ABSTRACT
From the moment that its existence became widely known, the Ringelblum Archive (also known as the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto) was widely regarded as a collection of unusual significance. Under the initiative of historian Emanuel Ringelblum, a group of social activists incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto created the archive between 1940 and 1943 with the aim to document the persecution of Jews in occupied Poland. Emulating the working principles of YIVO (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut, Yiddish Scientific Institute), 1 the Warsaw group gathered and produced a total of 35,000 pages of documents in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, and German and stowed them away secretly within the Ghetto. Among the documents were diaries, accounts from approximately 300 Jewish communities from the whole territory of occupied Poland, school essays, research works, and official German documents like posters, identification cards, and food ration cards. There were also some 70 photographs and over 300 drawings and paintings. 2
