Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma

What to Expect

The building at Tłomackie 3/5 has stood here since the 1930s. Built as the headquarters of the Institute of Jewish Studies and the Main Judaic Library — right next to the Great Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Warsaw. During the German occupation, this same building housed the clandestine Oneg Shabbat group led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum, secretly documenting life and destruction inside the Warsaw Ghetto. This is not an ordinary museum. It is a place where history happened — and is still present in the walls and floors.

The permanent exhibition takes its title from the words of 19-year-old Dawid Graber, who helped bury the archive: “What we were unable to shout out to the world, we have hidden in the ground.” The central artifact is one of the two original milk cans in which the archive was concealed — a rusted metal container that saved one of the most important collections of Holocaust documentation in the world. Surrounding it: original documents, letters, diaries, drawings, underground press, personal testimonies. A wooden table lists the biographies of Oneg Shabbat members — of roughly 60 people, only 3 survived.

On the floor of the main hall, you can see burn marks from May 16, 1943, when the Germans blew up the Great Synagogue next door. SS-Gruppenführer Jürgen Stroop personally detonated the charges. Fire entered the library building — the charring on the floor is authentic, not reconstructed. During conservation work in 2016-2017, charred wooden elements from that day were discovered beneath the floorboards.

The second permanent exhibition — “Beit Tfila — House of Prayer” — recreates a synagogue interior with original furnishings and liturgical objects from the 18th-19th centuries, salvaged from Polish and German synagogues. Many bear visible wartime damage. Maximum 15 visitors at a time — an intimate, deeply moving space.

The Ringelblum Archive was inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 1999. This is one of very few museums in the world whose central exhibit holds such status. The institute also preserves over 7 million pages of documents, 40,000 photographs, 15,000 artworks, and 85,000 volumes — the largest Judaica library in Poland.

If you’re visiting POLIN across the street (and you should), think of it this way: POLIN tells the 1,000-year story of Polish Jews. The Jewish Historical Institute holds the raw evidence — the actual documents, the actual milk can, in the actual building where they were created. Together, they form a complete narrative: POLIN for context, JHI for testimony.

Tips

• Free admission every Monday. But capacity limits apply (35 people in the permanent exhibition at once). Arrive early or pre-register.
• Combine with POLIN. The museums are 200 meters apart and complement each other perfectly. POLIN for the broad narrative, JHI for the wartime testimony. Allow a full day for both.
• Small museum, enormous emotional weight. This is not a large space, but the content is extraordinarily powerful. Allow 1.5-2.5 hours. Give yourself time to process.
• Book a guided tour for full context. 30 PLN per person in Polish, 40 PLN in English. The documents and artifacts gain enormously from expert narration.
• Look at the floor. The burn marks from the 1943 Great Synagogue explosion are easy to miss if you don’t know to look. Ask a staff member to point them out.
• Download the Explainit app before arriving — the audio guide is app-based, not a handheld device.
• Cloakroom is mandatory. Leave bags and coats before entering the exhibitions.
• Closed on Saturdays. Friday has shorter hours (closing at 16:00). Plan accordingly.
• Bilingual exhibitions — all labels and descriptions are in Polish and English.
• Genealogy services available. If you’re tracing Polish Jewish family roots, the institute offers research assistance. Contact: familyheritage@jhi.pl. Plan ahead — this isn’t a walk-in service.

Getting There

Metro: Ratusz-Arsenał station (M1 line) — literally a 2-minute walk. The closest metro station to the museum, essentially adjacent.

Tram: Metro Ratusz Arsenał stop — lines 4, 13, 18, 20, 23, 26, 35. Alternatively, Plac Bankowy — line 15.

Bus: Metro Ratusz Arsenał stop — lines 107, 111, 160, 190, 227, 527. Plac Bankowy — lines 222, 520, E-2.

Walking from POLIN: 200 meters, 2-3 minutes. From the Royal Castle: approximately 1 km, a 12-15 minute walk through the Old Town.

Nearby Museums

Background

The story of the Jewish Historical Institute is a story of rescue — of people, documents, and memory.

In the autumn of 1940, a few months after the Warsaw Ghetto was sealed, historian Emanuel Ringelblum founded a secret documentation group. He called it Oneg Shabbat — “Joy of the Sabbath” — because they met on Saturdays, under the cover of the Jewish Social Self-Help organization operating from this very building on Tłomackie Street. The group comprised historians, writers, rabbis, teachers, social workers — roughly 60 people from across the ghetto’s intellectual life. Their work remained completely secret.

For over two years, the group collected everything: essays, diaries, drawings, wall posters, photographs, underground newspapers, letters, food ration cards, tickets, official records. They used modern research methods — standardized surveys, structured reports. Initially they documented daily life under occupation. From early 1942, when news of mass exterminations reached the ghetto, they shifted their mission — they were now documenting annihilation.

In the summer of 1942, as deportations to Treblinka accelerated, Ringelblum launched a desperate plan to save the archive. The first cache — 10 tin boxes — was buried in the basement of the former Borochov school at 68 Nowolipki Street. In February 1943, a second cache — 2 large metal milk cans — was hidden at the same location. A third cache was buried on April 19, 1943, in a brushmaking workshop at 34 Świętojerska Street — this portion has never been found. It is believed to lie under the grounds of what is now the Chinese Embassy; a search in 2005 was unsuccessful.

Ringelblum escaped the ghetto in 1943 and went into hiding with his family. In March 1944, their shelter under a greenhouse at 81 Grójecka Street was discovered. He was executed along with his wife, his 12-year-old son, and the Polish family who had sheltered them.

The first cache was recovered on September 18, 1946, on the initiative of Rachela Auerbach — one of only three surviving members of Oneg Shabbat. The second cache (the milk cans) was found by chance on December 1, 1950.

The Institute itself was established on October 1, 1947, transformed from the Central Jewish Historical Commission. It has occupied this same building at Tłomackie ever since — the building that witnessed the Oneg Shabbat meetings, the destruction of the Great Synagogue, and the years of the ghetto. In 2009, the Institute was named after Emanuel Ringelblum and granted the status of a state cultural institution.

The Ringelblum Archive — approximately 6,000 documents totaling 35,000 pages — was inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 1999. The complete scholarly edition (38 volumes) was published in 2017. Materials are digitally accessible through the DELET portal. Samuel D. Kassow’s book “Who Will Write Our History?” (2007) and Roberta Grossman’s documentary film (2019) brought this story to international attention.