‘What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world we buried in the ground.’ David Graber, aged 17, the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1940 the historian Emanuel Ringelblum established a clandestine organization, the Oyneg Shabes, within the Warsaw ghetto to document Jewish life, compiling an archive – ranging from reportage to jokes, from artwork to poems. The project lasted until the ghetto was obliterated by the Nazis in May 1943. Ringelblum perished in 1944. But before he died, he managed to hide thousands of documents. These works uniquely record “a civilization responding to its own destruction” from the perspective of its first interpreters, the victims, capturing in real time the heroism, tragedy, and dark humour of the ghetto.

An event from Jewish Book Week 2020.