Searching for The Ringleblum Archives, Documentation of Life During the Holocaust : A Ground Penetrating Radar Investigation of Krasińskich Park, Warsaw, Poland

Abstract

The goal of this research is to search for the missing third of the Ringelblum archives, a collection of documents that is evidence that accounts for the events of the Holocaust and hidden across Warsaw, Poland. Poland is a central European country that was occupied by Nazi powers during the Holocaust and World War II. Jewish prisoners of the Warsaw Ghetto believed they were going to be wiped out of existence, so they started secretly collecting and preserving documents to attempt to tell their story, also known as the Ringelblum archives. Emanuel Ringelblum, Jewish historian and political activist, collected over 35,000 pages that illustrate the violence the Jews endured. Ringelblum hid 9 zinc boxes and 3 metal milk cans full of documents in the Warsaw Ghetto. So far, all the zinc boxes have been recovered, but only two milk cans. Some sources suggest the last milk can is buried near where the Brushmakers Factory complex, and 34 Świetojenska Street stood in 1943, prior to it liquidation in 1945. Krasińskich Park is now located were the Brushmakers factory used to be.