the vast majority of Warsaw's Jews. This is the compelling and moving story of some of the individuals who created the archive which was partially dug up after the war. It particularly focuses on the group's leader, Emanuel Ringelblum.
The Nazi's capture of Ringelblum perhaps perfectly demonstrates the depravity to which human nature had sunk in those years. A kind-hearted Pole was hiding Ringelblum, his family and a dozen others in a bunker beneath his greenhouse. However, when he fell out with his girlfriend she took revenge by denouncing him to the Gestapo. He was beaten and killed by the Germans and all the hidden Jews were executed. Makes you wonder how this young woman lived with herself afterwards. It also demonstrates how critical momentary choices were during the war. Ringelblum wanted to hide in another house but his wife overruled him. The people who hid in Ringelblum's chosen house all survived the war.
The Nazi's capture of Ringelblum perhaps perfectly demonstrates the depravity to which human nature had sunk in those years. A kind-hearted Pole was hiding Ringelblum, his family and a dozen others in a bunker beneath his greenhouse. However, when he fell out with his girlfriend she took revenge by denouncing him to the Gestapo. He was beaten and killed by the Germans and all the hidden Jews were executed. Makes you wonder how this young woman lived with herself afterwards. It also demonstrates how critical momentary choices were during the war. Ringelblum wanted to hide in another house but his wife overruled him. The people who hid in Ringelblum's chosen house all survived the war.
November 11, 2011
I can't say it better than Peter Miller did in the New Republic:
"This may well be the most important book about history that anyone will ever read. It is also a very important book of history, telling the story of an extraordinary research project in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1940 and 1943. As a tale about why doing history matters, Samuel D. Kassow's book has few equals in our collective record. Marc Bloch, arrested by Klaus Barbie's henchmen and executed in 1944, has become the martyrsaint of modern history, and his book The Historian's Craft, left incomplete and published posthumously, has emerged as our time's classic work on the meaning of doing history. Now, with the publication of Who Will Write Our History?, Marc Bloch will have to share his great and dark honor with Emanuel Ringelblum. Like Bloch, Ringelblum is a hero of history and a hero of historiography."
"This may well be the most important book about history that anyone will ever read. It is also a very important book of history, telling the story of an extraordinary research project in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1940 and 1943. As a tale about why doing history matters, Samuel D. Kassow's book has few equals in our collective record. Marc Bloch, arrested by Klaus Barbie's henchmen and executed in 1944, has become the martyrsaint of modern history, and his book The Historian's Craft, left incomplete and published posthumously, has emerged as our time's classic work on the meaning of doing history. Now, with the publication of Who Will Write Our History?, Marc Bloch will have to share his great and dark honor with Emanuel Ringelblum. Like Bloch, Ringelblum is a hero of history and a hero of historiography."
November 10, 2011
The story of the historian Emanuel Ringelblum who organized ordinary people to write what was happening from day to day in the terrible life they lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, and then to hide the archives, is truly awe-inspiring. There have been less than complimentary compliments from some reviewers about the first chapters of Samuel D. Kassow's book, which concentrate on the history of 1930s Poland and the ideological battles between the advocates of Yiddish or Hebrew and the Polish-language "assimilationists", however I found much of this material new and worthwhile. Although the first chapters may be a little too long, their usefulness is shown later in the book, if you wish to understand how different from each other were the people thrown together in the ghetto. Much of what happened between the different Jewish political groups in 1930s Poland, and in the Warsaw Ghetto itself, had an impact on how Israel developed later. The book has just been translated into French and I have already bought two copies to offer to friends.
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April 23, 2017This was an extremely difficult read. I suppose that wouldn't surprise anyone. I don't just mean, however, that it was difficult to read about atrocities from the Holocaust. I found this book difficult to read in more ways than that obvious one which I suspect is evidenced by the fact that it took me most of a year to finish. The tiny print on big pages didn't help; this book was dense but it's more than that. I have refrained from giving this book a star review because if ever there was a book that doesn't deserve a reductive set of stars pinned to it to summarise a complex opinion regarding it, it's this book. I had very mixed emotions about this book, but many of these were my own fault and so I certainly am not about to drag down its communal rating over my own quibbles with a book that moved me to tears or having to put the book down on several occasions.
This book had tonnes of potential but I struggled most of all with the way it was put together. The book, at its core, primarily deals with a rather short period of time, from the outbreak of World War II in 1939, to the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 following the ghetto uprising of that same year. The book deals with these years under a number of different headings and, therefore, often retells the same stories through different lenses revealing different details. Once, the story might be told with economic struggles to provide food for the Warsaw Ghetto's many inhabitants in mind, next it might be told with tensions between the various political factions that existed within the ghetto in mind, next it might focus on the Great Deportation. This all makes sense on the surface. The manner in which it's dealt with, however, lets the book down. The telling of the story with the economic struggle to provide food without any obvious source of income might overlap with the timeframe during which the Great Deportation took place and so the author might mention the Umschlagplatz at which many of the Deportation's most tragic scenes took place. The author, however, might not explain what the Umschlagplatz actually was until several chapters later until he decides to write his chapter about events at the Umschlagplatz. This chapter dealing with the Umschlagplatz will begin with a brief explanation of the term and the place in question right at the start of the chapter, but by the time you get to this explanation you've been encountering the term for several chapters and have already had to wiki it. It was an irritating facet that occurred on a number of occasions that could easily have been avoided with some editorial input. To say "for more on the Umschlagplatz, see chapter 4" is absolutely fine but to keep the most basic of explanations regarding said place until chapter 4 if you're going to mention it in chapters 1, 2, and 3, is senseless.
