Experience Underground: The Hidden Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto with expert Dr Michal Trebacz, Acting Director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland. On display for the first time outside of Europe, Underground exhibits rare artefacts from the hidden archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, now in the collection of the Jewish Historical Institute. 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.

Michał Trębacz, PhD, is a member of the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) and the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). From 2017, he was the head of the Research Department at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. He supervised the content of the Global Education Outreach Program, the aim of which was to build academic infrastructure for the development of Jewish studies in Poland and around the world. He lectured on the twentieth-century history of Polish Jews at universities in Germany, Israel and the USA. He also collaborated with the Memorial de la Shoah in Paris. He participated in and conducted many research projects on the history of Jews in Poland. He is the author of over 40 articles. He published, among others, in "Zagłada Żydów. Studia i materiały", "Jewish History Quarterly" and "Polityka".

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.

Exhibition Sponsors

The Melbourne Holocaust Museum would like to thank our exhibition sponsors

Gerry and Lillian Pearce
The Embassy for the Federal Republic of Germany