From the moment that the Warsaw Ghetto was sealed in November of 1940, historian Emanuel Ringelblum recognised the importance of testimony. With a small number of colleagues, he compiled reports on life under increasingly extreme conditions. With the onset of the Great Deportation in July of 1942, the future looked increasingly bleak and the nature of the archive changed. From that moment, until the final eradication of the ghetto in early 1943, the purpose of the secret archive was to preserve... everything.

In this lecture, Dr Simon Holloway will explore the history of the archive and the personalities of its contributors. Special attention will be given to those objects that the Melbourne Holocaust Museum is proud to showcase in our new Underground exhibit.

This talk is presented as part of the public programming running alongside the Melbourne Holocaust Museum's inaugural special exhibition in the new Alter Special Exhibitions Gallery - Underground: The Secret Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. On display for the first time outside of Europe, Underground exhibits rare artefacts from the hidden archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. This archive was led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum who initiated an unprecedented campaign to collect material in the ghetto—the collection today known as the Ringelblum Archive. This collective of academics, writers, and activists working secretly in the first attempt to document the German-initiated mass murder of European Jews as it was happening. The exhibition brings home to the viewer the act of resistance that the underground archive of the Warsaw Ghetto constituted—a never-ending, arduous, harrowing but ultimately successful attempt to write the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of its victims.

Underground is on display at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum from 17 November 2024 to 30 March 2025.

Underground: The Hidden Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto is presented in partnership with the Jewish Historical Institute, Poland, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, and the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, Germany.