I picked this book up in something of a self-imposed hurry in a museum in Munich. I didn't really give it much of a thumbing through. I just wanted to buy a book in English about the Holocaust while I was in this museum and I thought this book looked potentially quite moving. The idea of reading about a collection of letters and documents from the Warsaw Ghetto to me suggested that I might get to read some very poignant primary sources that would really communicate more clearly the experience of people on the ground during that awful time. I didn't honestly expect, under the Penguin label, to end up picking up such a heavy historical document. I realistically expected more popular non-fiction than historical textbook. This book is heavily annotated and provides constant references to the original Yiddish or Polish to show how the author arrived at the translation from the primary source that he did. Needless to say this was lost on me. That selecting the wrong book for me is my own fault goes without saying, however, I do feel that the book would have been improved by the direct quotation of more of the primary sources (translated of course). I felt while reading it that the book was most effective when quoting more, directly from the people in question, rather than paraphrasing and providing an annotation telling you where to find the original source, be it in the Oyneg Shabes archive itself or in someone else's book.
With all that said, and I'm aware that I sound extremely critical. This was a really remarkable book. It's far from perfect, has all the hallmarks of a labour of love, and will take most mere mortals an eon to read in full but at it's finest it is incredibly moving. Stories like those of Janusz Korczak and Aaron Koninski, teachers who accompanied their students to their deaths when they didn't need to rather than leave them alone and frightened tell of impossible bravery, while strong words from Emmanuel Ringelblum himself give stark warnings to us all about what a society on the brink looks like, and what actions need to be taken immediately if you ever find yourself facing up to such dark times. This book also does a remarkable job of showing the human element of these superhuman people. It shows their struggles as well as their successes, their frustrations as well as their achievements, and for that I am genuinely grateful for having read this book.
This book had tonnes of potential but I struggled most of all with the way it was put together. The book, at its core, primarily deals with a rather short period of time, from the outbreak of World War II in 1939, to the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 following the ghetto uprising of that same year. The book deals with these years under a number of different headings and, therefore, often retells the same stories through different lenses revealing different details. Once, the story might be told with economic struggles to provide food for the Warsaw Ghetto's many inhabitants in mind, next it might be told with tensions between the various political factions that existed within the ghetto in mind, next it might focus on the Great Deportation. This all makes sense on the surface. The manner in which it's dealt with, however, lets the book down. The telling of the story with the economic struggle to provide food without any obvious source of income might overlap with the timeframe during which the Great Deportation took place and so the author might mention the Umschlagplatz at which many of the Deportation's most tragic scenes took place. The author, however, might not explain what the Umschlagplatz actually was until several chapters later until he decides to write his chapter about events at the Umschlagplatz. This chapter dealing with the Umschlagplatz will begin with a brief explanation of the term and the place in question right at the start of the chapter, but by the time you get to this explanation you've been encountering the term for several chapters and have already had to wiki it. It was an irritating facet that occurred on a number of occasions that could easily have been avoided with some editorial input. To say "for more on the Umschlagplatz, see chapter 4" is absolutely fine but to keep the most basic of explanations regarding said place until chapter 4 if you're going to mention it in chapters 1, 2, and 3, is senseless.
I picked this book up in something of a self-imposed hurry in a museum in Munich. I didn't really give it much of a thumbing through. I just wanted to buy a book in English about the Holocaust while I was in this museum and I thought this book looked potentially quite moving. The idea of reading about a collection of letters and documents from the Warsaw Ghetto to me suggested that I might get to read some very poignant primary sources that would really communicate more clearly the experience of people on the ground during that awful time. I didn't honestly expect, under the Penguin label, to end up picking up such a heavy historical document. I realistically expected more popular non-fiction than historical textbook. This book is heavily annotated and provides constant references to the original Yiddish or Polish to show how the author arrived at the translation from the primary source that he did. Needless to say this was lost on me. That selecting the wrong book for me is my own fault goes without saying, however, I do feel that the book would have been improved by the direct quotation of more of the primary sources (translated of course). I felt while reading it that the book was most effective when quoting more, directly from the people in question, rather than paraphrasing and providing an annotation telling you where to find the original source, be it in the Oyneg Shabes archive itself or in someone else's book.
