Partial Liberation: Thoughts and Lives of Meaning

Emanuel Ringelblum, organizer Oyneg Shabes, a secret documentation and archival project of the Warsaw Ghetto. Ringelblum was caught by the Germans in April 1943 and sent to the Trawniki labor camp. Escaping in August 1943, he hid in an underground bunker in Warsaw with his wife Yehudis, son Uri, and 34 others. Ringelblum worked nonstop in the bunker, writing a history of Polish–Jewish relations during World War II and essays on key members of the Jewish intelligentsia. These writings survived. On 7 March 1944, the Germans discovered the bunker and a few days later murdered all its inhabitants. Searchers found one cache of the Oyneg Shabes archive in 1946; a second was discovered in 1950. A third cache is still missing. Three members of the Oyneg Shabes survived the war: Hersh and Bluma Wasser and Rokhl Oyerbakh (Rachel Auerbach). YIVO

Janusz Korczak(1879-1942); born Henryk Goldszmit

Writer of critical essays and children's books, pediatrician, educator, philosopher, activist, director of orphanages and schools. He has been a controversial and beloved figure in history. His educational philosophy--that children are small adults, that they want to learn how to function in the world, that they have incredible wisdom--reminds me of Maria Montessori's educational philosophy. Korczak wrote that life never gives more than partial liberation and achievement can never be more than fragmentary. He would have understood the difficulties and joys of liberation and achievement given the tumultuous period during which he lived and died.

Julia (Diament) Pirotte, self portrait, 1942

Julia (Diament) Pirotte. Documentary photographer, born in Końskowola, Poland 1907 or 1908, Jewish, died in Warsaw in 2000. Emigrated to Belgium in 1934. Later lived in France and became involved in the French Resistance, using her camera as a kind of documentary weapon for truth. 

Photographed the aftermath of the Kielce pogrom, July 4, 1946, which resulted in the death of 42 Jewish refugees, returning to Poland from the Soviet Union, and who were planning to emigrate to Palestine and the United States. 

Her work is not widely known, at least in the United States. I first discovered her photos in Fear, an interpretative essay by Jan Gross on the Kielce events. I felt moved by a woman photographer during the war and wanted to know more about her. Her self portrait reveals her seriousness, introspection, and grief all at once.

In the years 1949–1950, the Jewish Historical Institute Archives accepted records of the dissolved post-war Jewish organizations, especially of the Central Committee of the Jews in Poland, but also of the Organization for the Development of Creativity, the Society for the Protection of Health, various parties and Zionist organizations (Ichud, Hanoar Ha-tziyoni, Poalei Zion, Hitachdut, Keren Ha-Yesod) and of the Bund. Documentation also reached the Archives from foreign organizations that had branches in post-war Poland: the American Joint Distribution Committee and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

The archival units are very large in volume and show in detail post-war Jewish life in Poland, together with the problems of emigration. Unique on a worldwide scale is the card catalogue — numbering nearly 300,000 records — of the Jews registered in Poland after the war. (JHI)

Dr. Elonora Bergman, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw.

Dr. Bergman met with our AJC fellows group and explained her work with all matters related to editing and publishing of the materials of Ringelblum Archive. She grew up in Poland to Jewish parents who were active in the Communist Party and had survived imprisonment in Soviet Union. Prior to joining the Institute she conducted case studies related to the following fields: history — urban planning, history-architecture and history-conservation. She also conducted inventories of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. Her training is as an architect-urban planner.