In September 1939, Nazi Germany conquered Poland.
One month later, historian Emanuel Ringelblum began chronicling the Jews of Warsaw and the
surrounding areas under Nazi control.
Once the Jews were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, Ringelblum decided to found the clandestine
Oyneg Shabbes Archive.
He assembled a group of documenters of different backgrounds, with the intention of chronicling
the events as they transpired at all levels of Jewish society.
The archive personnel conducted studies, documented events, and collected writings of the ghetto prisoners.
They collected testimony and documents, newspapers, diaries, photographs, and artworks.
With the beginning of the Great Deportation of Warsaw Jewry to the Treblinka extermination
camp, and the archive members themselves seeking shelter, they decided that the archive was
to be buried, despite the risks involved, with the hope that it would one day be retrieved
and serve as testament to the murder of Polish Jewry.
Among those entrusted with this task were two educators, Israel Lichtenstein and his
wife, painter Gele Sekstein.
Shortly before burying the archives, they added their own wills, which are presented
here.
"It may be that I do not deserve to be remembered, only perhaps for the courage to help with
the Oyneg Shabbes group, to be the one most exposed to danger, for my having hidden the
entire material.
To pay with my own head would have been a trifle.
But I risk the heads of my beloved wife, Gele Sekstein, and of my jewel, my little daughter
Margalith."
"On November 4, 1940, I gave birth to my daughter.
She is my happiness and pride.
She is a fine child, talented and pretty.
This is my sorrow and pain.
If i survive, it will be because of and for my beloved daughter."
"I want my wife to be remembered, Gele Sekstein, talented artist painter, whose numerous works
could not be exhibited, could not appear in the bright light."
"Work of ten years put together, torn up and resumed, I endeavored to exhibit my pictures,
particularly the exhibition 'Portraits of a Jewish Child'.
I bequeath my works to the Jewish Museum which will be established in the future in order
to recreate pre-war Jewish culture life up to the year 1939, and study the terrible tragedy
of the Jewish community in Poland during the war."
"I know we shall not last.
It is not possible to live through, to survive such horrible murders, such massacres.
This is why I write this, my will my testament."
"I seek no praise, I merely wish that some trace remain of my name and the name of my
daughter, the talented little girl Margalit Lichtenshtein"
"At present, together with me, both of us get ready to meet and receive death."
"What can I say and ask at this moment.
Poised on the border between life and death, more certain that I won't live then that I
shall, I wish to take leave of my friends and works."
"Jews shall not be wiped out.
We the Jews of Poland, of Czechia [Czech Republic], of Slovakia, of Lithuania,
of Latvia, we are the redeemers for the entire People of Israel in all other lands.
I have thrown myself, with flaming enthusiasm, into the work of collecting material for the
archive.
I have been charged with the role of guardian of the access gate.
I hid the material.
Only I knew."
"Now I am calm.
I must perish but I have done my share, I am trying to preserve some trace of my works.
Farewell, friends and comrades.
Farewell Jewish people.
Don't allow such ruin to recur. "