With all that said, and I'm aware that I sound extremely critical. This was a really remarkable book. It's far from perfect, has all the hallmarks of a labour of love, and will take most mere mortals an eon to read in full but at it's finest it is incredibly moving. Stories like those of Janusz Korczak and Aaron Koninski, teachers who accompanied their students to their deaths when they didn't need to rather than leave them alone and frightened tell of impossible bravery, while strong words from Emmanuel Ringelblum himself give stark warnings to us all about what a society on the brink looks like, and what actions need to be taken immediately if you ever find yourself facing up to such dark times. This book also does a remarkable job of showing the human element of these superhuman people. It shows their struggles as well as their successes, their frustrations as well as their achievements, and for that I am genuinely grateful for having read this book.
May 11, 2022
Kassow provided an interesting look at the Warsaw Ghetto, and the efforts of Emanuel Ringelblum, a Jewish historian, to chronicle what happened in it throughout the Second World War through a collaboration with other Jews in an archive known as the Oyneg Shabes. The first third of the book details Ringelblums pre-war life, including his political views, and was quite tedious to read, as it felt to be rather repetitive. After all, there is only so much that can be written about a historian, even if he has radical political and cultural views (which Ringelblum did to an extent). After that, it quickly increases pace, as the Oyneg Shabes works to record every aspect of the Warsaw Ghetto, from the smugglers who crossed the walls, to the way soup kitchens operated, even the types of music the Ghetto produced. It provides excellent details on anything to deal with the Ghetto, and has extensive footnotes and bibliography, totalling nearly 100 pages, for further research.
April 12, 2011
In this book, Samuel Kassow tells the story of historian Emanuel Ringelblum and the development and history of the secret Oyneg Shabes archive in the Warsaw Ghetto. Kassow traces the efforts of Ringelblum and his collaborators from 1940 to Ringelblum’s death in the Pawiak prison in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto and through the excavation and discovery of the buried archives.
The first group of documents, buried in tin boxes around August 3, 1942, held 25,540 pages of material. The second group, buried in aluminum milk cans in February 1943, contained 9,829 pages, all from the period August 1942-February 1943. The first cache was uncovered after four years, with significant mold and water damage. The second batch of documents was found seven years after burial in relatively better condition because the aluminum milk cans were more watertight.
Using a collective ethnographic approach, Ringelblum organized a group of fifty to sixty members to document, collect, organize and care for hundreds of smaller narratives that build a window into the experiences of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Many of these fragments are the only traces of lives and individual stories who vanished forever.
In mid-1941, the Oyneg Shabes group began actively surveying the ghetto inhabitants as part of the “Two and a Half Years” project. The methods of the project included interviews, essays, and comprehensive questionnaires, with the intention of capturing how Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto thought intellectually about societal and moral issues. The project was divided into several main categories, including economic, general, a “cultural-scientific-literary-artistic” section, and a section devoted to mutual aid (226). Partial outlines listed in appendix B of the Kassow book reveal lists of theses and guidelines created by the Oyneg Shabes staff and include studies of the social history of the ghetto, German-Jewish relations, youth, house committees, soup kitchens, the Jewish police, and many other topics. While the Oyneg Shabes work focused mostly on people, ideas, and organizations, they also recognized the importance of documenting the physical environment of the ghetto as a critical piece of social history.
Studying the ghetto society at a deeper level was an increasing priority as time went on and the nature of the war (and Final Solution) became more apparent. Around the start of the Great Deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka in July 1942, the “Two and a Half Years” study ceased. Yet other members of the Oyneg Shabes left behind daily accounts and diaries of the steadily worsening conditions of life in the ghetto. In documenting the destruction of the ghetto, Ringelblum and the others hoped to maintain statistics and a sound methodology that would help future scholars and historians to understand the conditions.
I found this book to be extremely interesting and in-depth about the daily life and wartime conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto, and extremely readable.
The first group of documents, buried in tin boxes around August 3, 1942, held 25,540 pages of material. The second group, buried in aluminum milk cans in February 1943, contained 9,829 pages, all from the period August 1942-February 1943. The first cache was uncovered after four years, with significant mold and water damage. The second batch of documents was found seven years after burial in relatively better condition because the aluminum milk cans were more watertight.
Using a collective ethnographic approach, Ringelblum organized a group of fifty to sixty members to document, collect, organize and care for hundreds of smaller narratives that build a window into the experiences of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Many of these fragments are the only traces of lives and individual stories who vanished forever.
In mid-1941, the Oyneg Shabes group began actively surveying the ghetto inhabitants as part of the “Two and a Half Years” project. The methods of the project included interviews, essays, and comprehensive questionnaires, with the intention of capturing how Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto thought intellectually about societal and moral issues. The project was divided into several main categories, including economic, general, a “cultural-scientific-literary-artistic” section, and a section devoted to mutual aid (226). Partial outlines listed in appendix B of the Kassow book reveal lists of theses and guidelines created by the Oyneg Shabes staff and include studies of the social history of the ghetto, German-Jewish relations, youth, house committees, soup kitchens, the Jewish police, and many other topics. While the Oyneg Shabes work focused mostly on people, ideas, and organizations, they also recognized the importance of documenting the physical environment of the ghetto as a critical piece of social history.
