Chilling accounts of Nazi atrocities in the Warsaw Ghetto that were written by Jews and stashed in underground milk bottles have gone on display in Poland.
Notes describing the annihilation of Jews in the Polish capital were stuffed into milk jars before being stashed underground to avoid detection – and were only discovered after the war.
Dubbed the ‘first history of the Holocaust’, the archive contains shocking witness accounts of how people were loaded on to trains and sent to their deaths, parents were dragged away from their children and people were executed on the spot for trying to flee through gaps in the walls of the ghetto.
Chilling accounts of Nazi atrocities in the Warsaw Ghetto (pictured) that were written by Jews and stashed in underground milk bottles have gone on display in Poland
Dubbed the ‘first history of the Holocaust’, the archive contains shocking witness accounts of how people were loaded on to trains and sent to their deaths, parents were dragged away from their children and people were executed on the spot for trying to flee through gaps in the walls of the ghetto
Notes describing the annihilation of Jews in the Polish capital were stuffed into milk jars before being stashed underground to avoid detection
The Ringelblum archive, consisting of more than 35,000 pages, survived the war and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 10 metal cases and two metal milk bottles that were recovered (pictured) in 1946 and 1950, respectively
The ‘What We Could Not Shout Out To The World’ exhibition displays for the first time original documents prepared and hidden by historian Emanuel Ringelblum and a few dozen helpers who risked their lives in the Ghetto to save whatever was possible for posterity.
Nazi occupiers in 1940 corralled some 400,000 Jews into a small section of Warsaw most of whom were then sent to camps to be killed or died from the conditions in the Ghetto itself.
The Ghetto was destroyed in 1943 when the Nazis, attempting more deportations, were met with fierce opposition and a month long uprising.
The exhibition marks the completion of many years of work to organise and translate the archives, and often decipher the documents that were partly damaged.
Ringelblum and all but three of his aides perished in the Holocaust. But deep under the rubble of the burnt-down Ghetto they left a one-of-a-kind, meticulous chronicle of extermination.
‘All the Jews have left… goodbye’: How Nazi atrocities were recorded by their brave victims
The Ringelblum archive, consisting of more than 35,000 pages, survived the war and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 10 metal cases and two metal milk bottles that were recovered in 1946 and 1950, respectively.
Here are three of the chilling accounts that have gone on display in Warsaw:
1. ‘The Testimony of a Forced Gravedigger’, written by Szlamek Winer, a survivor of the Chełmno Nazi concentration camp in northern Poland.
‘At lunch I was reached by the sad news that my beloved parents and my brother were dead.
‘At one o’clock we were back at work. I tried to get as close as possible to the deceased, to look for the last time at my loved ones…
‘I was alone, alone in the whole world. I am the only living member of my family of sixty.
‘Before evening, when we were helping the gravediggers to bury the dead, at some point I put the spade away and with Mechel Podchlebnik we said a quiet Kaddish.’
One account called ‘Testimony of a Forced Gravedigger’ describes the horrors of the Chełmno Nazi concentration camp in northern Poland
2. An excerpt from the diary of Abraham Lewin, including the first mention of the mass murder of Warsaw Jews at the Treblinka concentration camp:
9 August. We’ve learned that 99 percent of the deportees are murdered.
11 August. We were sitting at the office and were gripped by deadly fear. Smolar had telephoned Sokołów: he was told that those who had been, or would be, deported to Treblinka, were going to ‘death’. News passed on by Kohn. There is a Jew in Warsaw, Salbe, who has conveyed a message from Treblinka. Fifteen kilometres from the Treblinka train station, the Germans stop the train. People leaving the cars are terribly battered. Then they are taken to huge sheds. For five minutes terrible cries can be heard, followed by silence . . .
This document, from the diary of Abraham Lewin, included the first mention of the mass murder of Warsaw Jews at the Treblinka concentration camp
3. Three letters written by Jews from Płońsk, dropped from a train bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp and delivered to relatives in the Warsaw Ghetto:
Please drop this letter in the nearest mail box.
Płońsk, 16 December 1942
It’s morning. We’re in a train car, the whole family. We’re leaving with the last round. Płońsk has been cleansed. Please visit the Barns at 6 Niska Street and give them our compliments.
