Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

marked the end of Ringelblum’s archive, which was
buried in house basements for safe keeping.
The documents of the Ghetto archives are generally
regarded as the most important collection of primarysource
material on the history of the Holocaust from
the point of view of its victims.
After the war, Hersz Wasser, a member of the Oneg
Shabbat group, was able to indicate where the documents
had been hidden and to draw up the first inventory
of the collection; one part has still to be recovered.
Emanuel Ringelblum escaped the Ghetto with his
wife and son, but in 1944 the family’s hiding place was
discovered and they were shot. Nearly all the creators
of the Ringelblum archives perished, either in the Ghetto
or in the extermination camps to which the inhabitants
were shipped.
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