By: Upper School Judaic Studies Teacher, Sarah Baird
As we approach Parshat Zachor, we are reminded of a profound commandment: to remember and eradicate the evil of Amalek. This command, deeply connected to the Jewish conceptions of memory and morality, is especially resonant when viewed through the lens of modern Jewish history. In my high school Judaic elective class this year, we explored the remarkable efforts of Emanuel Ringelblum and his Oyneg Shabbas archive, a powerful example of moral resistance and the Jewish imperative to remember.
Emanuel Ringelblum was born in Buczacz in 1900 and made a name for himself as a prominent Jewish historian and activist in Warsaw. Amidst the horror of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Ringelblum courageously stayed behind in Warsaw while many other community leaders fled to the Soviet-occupied east. When the Jews of Warsaw were confined to the ghetto a year later, Ringelblum spearheaded the Oyneg Shabbas—a clandestine group of Jews dedicated to meticulously documenting ghetto life on their own terms. Despite the immense dangers, the members of the Oyneg Shabbas collected essays, diaries, reports, and even seemingly mundane items like candy wrappers and children's doodles. This was not mere record-keeping; it was an act of intellectual defiance, a refusal to let the history of Warsaw's Jews be written by those who aimed to exterminate them. With the impending liquidation and destruction of the ghetto in 1943, the archive was buried beneath the ghetto walls and excavated in the years after the war. Only three of the nearly fifty members of the group survived the Shoah.
Every year on Parshat Zachor, we read, "Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt" (Deuteronomy 25:17). The biblical Amalek attacked the most vulnerable Israelites who straggled behind on the journey from Egypt, embodying the essence of evil by preying on the weak. The Torah commands us not just to remember Amalek’s deeds but to actively obliterate such malevolence from the earth. This directive feels especially resonant when we consider the mission of the Oyneg Shabbas.
In class, we discussed the parallels between Parshat Zachor and Ringelblum’s work; we recognized that their mission was not only about survival but about moral responsibility—to document, to remember, and to teach future generations. Thanks to the efforts of the archive members, we can remember the victims of the Shoah in their own words and in their own voices. They are not meticulous Nazi statistics; they were living, breathing, feeling Jews whose memories we must carry.
The act of remembering, as taught by Parshat Zachor and exemplified by Ringelblum, involves more than passive recollection. It requires active engagement and, sometimes, profound courage. When I think about the members of ZAKA who worked for days after October 7th, the psychologists who recorded October 7 survivor testimony, and those who compiled the footage of the barbarism, I'm reminded of that same determination shown by those who, even in the depths of despair, committed themselves to the Jewish tradition of remembrance.