Metadata: Collection of Jewish memoirs
Collection
- Country:
- Poland
- Holding institution:
- The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute
- Holding institution (official language):
- Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma
- Postal address:
- ul. Tłomackie 3/5, 00-090 Warszawa
- Phone number:
- +48 22 827 92 21
- Email:
- secretary@jhi.pl
- Reference number:
- PL 312/302
- Title:
- Collection of Jewish memoirs
- Title (official language):
- Zbiór pamiętników Żydów
- Creator/accumulator:
- Central Jewish Historical Commission; Jewish Historical Institute
- Date(s):
- 1919/1995
- Date note:
- 1919; 1933/1939; 1939/1945; 1946/1995
- Language:
- Polish
- German
- English
- Hebrew
- Yiddish
- Russian
- Extent:
- 6 linear metres; 347 archival units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The main topic of the collection of diaries is occupation, destruction and the struggle for survival. Occasionally there are diaries describing the earlier years of the authors' lives - the interwar period, and even the years of the First World War. The authors of most of the texts are known, but some remain undeciphered.
The collection contains 347 archival units. Other types of documents are also referred to as "diaries". The collection includes:
Journals written on an ongoing basis in ghettos and hideouts, such as the diary of Dawid Sierakowiak from the Łódź ghetto; Calek Perechodnik, a Jewish policeman from the Otwock ghetto; Renia Knoll from the Kraków ghetto; or written down in a hideout after leaving the ghetto, where the authors describe earlier events and experiences. It also contains the diaries of Leon Najberg from Warsaw, Baruch Milch from Tłuste and the surrounding area (in Podolia).
Memories written from a certain perspective of time, including many shortly after the end of the war.
Fictionalised texts.
Historical studies, especially those by Emanuel Ringelblum, “Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War” and “Collection of biographical sketches about Jewish activists who were murdered or who died during the war”.
Documents included in the collection by chance, such as a class chronicle from a primary school in Kraków or an appeal by former Auschwitz prisoners to world opinion.
Diaries written by young people deserve special attention, for example, the diary of an unknown girl, found in the former ghetto in Łódź, or by Tauba Szmaragd (born 1926). Worth noting is the diary of Janina Hescheles (born 1931), which describes the fate of Jews in the vicinity of Lwów, first under the Soviet, then under the German occupation, the stay in the ghetto and in the Janowska [Street] camp, and then in Kraków. It was published in 1946 by the Central Jewish Historical Commission, with the title “Oczyma dwunastoletniej dziewczyny” (Through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl).
The collection includes a relatively large number of diaries of people who spent part of the occupation in Kraków, both in the ghetto and outside it, also in the Płaszów camp. The authors include Jakub Stendig, Irena Gluck, Halina Nelken, Hanna Barsuk (née Moses) and Natan Gross. Worthy of mention is a very interesting fragment of the diary of Leon Berenson, a lawyer, who died in the Warsaw ghetto 8 days after the last entry was made. There is also a report by Rachela Auerbach on her visit at the site of the former killing centre in Treblinka.
A valuable source are the documents prepared for the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland by Otto Wolken, an Austrian doctor of Jewish origin, who was sent to Auschwitz in 1943 and worked as a doctor there. He describes transports, procedures of dealing with Jews who came to the camp, scenes from the lives of prisoners, the fate of women and children, the evacuation of the camp, etc.
Not all the documents have been preserved in their entirety – some were scattered and can be found in several institutions, for example the diary of Chaim Kapłan, which, apart from being in the Jewish Historical Institute, is in the Moreshet Archives in Israel and the USHMM, or another part of the diary of Leon Berenson, which is in private hands (despite the efforts of the Jewish Historical Institute, it was not possible to obtain it for the collection).
Some diaries became widely known thanks to book publications, e.g. those written by Dawid Sierakowiak, Calel Perechodnik, Baruch Milch, Chaim Aron Kapłan, Binem Motyl, Stanisław Gombiński or the last Jewish Historical Institute Archive acquisition - the diary of Jerzy Jurandot. Many diaries were published - in whole or in part - in the "Biuletyn ŻIH" and the "Kwartalnik Historii Żydów". There are also two selections of diaries, compiled by Michał Grynberg. The first of them concerns only Warsaw (Pamiętniki z getta warszawskiego, Warszawa 1993), the second (Życie i zagłada Żydów polskich 1939-1945. Relacje świadków, edited by M. Grynberg, Maria Kotowska, Warszawa 2003) is devoted to the fate of Jews in other places in occupied Poland.
- Archival history:
- The collection includes works collected by the Central Jewish Historical Commission and the Jewish Historical Institute. They were brought or sent by authors, by people who were entrusted with their storage or who found them in various hiding places (e.g., Guterman's diary), or in a waste paper depot (Renia Knoll's diary). After the war, a significant number of survivors wanted to bear witness to their fate. The Central Jewish Historical Commission encouraged them to do so - some diaries from the collection were sent to a competition announced by the Commission in 1946. Some authors wrote down their memoirs many years after the war. New material is still being accrued.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Central Jewish Historical Commission (CKŻH) began collecting diaries of Jews who survived the Holocaust in Lublin in the autumn of 1944. The Jewish Historical Institute continued this activity from its inception in 1947 and continues it to this day, as new memoirs are coming into its archives and are added to the collection. The collection of diaries (no. 302) was created simultaneously with the collection of testimonies of the war period (no. 301). The formal difference between accounts and diaries is that the accounts were written by Central Jewish Historical Commission employees based on testimonies of witnesses, while diaries were written by the authors themselves. Sometimes, however, there are both handwritten accounts and diaries dictated to the employees of the Central Jewish Historical Commission. A more indicative criterion is the length of the text, but here too there are both extensive reports and diaries that are only a few pages in total.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Gombiński, Stanisław
- Ringelblum, Emanuel
- Subject terms:
- Holocaust
- Holocaust--Concentration camps
- Holocaust--Ghettos
- Memoirs
- System of arrangement:
- The collection is arranged in order of acquisition.
- Access, restrictions:
- Scans of the documents are accessible on computers in the reading room of the Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute.
- Finding aids:
- A digital catalogue (2018) in Polish is accessible in the reading room of the Jewish Historical Institute, and as a publication from 2007 in Polish and English, Inwentarz zbioru pamiętników (Archiwum ŻIH, zespół 302)/ Memoirs Collection catalogue (Jewish Historical Institute Archives, Record Group 302 / Michał Czajka; [trans. Eliza Borkowska, Piotr Borkowski]; ŻIH IN-B.
- Yerusha Network member:
- The Taube Department of Jewish Studies of the University of Wrocław
- Author of the description:
- Agnieszka Reszka; The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute; August 2018