Emanuel Ringelblum

Emanuel Ringelblum (November 21, 1900 – March 7, 1944) was a Polish-Jewish historian, politician and social worker, known for his Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, Notes on the Refugees in Zbiszyn chronicling the deportation of Jews from the town of Zboszy, and the so-called Ringelblum's Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto.

During the war, Ringelblum and his family were resettled to the Warsaw Ghetto. There he led a secret operation code-named Oyneg Shabbos (Yiddish for "Sabbath delight"). The activities of the group were kept so secretive that not even the inhabitants of the ghetto were aware of the operation. He spent his days collecting information, and wrote notes at night. Together with numerous other Jewish writers, scientists and ordinary people, Ringelblum collected diaries, documents, commissioned papers, and preserved the posters and decrees that comprised the memory of the doomed community. Among approximately 25,000 sheets preserved there are also detailed descriptions of destruction of ghettos in other parts of occupied Poland, the Treblinka extermination camp, Chelmno extermination camp and a number of reports made by scientists conducting research on the effects of famine in the ghettos. The operation used the Jewish Social Self-Help (ZSS), an organization tolerated by the Nazi Party, as a cover for its activities. The office of this social service is now the storage sight of the archives.

He was also one of the most active members of Zydowska Samopomoc Spoeczna (Polish for Jewish Social Aid), an organisation established to help the starving people of the Warsaw Ghetto. On the eve of the ghetto's destruction in the spring of 1943, when all seemed lost, the archive was placed in three milk cans and metal boxes. Parts were buried in the cellars of Warsaw buildings.

Shortly before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Ringelblum and his family escaped from the Ghetto and found refuge on the "Aryan" side of Warsaw. However, on 7 March 1944 their hiding place (prewar address 81 Grójecka Street) was discovered by the Gestapo. Soon after, Ringelblum and his family were executed, along with those who hid them, in Pawiak Prison.

Source: Wikipedia