A Deadly Truth

"Only by common effort,

By genuine and realistic work,

By great exertion,

By avoiding unproductive complaints and vicious accusations,

By working with heart,

By using sense,

By patience,

Will it be possible to weather the present grave times."

~Emmanuel Ringelblum

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During the years of Jewish persecution many efforts were made to document the injustices being committed. Personal diaries have served as a great source to teach us about life in the ghettos. One of the greatest surviving sources, however, was an archive of documentation, called the Oneg Shabbat, about the suffering of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto was put together by Emmanuel Ringelblum and a secret committee of historians. Ringelblum and his colleges protected their documents from the Nazi's by burying them in Milk Cans and Metal Boxes. Had the Ringelblum archive been discovered their writers would have been killed and the documents destroyed, however, Ringelblum and his co-workers were willing to risk their lives to preserve the stories of their people and the terrible treatment they experienced.

                                     Photographed in the United States Memorial Museum by Arnold Kramer

There were many others who risked their lives to document the horrors of the ghettos. The Gelpenus Diary documented the events surrounding the Kovno Ghetto Resistance. The diary of Mary Berg, a young Polish Jew was published in ten different languages after the end of the war.   

                                                                                Mary Berg 

Ghost diary discovered - probably the last thing ever written by this unknown author, this 16 page diary was later found in the ruins of Warsaw Ghetto. It is the only diary which documents the final days of the Warsaw Uprising known to be in existence.

Diaries were not the only outlet used to document Nazi oppression in the ghettos. Photography, paintings, and poetry were also used.

See Art in the Ghettos.

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