Studying the ghetto society at a deeper level was an increasing priority as time went on and the nature of the war (and Final Solution) became more apparent. Around the start of the Great Deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka in July 1942, the “Two and a Half Years” study ceased. Yet other members of the Oyneg Shabes left behind daily accounts and diaries of the steadily worsening conditions of life in the ghetto. In documenting the destruction of the ghetto, Ringelblum and the others hoped to maintain statistics and a sound methodology that would help future scholars and historians to understand the conditions.
I found this book to be extremely interesting and in-depth about the daily life and wartime conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto, and extremely readable.
February 6, 2018
Before the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Warsaw was a unique, bustling center of history and culture. While most of the learned elite fled the vibrant city before the Nazis arrived, Emanuel Ringelblum stayed behind in order to record the history of the Jews of Warsaw and Poland. This text outlines the story of the Oyneg Shabes Archive while simultaneously using its contents to reconstruct the history of the Warsaw Ghetto and the fate of its Jews. It is a testament to Ringelblum and the work of the Oyneg Shabes staff who worked so diligently to ensure the future would not forget Polish Jewry. They strongly believed that “their work had a purpose. Even if they did not survive, they could still determine what that last chapter would say and who would write it. Their work and sacrifice would create a record that would bring the killers to justice. They might still leave a legacy for future generations” (210).
October 17, 2019
I watched first the 2018 documentary film by Roberta Grossman based on this book, which prompted me to read it. The story is indeed intense, but I found it a hard read. The first 15-17% (I read Kindle version) talks about the political background of Polish Jewry, early life of Emanuel Ringelblum, and formation of his historical ideals, this part was quite dull (if not very dull), and I enjoyed still less the repetitions of personage introductions, as if a few pages later readers would have forgotten who was who.
In the documentary there is more information about the whereabouts of the other surviving members of Oyneg Shabes, and how the archives were recovered. I would recommend more the documentary than the book.
In the documentary there is more information about the whereabouts of the other surviving members of Oyneg Shabes, and how the archives were recovered. I would recommend more the documentary than the book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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August 3, 2011The book follows the live of the historian behind the archive, the stages of the work on it and not so much the contents of the archive itself. If you are looking for a history of the Warsaw Ghetto itself - this is not the book for you.
To work on scientific level in Ghetto circumstances - I can´t imagine what it takes to do that. On the other hand it may have given people enough distance to the horrors to get through their daily life.
Definitely worth reading
To work on scientific level in Ghetto circumstances - I can´t imagine what it takes to do that. On the other hand it may have given people enough distance to the horrors to get through their daily life.
Definitely worth reading
August 7, 2017
It took me a long time to get through this book. One reason is because it is difficult reading due to the topic it covers, the Holocaust. But it is a very well written study on the work of a Jewish Historian working to write the history he and thousands of others were living in the Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw. It is is truly a gem as it explores the history and the saving of history especially for those who have had their power and humanity stripped from them. It is a very, very good (but hard) read.
March 17, 2017
I saw the author, Samuel Kassow, on Booktv and immediately ordered the book. It's the heartwrenching journals of life in the Warsaw Ghetto and also an academic work on the history of social and political movements leading up to the Holocaust. This is a well researched study with voluminous footnotes.
March 10, 2019
An amazing work of scholarly research - Kassow digs through original material in Yiddish, Polish, and German to present a well-organized and objective view of historian Emmanuel Ringelblum’s determination for the Jewish victims of Nazi atrocities to tell their stories.
October 17, 2018
This is probably the best scholarly work I've ever read on the Holocaust. Not only is the main figure - Emanuel Ringelblum - deeply inspiring in both his human foibles and his ability to so often overcome them, but Kassow's overarching discussion about the purpose of history as a crucial foundation for a people's identity (helped by Ringelblum's own thoughts on the topic) is extraordinarily well done. Kassow's ability to weave historical theory/philosophy and emotional accounts of the real people in the ghetto throughout a largely fact-driven linear narrative achieves the kind of history all historians should aspire to emulate.
Notable ideas:
"From the very beginning Ringelblum understood the need to encourage writing 'from inside the event,' writing that would not be skewed by the distorting lens of retrospective recollection and selective memory. To collect material, to gather impressions, and to write them down immediately--these were the watchwords of the Oyneg Shabes. Memory was tricky, Ringelblum insisted, especially in the ghetto. Under the pressure of unprecedented events, Jewish society changed at lightning speed. In wartime, months turned into days and years into months. By December 1939 the tough prewar days seemed like a picnic. A year later, after the Jews were herded into a ghetto, the pre-ghetto period of the German occupation evoked a kind of nostalgia. After the deportations to Treblinka began in July 1942, then even the ghetto hell of 1941-42 seemed like the 'good old days.' Ringelblum realized, even before he was aware of the Final Solution, how quickly trauma would efface memories of all that had preceded it, how unimportant the 'everyday' would seem when viewed through the prism of greater suffering. Thus it was all the more vital to capture the 'everyday' of Jewish society under German occupation, to meld thousands of individual testimonies into a collective portrait."
