S u m m a r y
In September 1939 historian, teacher and social activist Emanuel Ringelblum (1900–1944) began taking notes on various aspects of wartime reality. It was the beginning of a wider documenting project, later known under the codename of “Oneg Shabbat”. Ringelblum continued his notes until January 1943. They were unearthed after the war in both parts of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto and are now held in the Jewish Historical Institute Archive in Warsaw. A small part is located in Hersh Wasser Collection, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City.
Ringelblum’s notes were published in the original language (Yiddish) in Warsaw in
1952 (Notitsn fun varshever geto), 1961–1963 (Ksovim fun geto) and in Tel Aviv in 1985 (reprint of the 1961–1963 edition including notes from the Hersh Wasser Colletion). The Polish translation was prepared by Adam Rutkowski in the late 1950s but was withdrawn from the printing house following the antisemitic campaign of 1968. It finally came out in 1983, edited by Artur Eisenbach, under the title Kronika getta warszawskiego.
For the sake of the current edition, the existing Polish translation has been verifi
ed against the Yiddish original, as well as the Yiddish edition (Ksovim fun geto) and
the Hebrew translation (Yoman u-reshimot mi-tekufat ha-milḥamah, ed. Israel Gutman, Joseph Kermish, Israel Shaham, Jerusalem 1992–1994). Mistakes noticed in translation have been corrected, fragments removed by the censors have been reinstated, language of the translation has been modernised and new critical apparatus has been added. The current edition includes also notes held in the Hersh Wasser Collection (doc. 109a–c, 110a–c, 111, 112, 120, 121, 168a–b) as well as notes previously unpublished in Polish: drafts of the essay on the “Oneg Shabbat” (doc. 196a–e) and the essay „How did the Warsaw Jewish intelligentsia perish?” (doc. 193a–c), fragmentary notes mainly from the period of the Warsaw Ghetto deportation of summer 1942 (doc. 81, 82, 84, 103, 139, 147, 148, 151, 177d), as well as lists of names, mainly names of victims and those who
survived the first and second deportation (doc. 194a–195e, 199). Whenever possible, the documents were arranged chronologically. The final section, „Varia”, includes three letters written by Ringelblum in the ghetto (doc. 200–202).
Inspired by the works of Philippe Lejeune and Paweł Rodak on diaries and diary
practices, the current edition proposes to analyse Ringelblum’s notes as a daily writing
