The Underground Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto is the central collection of sources on the life and death of Polish Jews under Nazi occupation. In secret, the historian Emanuel Ringelblum and numerous employees collected the most diverse evidence of the Holocaust. They wanted to document and analyze their history and that of many others for posterity - even during persecution and mass murder.
The group of chroniclers collected official documents and notices, private diaries and letters, cultural programs, entrance tickets and numerous other sources of everyday life. In addition, they prepared reports on various aspects of ghetto life, motivated many other ghetto dwellers to write, and encouraged essay competitions for children.
This unique underground archive, which has largely been conveyed and is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage List, is now being published by the Department of Holocaust Literature at the Justus Liebig University together with the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History (Institit für Zeitgeschichte - IFZ München) and made accessible to the German-speaking reading public in a selection edition. Publication is planned in the Wallstein Verlag.
Project Manager at the Department of Holocaust Literature: Dr. Markus Roth
E-Mail: markus.roth@germanistik.uni-giessen.de
Project Manager at the Center for Holocaust Studies: Dr. Andrea Loew
E-Mail: loew@ifz-muenchen.de