Please drop in a mail box by courtesy.
Warsaw, 47/19 Nalewki Street
We’ve departed from Płońsk today, our whole family, and all the Jews have left. Be wakeful, for we’re going to a wedding.
Goodbye, Dawid
Please drop in a mail box by courtesy.
L. Przygoda, 46 Miła Street, Warsaw
16 December, Wednesday
While at the Praga stop, I’m writing this short message. We’re riding no one knows where. Keep well.
Heartbreaking letters were dropped from trains bound for Auschwitz in the hope others would post them to their loved-ones. This postcard said: ‘We’ve departed from Płońsk today, our whole family, and all the Jews have left. Be wakeful, for we’re going to a wedding’
Emanuel Ringelblum (pictured) and all but three of his aides perished in the Holocaust. But deep under the rubble of the burnt-down Ghetto they left a one-of-a-kind, meticulous chronicle of extermination
The title of the exhibition was taken from the testament left by Dawid Graber, who belonged to a group of people hiding the first part of the Archive.
He wrote: ‘What we were unable to shout out to the world, we buried in the ground.
Graber, 19, wrote that he had one hope: ‘That future generations will recall our suffering and pain, that during the fall, there were also people who had the courage to do this work.
The archive includes accounts of the extermination in the Warsaw Ghetto and descriptions of the train loads of people sent to Treblinka death camp.
One heartbreaking extract, written by Ringelblum referenced ‘heroic’ nurses who saved people for no money – but also an individual named Szmerling who he described as a ‘torturer with a whip’.
‘Scenes of people being loaded on train cars. The eagerness of the Jewish police. Parents being separated from children, wives from husbands…
‘The executions of those who, during the night, tried to escape through openings in the walls.
The archive includes accounts of the extermination in the Warsaw Ghetto and descriptions of the train loads of people sent to Treblinka death camp
The archives include documents in Polish, German and Yiddish, Nazi proclamations and Jewish appeals, ghetto ration cards, tram tickets, private letters and photographs depicting life in the ghetto
In 1999, the Ringelblum archives were assigned ‘Memory of the World’ status by UNESCO, along with such Polish documents as the original manuscripts of composer Frederic Chopin and the treatises of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. This is one of the milk bottles used to stash the Warsaw notes
‘People saved under the guise of doctors, nurses. Doctor’s coats saved hundreds of the intelligentsia. The tragedy of those caught two, three, five times. A mother who wouldn’t go without her child. A father who wouldn’t go without his wife, and so on.
‘And then they all went into the train cars.’
In a testimony called ‘The Destruction of Warsaw’, a Jechiel Górny describes how ‘carts appear on the streets, carrying Jews taken from the [collection] points.
‘Their faces are desperate, full of painful anxiety, their eyes asking, ‘Where are we heading? Into whose hands are they sending us?’
‘Women are crying, children are asking for food, it’s a fearful sight to behold.
A separate account reveals Nazi mass murder of Jews being sent to the notorious Treblinka concentration camp in Poland
‘Fifteen kilometres from the Treblinka train station, the Germans stop the train.
Pawel Spiewak (pictured), head of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw where the exhibition is held, said the aim of the exhibition was to ‘help shout out all that they said, find a language that will make this archive well-known and accessible.’
‘People leaving the cars are terribly battered. Then they are taken to huge sheds. For five minutes terrible cries can be heard, followed by silence.’
Pawel Spiewak, head of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw where the exhibition is held, said the aim of the exhibition was to ‘help shout out all that they said, find a language that will make this archive well-known and accessible.’
The Ringelblum archive, consisting of more than 35,000 pages, survived the war and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 10 metal cases and two metal milk bottles that were recovered in 1946 and 1950, respectively.
In 1999, the Ringelblum archives were assigned ‘Memory of the World’ status by UNESCO, along with such Polish documents as the original manuscripts of composer Frederic Chopin and the treatises of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
‘We want to show that this archive deserves this title,’ Spiewak said. ‘It has to be shown and that people have to see it.’
The archives include documents in Polish, German and Yiddish, Nazi proclamations and Jewish appeals, ghetto ration cards, tram tickets, private letters and photographs depicting life in the ghetto.