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Emanuel Ringelblum: The Oyneg Shabbes Underground Archive in the Warsaw Ghetto
In September 1939, Nazi Germany conquered Poland. Shortly after, historian Emanuel Ringelblum began chronicling the events overtaking the Jews of Warsaw and the surrounding areas under Nazi control. Once the Jews were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, Ringelblum decided to found the clandestine Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”) Archive. He assembled a group of documenters of different backgrounds, with the intention of chronicling the events as they transpired at all levels of Jewish society. He had the archive buried under the ground of the Warsaw ghetto in metal boxes and milk cans, in three separate places. After the war, two caches of the archive were discovered in 1946 and 1950; the third cache was never found. The Oneg Shabbat Archive remains the largest collection of Jewish documentation detailing the fate of the Jews under Nazi rule.