cashbook reflects Oyneg Shabes’s finances faithfully and fully, but it seems
unlikely. Surely some contributions for the team were not registered, but it
is unknown what percentage of the total resources obtained during 1940–
1942 they constituted.³³
Cataloguing the Ghetto Archive
Lists of documents collected by Emanuel Ringelblum’s colleagues are crucial
material for an analysis of the operation of Oyneg Shabes. They reveal
the methods implemented during the cataloguing of the collection. This subject
matter was discussed in detail in the introduction to Inwentarz Archi wum
Ringelbluma, so only selected issues will engage our concentration. The documentation
presented here suggests that Oyneg Shabes began to catalogue
its collection of files as early as in autumn 1941. It was undoubtedly a consequence
of the Archive’s growth, particularly since mid-1941. During that time
the group’s members had not only collected many original documents, but had
also written down testimonies and made many duplicates. Did that intensification
of the team’s activity result from the invasion by Germany of the Soviet
Union? It is difficult to answer this question. Nonetheless, information about
the annihilation of communities in the eastern territories gradually seized
by the Germans quickly reached Warsaw.
The first lists of archival documents were most probably made at the end
of that year, with Hersh Wasser personally responsible for the cataloguing
until July 1942, when he began to employ other people’s help. Handwritten by
Wasser, the first catalogue of files includes a short description of each manuscript’s
contents, its author’s or copyist’s codename, and the number of pages
(see document 8a). Wasser also marked the documents in a special way, using
their authors’ or copyists’ codenames. The same codenames also figured on
the lists, which facilitated finding a given manuscript in the register. That
surviving list included documents of various types, mostly testimonies and
studies written down or copied by Oyneg Shabes’s co-workers, while clearly
33 Oyneg Shabes bookkeeper, Menakhem Mendel Kon, was supposedly one of the donors, but
there is no trace of him in this part of the cashbook. Kassow, Who will Write our History,
pp. 220–221.
