Out of the Ghetto: Struggle, Resistance and the Human Spirit. The Ringelblum Archive Publication Project

Ruth Gay Seminar in Jewish Studies Inaugurated in 2008 thanks to a major gift from the family of Ruth Gay, the Ruth Gay Seminar in Jewish Studies was established in honor of Ruth Gay (1922-2006), the noted American Jewish historian and writer. This series is given by scholars who use the YIVO Archives and wish to share their research with the public. Admission: Free

Presenter: Dr. Eleonora Bergman, The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw

Moderator and Respondent: Dr. Samuel Kassow, Professor of History, Trinity College

Panelist: Dr. Robert Shapiro, Panelist, Professor of Judaic Studies, Brooklyn College

Actively involved with the Ringelblum Archive Publication Project since 2004, Dr. Eleonora Bergman has been working, together with several dozen project team members, to carry out the wishes and dreams of the creators of the secret Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes Archive – to make the Archive available to the public. Dr. Bergman will outline this monumental project to publish some 3,000 documents numbering 35,000 pages of testimonies, essays, poems, posters, letters and reports, collected by the historian Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, a member of YIVO’s Historical Section, and his colleagues under the most harrowing conditions. While Ringelblum's plan to publish the work “Two and a Half years of War. Reflections, Evaluations and Perspective for the Future.” was not fulfilled, a large part of the vast wartime Archive has survived, the bulk of it at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. The Archive throws light on the fate of the Jewish community in the Warsaw Ghetto and covers a wide range of topics including the situation of refugees and deportees, widespread starvation, epidemics and other health conditions, deportations, self-help and resistance activities of the ghetto residents, the role of women and ghetto cultural activities. Bergman’s presentation will throw light on the vast scope of  the project which involves translation from Yiddish, Hebrew, and German, and which, because of the sheer volume of the materials, has taken 70 years to carry out. The Ringelblum Archive Publication will appear in 35 volumes, first in Polish and then in an English edition.

About the Participants

Dr. Eleonora Bergman is a historian at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. She is a leading authority on the conservation of Jewish monuments in Poland. In recognition of her work on the preservation of Jewish heritage in Poland and for her work on the publication of the Ringelblum Archive, Bergman was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in France in 2012. Bergman is the author and co-author of more than twenty case studies on the history and preservation of Polish towns, including five books and more than sixty articles. Bergman has been at the Jewish Historical Institute since 1991 and was its Director from 2007 to 2011. Bergman has been awarded fellowships by the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and the Restoration of Cultural Property, Rome, 1982; the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York in 1993/1994 and 1996/1997; and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. in 1995. Bergman has authored and co-authored and curated exhibitions about the Ringelblum Archive in Germany, the US, France and Spain. Since 2004 Bergman has been involved in preparing the complete publication of the Ringelblum Archive.

Dr. Samuel Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, and is recognized as one of the world's leading scholars on the Holocaust and the Jews of Poland. He is widely known for his 2007 book, Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Indiana University Press). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, has won numerous awards, and has lectured widely.

Dr. Robert Moses Shapiro is Professor of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he specializes in teaching and research about East European Jews, the Holocaust, and Yiddish. He is the translator and editor of the English editions of Isaiah Trunk's Lodz Ghetto: A History (Indiana University Press with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2006) and The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive: Catalog and Guide (Indiana University Press with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw, 2009)