Emanuel Ringelblum

Born in the Galician town of Buczacz, Emanuel Ringelblum was involved in Labor Zionist and Yiddishist politics from an early age. He received his doctorate in history from Warsaw University in 1926, published studies on the history of Polish Jewry, and became a leading member of YIVO’s history section. In the 1930s, he took an active role in the relief work of the Joint Distribution Committee, which stressed the importance of self-help as an antidote to despair and economic antisemitism. Applying his prewar credo to the Warsaw ghetto, Ringelblum established the secret Oyneg Shabes archive in November 1940 while simultaneously heading the Aleynhilf (Self-Help). Ringelblum, his wife, and son were shot by the Germans in March 1944. Two caches of the buried archive were discovered in September 1946 and December 1950, and a third cache has never been found.