"Over time Ringelblum realized more and more clearly that survivor identity would overshadow the prewar past: The 'before' would be erased by the 'after.' As he confronted the unfolding disaster he fought all the harder to preserve the 'Now' and the 'Before,' to keep the posteriori label of 'victim' from effacing who the Jews were before the war. In a very real sense he saw history as an antidote to a memory of catastrophe which, however well intentioned, would subsume what had been into what had been destroyed."
"Now that Jews once again found themselves under Polish sovereignty, the history of Polish Jewry took on a new urgency. Supports of the anti-Jewish National Democratic party used historical arguments to bolster their call for a political and economic campaign against a Jewish minority which they viewed as harmful alien interlopers. ...In turn, Jewish historians in the young Polish republic began to see themselves as front line soldiers in a battle to convince the Polish public that anti-Semitism was not only self-defeating and harmful but rested on a totally erroneous interpretation of Polish history. Historical research quickly turned into a weapon to defend Jewish honor."
"In their search for a Marxist-Borochovist voice, these young historians grappled with one of the major problems facing the Jewish Left: If it rejected religion and nationalism, then on what basis could it justify its fight against assimilation? One important answer to this dilemma was to build an attractive and intellectually challenging secular culture based on literature, history, and folklore. The historian could use the past to transform the image of Jewish society by including previously neglected groups and by fashioning thick descriptions of everyday life that would highlight the creativity and resilience of the folk."
"Mahler argued that there was no contradiction between the study of general history and the study of Jewish history. Indeed, one complemented the other. Even though Marxist theory clarified the nature of the powerful economic forces that would transform all human societies, individual national cultures would survive because alongside general cultural ideals, common to all nations, each people had its own specific cultural conditions, shaped by the particular character of its historical development. To understand this interplay of the national and the universal, of general economic forces and specific national cultures, one needed to study national history alongside general history. Only with a thorough knowledge of their own history could Jews understand the specific problems they faced and fashion solutions to them."
"The YIVO scholars, otherwise a diverse group, shared the common conviction that there was a vital link between the East European Jewish past and present, one that required serious study--in Yiddish. In the words of Dan Miron: They were not to study the cultural past as a finished product, a sealed off enterprise that could now be archaeologically dissected, but rather as the source of an ongoing creative activity. Therefore, they must also pay close attention to the cultural present, because it offered the only perspective through which the past could be creatively examined."
"Could a committed leftist be an objective scholar? Ringelblum implicitly, if surprisingly, acknowledged a certain tension between political commitment and scholarly integrity as he discussed the problems of researching the history of 19th century polish Jewry. There were many sources, he declared, perhaps even too many, but there was also a danger posed by the subject's proximity to the present day. The more recent the period, the more the historian had to deal with political pressures and passions, especially his own. In Ringelblum's words, 'The historian who has not isolated himself from public life' faces these dangers more acutely. 'Although history is--to quote a handy phrase -- past politics and politics is current history, it is all too possible to make history into politics, and bad politics to boot.'"
"Could a historian also defend one's people without becoming an apologist? To write Jewish history in Poland, Ringelblum noted, exposed one to the temptation of obsessively responding to anti-Semitic attacks, or to us one's scholarship to praise the achievements of the Jews in all fields. Friedman, Ringelblum wrote, had successfully manged to navigate between the Scylla of apologetics and the Charybdis of nationalist megalomania."
"Gutchke the cook often infuriated the fastidious Auerbach with her casual approach to hygiene, but she somehow made the soups taste halfway decent. In the kitchen on Leszno 40 she would sing a Yiddish ballad, bustle around, talk to the pots (she gave each a nickname: Maciusz was her favorite) and sample soup (with her fingers). Before the war she had run her own restaurant in Praga. Childless, she had recently married an elderly widower and scholar. Gutchke, barely literate herself, was devoted to her learned husband, for how could such a common woman have married a scholar in ordinary times? She did her best to keep him alive. Auerbach once caught her taking a tiny bit of food from the kitchen to make a meal at home. As Auerbach guiltily reported after the war, she scolded the crestfallen woman and warned her never to do that again. At the time it had seemed her duty. 'Why did I shame her and depress her? Why didn't I understand that through this little transgression she wanted to gladden and strengthen her elderly helpless husband who had become like a child? How blind, how stupid we were then-- on the brink of extermination.'"
"But the secret archives could accomplish much more than solitary individuals. They drew their strength from the collective energy of dedicated workers who could pool their talents and establish a hierarchy of priorities and objectives. The more diverse the archival staff and the greater the range of their prewar political and cultural backgrounds, the more likely it was that the archive would develop fruitful contacts and sources of information. Archives, although not entirely free of politics, generated a sense of common purpose that helped allay political rivalry. A collective could mobilize financial resources and gain the protection of important people in the Jewish Councils or social welfare organizations more easily than individuals. In some ghettos the official Jewish leadership and the archival staffs came together in a complex relationship fraught with mutual suspicion and mutual need. Ghetto leaders might feed the archive important documents--even as they concealed others."
