In the Warsaw Ghetto, a clandestine group called Oyneg Shabbes secretly compiled essays, letters, poems, newspapers, records, Nazi pronouncements and photographs that documented life in the ghetto as well as the atrocities endured there. The 60,000 documents were buried in three separate, hidden caches, unearthed in 1946 and 1950 and now housed at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.
The story of this secret archive and the individuals who risked their lives to speak the truth is the subject of the documentary “Who Will Write Our History,” written, produced and directed by Roberta Grossman and based on Samuel D. Kassow’s 2007 book of the same name. Executive produced by Nancy Spielberg, the film combines archival footage, interviews, dramatizations shot in Poland in Polish and Yiddish, and the writings of Oyneg Shabes members Emanuel Ringelblum and Rachel Auerbach, read by actors Adrien Brody and Joan Allen.
The documentary will have its television premiere on Discovery Channel on Jan. 26 at 3 p.m., commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz the following day.
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