Two important new permanent exhibitions have recently opened in Poland.
One, situated in the synagogue of the former Chachmei Yeshivat Lublin, focuses on the history of the Yeshiva and its founder, rabbi Meir Yehuda Shapira (1887-1933).
The other, at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, is called “What we were unable to shout out to the world” and centers on the Ringelblum Archive — the documents from the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, founded by the historian and social activist Emanuel Ringelblum.
The Lublin exhibit, which opened December 7, includes family pictures and documents never before made public. The exhibition was arranged to resemble Talmud pages and Torah scrolls.
The Yeshiva functioned only until 1939. After World War II, the huge building became part of the Lublin medical school. It was returned to the ownership of the Warsaw Jewish community in 2004, and parts of it have been renovated to include a synagogue, mikvah and Jewish communal offices — as well as the four-star Hotel Ilan.
The exhibit was organized by the Schorr Foundation and the Warsaw Jewish Community and was co-financed by the National Cultural Centre Poland, Hotel Ilan, Jewish Community of Warsaw and the City of Lublin.
In Warsaw, the Ringelblum Archive exhibition (which opened in November) centers on the cache of documents collected in the Warsaw Ghetto by a group called “Oneg Shabbat” and hidden away in milk cans that were discovered after the war. The exhibit was curated by Paweł Śpiewak, the Jewish Historical Institute’s Director.
Ringelblum, the Jewish Historical Institute web site notes:
gathered together a group of people who documented the life and death of the Warsaw Ghetto. When they realized that the Ghetto will be liquidated, and themselves – along with others – will be transported to a death camp, they buried the documents in a basement of the Borokhov school at Nowolipki 68. They survived in hiding from 1946 and 1950, when the second part of the archives was found. The documents were rediscovered and recovered from the remains of the Ghetto only thanks to the fact that Hersz Wasser, one of the people who knew the location, survived the Holocaust.
The website states that the title of the exhibition was taken from the testament left by Dawid Graber, who belonged to a group of people hiding the first part of the Archive. He wrote: „What we were unable to shout out to the world, we buried in the ground”.
The main subject of the exihibition is activity of particular members of the Oneg Shabbat group and the story of the Archive they created together – from its beginning until today.[…] The documents-testimonies of the Holocaust are presented in chronological order, which illustrates the looming apocalypse – and the apocalypse happening. It includes materials about the extermination action in the Warsaw Ghetto and documents about the Treblinka death camp. […] A separate part of the exhibition is dedicated to the history of the group – from the moment of hiding the Archive until present day. We display documents which describe the efforts of hiding the Archive, of its recovery and following stages of preservation, cataloguing, analysis, edition of the documents, up until including the Archive in the „Memory of the World” UNESCO register in 1999.