Was 'lost' ghetto archive under researchers' noses for years?

Has the missing third part of the Ringelblum Archives chronicling life in the Warsaw Ghetto been lying for years in a cellar at Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta'ot while researchers and Polish authorities raced to find it? The staff at the kibbutz's Ghetto Fighters' Museum believe it has.

The archives consist of essays, diaries, drawings, wall posters and other materials describing life in the ghetto. They were collected between September 1939 and January 1943 by a group working under historian Emanuel Ringelblum that included historians, writers, rabbis and social workers.

After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was put down by German troops and it became clear that the ghetto's inhabitants were destined for the death camps of Poland, Ringelblum had the archive stored in three milk cans and ten metal boxes.

The first two parts of the archive were discovered in 1946 and 1950 respectively, but researchers long believed a third part remained hidden somewhere in the ghetto, waiting to be discovered.

Yesterday, shortly before the main Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at the kibbutz (which is located on the northern coastal plain between Acre and Nahariya), the museum management convened a press conference to present what they believe to be the third part of the archive. It consists of documents brought to the kibbutz in the late 1980s by Adolph Berman, a ghetto resistance leader.

Simcha Stein, the museum's director, said researchers had long been unable to decipher the handwriting in which the so-called Berman Collection, which was an elaborate code. After painstaking research, however, they now believe that the long-searched for third part of the Ringelblum Archive is not hidden in Warsaw, but has actually been in their possession for nearly two decades. "Today, after Sisyphean investigation, we believe it is highly likely that this is indeed the third part of the Warsaw Ghetto archive," Stein said.

The Ringelblum collection - also known as Oyneg Shabbos or Oneg Shabbat - is a rare assemblage of Polish documents. Yossi Shavit, director of the museum's archive, said the papers are only part of some 300 documents from the Rinbelblum archive from the period between April 1943 and August 1944 - which includes the time of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

One of the most important documents is the diary of an unidentified girl who hid in a bunker with members of the Resistance. It documents the last six days of the uprising, until virtually the moment German troops burst into her hiding place.

"There is no doubt this is highly important material that will now be available to researchers. We will be able to learn a lot about the period, on day-to-day life in the ghetto during and after the uprising," Stein said.