The story of the Warsaw ghetto told by Jews and not by the Nazis – Jewish World News – Haaretz – Israel News

Suffering from hunger and other indignities, with death on every street corner, dozens of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto decided to spend time each day recording what they witnessed and collecting information. documents and artifacts. what had happened to them during the Holocaust.

If they had been discovered by the Nazis, they would have been immediately sentenced to death. The fact that they managed to achieve this feat in such circumstances is almost unfathomable.

No less astounding is the fact that these secret archives – at least a large part – were finally discovered under piles of rubble, deep in the bowels of the earth, several years after the Warsaw ghetto was burned. in 1943.

A film documenting the extraordinary history of the secret archives of the Warsaw Ghetto, which included tens of thousands of documents and artifacts, will be presented as a world premiere in July at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival .

Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Roberta Grossman, "Who Will Write Our History" is a 90-minute docudrama that sheds light on this unconventional and less-known act of resistance in the Warsaw ghetto. It is based on the book of historian Samuel D. Kbadow "Who will write our story?" (He also served as the film's chief academic consultant).

Bringing together reconstructions, archives and expert interviews, Grossman's film traces the history of secret archives: From its conception in 1940, the Warsaw ghetto was formed , the dramatic discovery of cans of milk and metal boxes containing the treasure after the war. At that time, almost all of the 500,000 ghetto inhabitants had been murdered.

The script also incorporates newspaper excerpts from members of the secret group, some of which are read by well-known actors such as Adrien Brody and Joan Allen.

& # 39; Simple proofs of life & # 39;

The two main protagonists of the film – performed by Polish actors Piotr Glowacki and Jowita Budnik, respectively – are Emanuel Ringelblum, the historian who led the documentation project, and Rachel Auerbach (aka Rokhl Auerbakh), the One of the few members of the Society of Archivists to survive the Holocaust.

Despite the reconstructions, the film often has a documentary meaning, especially in scenes where special effects are used to superimpose the actors on historical images.

The Yiddish code name for what is also known as the name of Ringelblum Archive. was Oyneg Shabes ("The Joy of Shabbat") – probably because its members would meet on the Sabbath. Its 60 members were handpicked by Ringelblum and represented a wide range of Polish-Jewish society, including doctors and rabbis, Zionists and Bundists (in reference to members of the Jewish Socialist Organization) .

Only Ringelblum and two other members of the group knew the underground locations of the hidden archives. Miraculously, one of them, Hersch Wbader, survived the war and was able to direct the research teams to two of the places.

In September 1946, following an intensive search, a first cache of 10 metal boxes hidden under a school building was found. In December 1950, a second cache of documents hidden in two cans of aluminum milk was discovered by accident by Polish construction workers digging underground.

To date, a third cache has never been found; It is thought that it is located under the grounds of the Chinese Embbady.

With newspapers kept by Oyneg Shabes members, the archives included both official and clandestine newspapers; transcripts of interviews with Jews who had escaped from other ghettos and death camps; German declarations of display; theater tickets; labels on merchandise sold in the ghetto; some poems; drawings; and even jokes. "Simple proofs of everyday life and death", as described by the historian Jan Gobrowski in the film.

For Ringelblum, it was absolutely essential that, Even if the Jews did not survive, they would retain the property of their history.

"The Germans send film crews to the ghetto to show everyone how dirty we are, how dirty we are," Kbadow said in an interview in the film. "They tell the world that we are the scum of the earth, so unless we gather our own documents, posterity will remember us on the basis of German sources and not Jewish sources.The Germans will write our history, or are we going to write our story?

Ordinary people

When the idea of ​​the archive was first conceived, the Jews of Warsaw did not yet understand that they were doomed. They hoped to finally unearth the material and write an appropriate story of the time when they had more time and better conditions to work.

Finally, they realized that the chances of survival were slim and that this archive would be used by others who would continue the work for them.

As Kbadow points out in the film, the project concept Oyneg Shabes fits well with Ringelblum's approach to Jewish history.

"Ringelblum was absolutely dedicated to the notion that Jewish history is not the story of the rabbis, but is not the only one. philosophers' story, but that's the story of the whole people, "he explains.

According to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, chief curator of the POLIN Museum of Polish Jewish History, Ringelblum was heavily influenced in this approach by her work at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which had a branch in Warsaw. "There was a value placed on ordinary people and their experiences," she says in the movie.

Born in a small town in eastern Galicia in 1900, Ringelblum was an active member of a leftist Zionist party. He finally escaped the ghetto with his wife and son, but their hiding on the Aryan side of the city was finally discovered and they did not survive the war.

Auerbach, one of three Warsaw ghetto archivists to have survived the Holocaust, had been a journalist before the war. She led a soup kitchen in the Warsaw ghetto and was the main force behind the digging of the archives after the war.

Auerbach, whose written descriptions of ghetto life figure largely in the film, will eventually immigrate to Israel, where she testified in Adolf Eichmann's trial in 1961 and held a senior position at Yad Vashem. , the national memorial of the Holocaust.

Among the most powerful scenes of the film, one is taken from Auerbach's diary. She describes her wandering in the ruins of the ghetto after the war where she discovers, among the piles of objects left by the Jews sent to their deaths, a picture of a beautiful young smiling woman in a swimsuit.

One of the executive producers of the docudrama is Steven Spielberg's sister, Nancy Spielberg. She previously collaborated with Grossman on another Jewish-themed movie, "Above and Beyond" (2014), which told the story of American Jewish pilots who fought for Israel during the 1948 Independence War.

Their new film is the last sign that Warsaw Ghetto archives are beginning to gain the recognition they have long deserved. In 1999, it was one of three collections of Poland registered in the Memory of the World Register of UNESCO. The others were the masterpieces of Frédéric Chopin and the scientific works of Nicolaus Copernicus.

Last November, the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland (known as the Jewish Historical Institute Emanuel Ringelblum), which houses the archives, exhibited it for the first time. "What we were unable to make known to the world" is the name of a new permanent exhibition, which offers the public an unprecedented opportunity to see the original material up close.

"Who Will Write Our History" will premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on Saturday, July 21, with more screenings on July 22 and 28.