"Ringleblums' essay was a unique synthesis of the immediacy of contemporaneous testimony with the analytic dispassion of retrospective historical analysis . The essay reflected the tension between the imperative of historical objectivity and shock at the enormity of the crimes he had witnessed not as a bystander but as a direct victim. Detached historians could make necessary distinctions between perpetrators and bystanders, between Polish and Germany anti-Semitism, between active complicity and indiffernece. But for a member of a victimized people to do so required a major effort of intellectual discipline. Ringelblum, writing both as a historian and a witness, wrote an essay that decades later retained its scholarly relevance."
Notable ideas:
"From the very beginning Ringelblum understood the need to encourage writing 'from inside the event,' writing that would not be skewed by the distorting lens of retrospective recollection and selective memory. To collect material, to gather impressions, and to write them down immediately--these were the watchwords of the Oyneg Shabes. Memory was tricky, Ringelblum insisted, especially in the ghetto. Under the pressure of unprecedented events, Jewish society changed at lightning speed. In wartime, months turned into days and years into months. By December 1939 the tough prewar days seemed like a picnic. A year later, after the Jews were herded into a ghetto, the pre-ghetto period of the German occupation evoked a kind of nostalgia. After the deportations to Treblinka began in July 1942, then even the ghetto hell of 1941-42 seemed like the 'good old days.' Ringelblum realized, even before he was aware of the Final Solution, how quickly trauma would efface memories of all that had preceded it, how unimportant the 'everyday' would seem when viewed through the prism of greater suffering. Thus it was all the more vital to capture the 'everyday' of Jewish society under German occupation, to meld thousands of individual testimonies into a collective portrait."
"Over time Ringelblum realized more and more clearly that survivor identity would overshadow the prewar past: The 'before' would be erased by the 'after.' As he confronted the unfolding disaster he fought all the harder to preserve the 'Now' and the 'Before,' to keep the posteriori label of 'victim' from effacing who the Jews were before the war. In a very real sense he saw history as an antidote to a memory of catastrophe which, however well intentioned, would subsume what had been into what had been destroyed."
"Now that Jews once again found themselves under Polish sovereignty, the history of Polish Jewry took on a new urgency. Supports of the anti-Jewish National Democratic party used historical arguments to bolster their call for a political and economic campaign against a Jewish minority which they viewed as harmful alien interlopers. ...In turn, Jewish historians in the young Polish republic began to see themselves as front line soldiers in a battle to convince the Polish public that anti-Semitism was not only self-defeating and harmful but rested on a totally erroneous interpretation of Polish history. Historical research quickly turned into a weapon to defend Jewish honor."
"In their search for a Marxist-Borochovist voice, these young historians grappled with one of the major problems facing the Jewish Left: If it rejected religion and nationalism, then on what basis could it justify its fight against assimilation? One important answer to this dilemma was to build an attractive and intellectually challenging secular culture based on literature, history, and folklore. The historian could use the past to transform the image of Jewish society by including previously neglected groups and by fashioning thick descriptions of everyday life that would highlight the creativity and resilience of the folk."
"Mahler argued that there was no contradiction between the study of general history and the study of Jewish history. Indeed, one complemented the other. Even though Marxist theory clarified the nature of the powerful economic forces that would transform all human societies, individual national cultures would survive because alongside general cultural ideals, common to all nations, each people had its own specific cultural conditions, shaped by the particular character of its historical development. To understand this interplay of the national and the universal, of general economic forces and specific national cultures, one needed to study national history alongside general history. Only with a thorough knowledge of their own history could Jews understand the specific problems they faced and fashion solutions to them."
"The YIVO scholars, otherwise a diverse group, shared the common conviction that there was a vital link between the East European Jewish past and present, one that required serious study--in Yiddish. In the words of Dan Miron: They were not to study the cultural past as a finished product, a sealed off enterprise that could now be archaeologically dissected, but rather as the source of an ongoing creative activity. Therefore, they must also pay close attention to the cultural present, because it offered the only perspective through which the past could be creatively examined."
"Could a committed leftist be an objective scholar? Ringelblum implicitly, if surprisingly, acknowledged a certain tension between political commitment and scholarly integrity as he discussed the problems of researching the history of 19th century polish Jewry. There were many sources, he declared, perhaps even too many, but there was also a danger posed by the subject's proximity to the present day. The more recent the period, the more the historian had to deal with political pressures and passions, especially his own. In Ringelblum's words, 'The historian who has not isolated himself from public life' faces these dangers more acutely. 'Although history is--to quote a handy phrase -- past politics and politics is current history, it is all too possible to make history into politics, and bad politics to boot.'"
"Could a historian also defend one's people without becoming an apologist? To write Jewish history in Poland, Ringelblum noted, exposed one to the temptation of obsessively responding to anti-Semitic attacks, or to us one's scholarship to praise the achievements of the Jews in all fields. Friedman, Ringelblum wrote, had successfully manged to navigate between the Scylla of apologetics and the Charybdis of nationalist megalomania."
