Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

In this paper, I suggest specific ways to interact with and learn from the still-buried segments of a sprawling Holocaust archive created in the Warsaw Ghetto. I will argue in that the distance between us and the still-buried portions of the Ringelblum, or Oneg Shabbas, archive can be meaningful through the ways in which we engage with its absence. I’ve grouped my suggestions into two approaches: one which studies around the absence, as a way to learn about the international policies and reactions after the war which left the archive underground, and within the absence, a more rhetorical approach to studying Jewish collective memory and the sublime historical experience of studying buried testimony. I end with context about how museums display and preserve discovered Holocaust testimonies, and how technology may or may not alter the museum goer’s interactions with testimony.