Classrooms Without Borders: “Ringleblum Archives: Virtual Tour and Teacher Training with Dr. Katarzyna Person and Helise Lieberman”

Who writes history? The underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto was started by historian and high school history teacher, Emanuel Ringelblum, and created by a clandestine group who vowed to defeat Nazi propaganda by detailing everyday life in the ghetto from the voices of the Jewish inhabitants. Ringelblum enlisted people of all ages, occupations and classes to record their daily lives through words, photographs, receipts, tram tickets, candy wrappers, theater tickets and drawings. He hoped for the vivid, personal detail that could illuminate the human meaning of the moment. A social historian committed to telling the truth, the Oyneg Shabes (Yiddish for “joy of the Sabbath”) was a unique form of resistance. Burying the archives beneath the buildings of the ghetto in metal boxes and steel milk canisters, Ringelblum hoped and believed these pages would survive even if the writers did not.

This virtual tour and teacher training workshop will look closely at some of these documents and afford teachers the opportunity to include the Ringelblum Archive in their classes. Together we will consider how we can introduce these artifacts and guide our students towards a discussion about the different forms of resistance.