Within a few months of the beginning of the war, Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum and a group of friends began to gather testimonies and descriptions of events of Jews who had come to the capital from peripheral towns. When the Jews were interned in the Warsaw Ghetto, a new phase in the work of the archives began. Ringelblum, aware that the events befalling the Jews under the occupation regime were unprecedented, believed it essential to enable future historians to obtain painstakingly recorded material. The team did not settle for gathering material and taking notes on events; it also encouraged writers and laypersons to write about, and analyze, the ghetto realities. Among the small circle of friends who established and managed the collection known as the "Oneg Shabbat" archives, only one member survived.