"Gutchke the cook often infuriated the fastidious Auerbach with her casual approach to hygiene, but she somehow made the soups taste halfway decent. In the kitchen on Leszno 40 she would sing a Yiddish ballad, bustle around, talk to the pots (she gave each a nickname: Maciusz was her favorite) and sample soup (with her fingers). Before the war she had run her own restaurant in Praga. Childless, she had recently married an elderly widower and scholar. Gutchke, barely literate herself, was devoted to her learned husband, for how could such a common woman have married a scholar in ordinary times? She did her best to keep him alive. Auerbach once caught her taking a tiny bit of food from the kitchen to make a meal at home. As Auerbach guiltily reported after the war, she scolded the crestfallen woman and warned her never to do that again. At the time it had seemed her duty. 'Why did I shame her and depress her? Why didn't I understand that through this little transgression she wanted to gladden and strengthen her elderly helpless husband who had become like a child? How blind, how stupid we were then-- on the brink of extermination.'"
"But the secret archives could accomplish much more than solitary individuals. They drew their strength from the collective energy of dedicated workers who could pool their talents and establish a hierarchy of priorities and objectives. The more diverse the archival staff and the greater the range of their prewar political and cultural backgrounds, the more likely it was that the archive would develop fruitful contacts and sources of information. Archives, although not entirely free of politics, generated a sense of common purpose that helped allay political rivalry. A collective could mobilize financial resources and gain the protection of important people in the Jewish Councils or social welfare organizations more easily than individuals. In some ghettos the official Jewish leadership and the archival staffs came together in a complex relationship fraught with mutual suspicion and mutual need. Ghetto leaders might feed the archive important documents--even as they concealed others."
"Ringleblums' essay was a unique synthesis of the immediacy of contemporaneous testimony with the analytic dispassion of retrospective historical analysis . The essay reflected the tension between the imperative of historical objectivity and shock at the enormity of the crimes he had witnessed not as a bystander but as a direct victim. Detached historians could make necessary distinctions between perpetrators and bystanders, between Polish and Germany anti-Semitism, between active complicity and indiffernece. But for a member of a victimized people to do so required a major effort of intellectual discipline. Ringelblum, writing both as a historian and a witness, wrote an essay that decades later retained its scholarly relevance."
October 29, 2012
Very niche, I'm not sure I'd recommend this book to the casual reader with a simpler curiosity in learning about the Holocaust. This is not a starting point for Holocaust research. Still, one can tell that this good was a labour of love and meticulously researched.
November 12, 2010
Excellent. Fascinating historiographic background, and heartbreaking close-up account of events in the ghetto.
November 4, 2012
excellent and very moving
August 7, 2021
Goodreads rating 87
February 21, 2015
I would have liked more if the primary source material given the title but overall a well written and put together historical analysis.
October 29, 2016
Good but not what I expected - more of a history text book versus a good read
January 30, 2017
Very interesting book. Save and passing on history even when you know you life is over; and your store may never be found. The true nature of the human spirit
to-buy-or-borrow
May 8, 2019Just saw the documentary (which should not be missed) and would like to read the book and find out more.
October 29, 2019
The most incredible book I have ever read in my life.
October 21, 2020
This book was originally published in 2007, I saw the documentary based on the book in 2019, and it is now available on DVD and Amazon Prime. With a focus on Ringelblum, the book gives some background on the cultural/historical mileau of Poland between World War I & II, and describes the work of Oyneg Shabes, which collected, organized and hid documentation of Poland, and particularly Warsaw, during the German occupation, 1939-1943.
For me, the book was dryer than the movie, but well worth reading for the first three chapters alone. The first two gave me a glimpse of Emanuel Ringelblum's (and Oyneg Shabbes) intellectual and political development and the Jewish culture that shaped Ringelblum between World War I & II in Poland, including the foundation of YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute) in 1925 to preserve and study Jewish history and culture in Eastern Europe. (headquartered in New York City after World War II.)
The third chapter, “History for the people,” talks about how Ringelblum as a historian and educated Jews in general began to see themselves as creating an historical picture of Judaism that affirmed Jewish distinctiveness as a contributor to Eastern European society, rather than as a simply a religious community that Poland had welcomed as refugees. This also led to a rejection of assimilation, and an emphasis on developing Yiddish not only as a language of the people, but as an intellectual language as well.
The remaining chapters (4-9) discuss the development and different aspects if the Oyneg Shabes group Ringelblum led from 1939-1943, which chronicled the life and culture of Jewish Poland, especially Warsaw, during the German occupation. This is the group that created a report of the Chelmo massacre and smuggled it to London. Their archives were hidden before the destruction of the ghetto and partially recovered in the 1940s & 50s; the recovered documents can be accessed electrionically by researchers at United States Holocaust Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute.
