Who Will Write Our History?

1. This book tells the dramatic story of the clandestine collection of documents about Jewish life in the Warsaw ghetto, their burial in tins and milk cans, and their retrieval after World War II.

2. This second editon is published now, with a new forward, to be timed with the release of a documentary movie about these documents. The film was produced with imput by the daughter of the author and the forward includes stills from the movie.

3. The focus of the work is on how humanitarian and scholarly activities were carried on as acts of civil resistance.

4. The author himself is a compelling researcher, born in a displaced persons camp in Germany, a child of Holocaust survivors.

In 1940, the historian Emanuel Ringelblum established a clandestine organization, code named Oyneg Shabes, in Nazi-occupied Warsaw to study and document all facets of Jewish life in wartime Poland and to compile an archive that would preserve this history for posterity. As the Final Solution unfolded, although decimated by murders and deportations, the group persevered in its work until the spring of 1943. Of its more than 60 members, only three survived. Ringelblum and his family perished in March 1944. But before he died, he managed to hide thousands of documents in milk cans and tin boxes. Searchers found two of these buried caches in 1946 and 1950.

Who Will Write Our History tells the gripping story of Ringelblum and his determination to use historical scholarship and the collection of documents to resist Nazi oppression.

Introduction
1. From 'Bichuch' to Warsaw
2. Borochov's Disciple
3. History for the People
4. Organizing the Community: Self Help and Relief
5. A Band of Comrades
6. Who Will Write Our History?
7. Traces of Life and Death: texts from the Archive
8. The Tidings of Job
9. A Historian's Final Mission
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography