— Emmanuel Ringelblum
Jewish children ‘looked after’ by the Judenrat, Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy the Jewish Historical Institute.
Jewish children ‘looked after’ by the Judenrat, Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy the Jewish Historical Institute.
In the heart of the Warsaw Ghetto, as Jewish life was methodically starved, burned, and erased, a group of writers, thinkers, teachers, and poets assembled an archive — not only of what was happening, but what it meant.
18 September 1946 — The Ringelblum Archives are unearthed from under the ruins of the school at 68 Nowolipki street in the Warsaw Ghetto. Courtesy the Polish Press Agency.
They called themselves Oyneg Shabes — the Joy of the Sabbath — a name heavy with irony. Their mission: write the truth before it was silenced.
Led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum, the Oyneg Shabes buried their testimonies in tin boxes and milk cans beneath the ghetto, knowing full well they would likely not survive. They recorded the rhythm of daily life, the terror of deportations, the dance of song and prayer. They assembled diaries, studies, interviews, reportages, poems, songs, and photographs. They compiled Nazi decrees, Ghetto maps, ration tickets, school assignments, candy wrappers, and tram tickets. They created not just quantitative reports of Jews exterminated but brought forth qualitative portraits of a people determined not to vanish without a voice. Each scrap of paper, each smuggled document, each scribbled line of verse bore witness to a truth the Nazis sought to erase: that even under the boot of annihilation, Jewish life — rich, intellectual, stubbornly beautiful — persisted.
It was not merely a record, but resistance.
Like all resistance, it took many forms — some loud, some quiet, some evanescent. Among the thousands of pages buried by Oyneg Shabes are a few poems: verses of grief, of longing, of fear, of rage. But the poetry of this archive lives far beyond those lines.
It appears not only in what was written as poetry, but in what became poetry — in the diaries, testimonies, and fragments that blur the boundary between victim and artist. These were not crafted as art. And yet, in their urgency, their compression, their stark and startling beauty, they become something more than witness. In the act of writing, the victim — even unknowingly — becomes a poet.
It was not merely a record, but resistance.
Like all resistance, it took many forms — some loud, some quiet, some evanescent. Among the thousands of pages buried by Oyneg Shabes are a few poems: verses of grief, of longing, of fear, of rage. But the poetry of this archive lives far beyond those lines.
It appears not only in what was written as poetry, but in what became poetry — in the diaries, testimonies, and fragments that blur the boundary between victim and artist. These were not crafted as art. And yet, in their urgency, their compression, their stark and startling beauty, they become something more than witness. In the act of writing, the victim — even unknowingly — becomes a poet.
A Poetic Revolt is an exploration of this convergence: between history and lyric, suffering and form, document and elegy. It is the story of those who used writing not as their only weapon, but as their most enduring one — who recorded not just events, but inner worlds; not only what was done to them, but who they remained in spite of it. Who refused to let others shape the meaning of their annihilation.
The Oyneg Shabes wrote knowing they would likely not live to see their words read. What was buried has been unearthed. What remains is to enter.
The Oyneg Shabes wrote knowing they would likely not live to see their words read. What was buried has been unearthed. What remains is to enter.