For me, the book was dryer than the movie, but well worth reading for the first three chapters alone. The first two gave me a glimpse of Emanuel Ringelblum's (and Oyneg Shabbes) intellectual and political development and the Jewish culture that shaped Ringelblum between World War I & II in Poland, including the foundation of YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute) in 1925 to preserve and study Jewish history and culture in Eastern Europe. (headquartered in New York City after World War II.)
The third chapter, “History for the people,” talks about how Ringelblum as a historian and educated Jews in general began to see themselves as creating an historical picture of Judaism that affirmed Jewish distinctiveness as a contributor to Eastern European society, rather than as a simply a religious community that Poland had welcomed as refugees. This also led to a rejection of assimilation, and an emphasis on developing Yiddish not only as a language of the people, but as an intellectual language as well.
The remaining chapters (4-9) discuss the development and different aspects if the Oyneg Shabes group Ringelblum led from 1939-1943, which chronicled the life and culture of Jewish Poland, especially Warsaw, during the German occupation. This is the group that created a report of the Chelmo massacre and smuggled it to London. Their archives were hidden before the destruction of the ghetto and partially recovered in the 1940s & 50s; the recovered documents can be accessed electrionically by researchers at United States Holocaust Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute.
October 4, 2021
This is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read. The book is primarily the story of how a group of intellectuals in the Warsaw Ghetto managed to produce and preserve a rich archive of primary and secondary material about all aspects of life and death in the ghetto, the Oyneg Shabbes archive. It's also a deeply moving account of how the ghetto intelligentsia reacted to news of the extermination of European Jewry, which the Oyneg Shabbes was instrumental in transmitting abroad. It's also a thoughtful and provocative look at the purposes and uses of history, including as a means of building national consciousness. As if that weren't enough, this book is a biography of the Polish Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum, and introduction to historiographic trends of the 19th century through the mid-20th century, a primer on Jewish political movements in Poland in the interwar period, and a meditation on Jewish-Polish relations before and during the second world war. As someone who was generally familiar with the outlines of modern Jewish history and the holocaust but who thought that I knew enough, this book was wakeup call as to all that was lost and all I have to learn.
May 29, 2025
One of the blurbs on this book says it's the most important history book you'll ever read. That may be a slight exaggeration, as I'm not sure how you could say that about any single book, really. Having said that, it really is an excellent book. I have read Holocaust literature before - Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, but some how I felt that this was the most hard-to-digest of them all. The level of detail really makes you feel as if you almost know some of these people personally. Also, it made me think "well, what would I do in that situation", more than other books.
Another advantage of this book is the depth and breadth in which it describes Polish Jewish society before the war. I don't think I have ever read such a description before.
Another advantage of this book is the depth and breadth in which it describes Polish Jewish society before the war. I don't think I have ever read such a description before.
November 10, 2020
A very detailed book about Ringelblum, an historian who was passionate about recording the life of common Jews and daily life. He believed in doing everything to pass on to the world all the daily details as well as the horrors of the fate of the Jews, particularly of the Warsaw Ghetto. The author clearly is passionate about the task and gives honor to the many people involved in this effort, many of whom would otherwise never been know.
September 6, 2025
A moving account of the Warsaw Jewish community's attempts, led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum, to memorialize itself during the Holocaust. This was an intense read that made me emotional at times, as Kassow and Ringelblum both mediate so poignantly on the subject of human memory and people's dedication to preserve it even in the most desperate circumstances.
November 6, 2025
Un libro davvero impegnativo, non solo sul ghetto di Varsavia ma sulla comunità degli ebrei polacchi dalla fine dell'800 a metà del 900. Interessante quasi tutto, poche le testimonianze. Nel 1943 Isaac Schiper scrive: Avremo il compito ingrato di mettere davanti agli occhi di un mondo riluttante le prove che noi siamo Abele, il fratello assassinato. Fa un certo effetto leggerlo ora.
December 22, 2022
je n'ai pas accroché mais il reste tout de même un bon livre qui décrit très bien la vie vécu par les juifs et la bataille qu'ils ont mené
June 6, 2021
"Who Will Write Our History" by Samuel Kassow; 568 pages (2018). In depth study of Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oneg Shabbat Archives.
This study provides the Warsaw Ghetto student a deep understanding of Ringelblum's background, motivations, strengths and flaws. Additionally the reader learns about key contributors of the Archives (Lewin, Kaplan, Auerbach, et al) bringing an enhanced understanding of their individual works. Finally, we learn about the Ghetto itself, its leaders but more importantly for Ringelblum, the average typically forgotten person in the historical narrative. An absolute must for any researcher of Warsaw Jewry and the Ghetto.
This study provides the Warsaw Ghetto student a deep understanding of Ringelblum's background, motivations, strengths and flaws. Additionally the reader learns about key contributors of the Archives (Lewin, Kaplan, Auerbach, et al) bringing an enhanced understanding of their individual works. Finally, we learn about the Ghetto itself, its leaders but more importantly for Ringelblum, the average typically forgotten person in the historical narrative. An absolute must for any researcher of Warsaw Jewry and the Ghetto.
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