80 years on from the Warsaw Ghetto's revolt & destruction, Radio 4 brings to life an extraordinary secret archive chronicling daily existence in the prison city.
The Oyneg Shabes Archive documented every facet of life and death in the ghetto between 1940-43. It was history as survival. Anton Lesser narrates. Episode 6-Faith & Culture with Ilan Goodman & Carl Prekopp.

In the middle of Europe, in the middle of the 20th Century a half million Jewish men, women & children were cut off, surrounded by the German occupiers, imprisoned behind walls. How do you tell the world about your life and fate? Historian and activist Emanuel Ringelblum devised and directed a clandestine archive- codename Oyneg Shabes (Joy of the Sabbath) to chronicle every aspect of their existence. Thousands of pages-diaries, essays, poems, photographs, statistical studies, art, ephemera -a historical treasure that was buried even as the Ghetto was being extinguished so that the world might read and understand. Listen to their stories

6. Faith & Culture. Rabbi Shimon Huberband became one of the most valued member of the Oyneg Shabes with his studies of ghetto folklore, accounts of the destruction of Jewish religious communities across Poland & the struggles for spiritual survival. Jewish life faced an enemy that sought not conversion but annihilation. For the Oyneg Shabes, former teacher Stefan Różycki, dispassionately surveyed the cultural world of the Ghetto-it's cafés, theatres & cabarets,
Narrated by Anton Lesser. Readers Ilan Goodman & Carl Prekopp. Translation by David Fishman & the Textura Foundation. Written & produced by Mark Burman.

For more information on the Oyneg Shabes/Ringeblum archive go to the website of the Jewish Historical Institute https://cbj.jhi.pl/ Show less