O.6 - Polish Collection

O.6 - Polish Collection
 
 The Polish Collection is a record group composed of various materials dealing with Polish Jewry during the Holocaust. The numerous and varied materials arrived at the Yad Vashem Archives from many sources, mainly private people.
 The documentation reflects the multiple and varied aspects, both personal and public, of the lives of the Jews in Poland at the start of, during and after the German occupation.
 
 - Among the documents pertaining to personal fate there are memoirs and testimonies, journals written during the war and after the liberation, correspondence between relatives and friends in occupied Poland and beyond, personal documentation such as identity cards, passports, work permits, certificates from schools and academic institutions and forged Aryan papers. From all these items, it is possible to learn about the reality of the ghetto, the "Aktions", the labor camps, the concentration camps, the underground and Jewish fighting, the attitude of the local population, life on the Aryan side and survival of the few as well. The journals, memoirs and testimonies deal mainly with the personal fate of the writer, but among them there are also wide ranging essays beyond the level of the individual.
 
 - Correspondence and survey reports of Jewish organizations in Poland, such as Zydowska Samopomoc Społeczna (ZSS-Jewish Social Self-Help), the Judenrats and self-help organizations throughout Poland, reflect the organization on a local level and the scope of the aid required for the population which within a short time was left without means of support. Among these items there are also protocols of the house committees in the ghettos, which provided the swift and immediate answer to the organization of life under ghetto conditions.
 
 - Reports and surveys compiled for the Polish Government-in-Exile in Poland serve as documentation with a broad scope regarding various events pertaining to the Jews of Poland, reality in the ghettos, Jewish fighting and the executions and murder of Jews. These papers were transferred to the Polish Government-in-Exile in Poland in London as confidential documents by its representatives in occupied Poland. A special place is held by the documents of the Council for Help to the Jews, or as it was popularly known, the Zegota Organization which was dealt with the rescue of Jews and hiding them on the Aryan side. The organization also managed the rescue of Jewish children through cooperation with monasteries and orphanages in Poland.
 
 - Newspaper clippings and articles in Polish published during the German occupation and after the war including various descriptions, starting from Jewish fighting in the ghettos in the underground Polish press, through surveys regarding Jewish-Polish relations and on to antisemitic propaganda which appeared after the war as well.
 
 - Placards and notices that reflect the deterioration in policy and in anti-Jewish German legislation before and after the establishment of the ghettos and serve as a reliable source for the dates of events in various places in Poland and activities of local Judenrat and German authorities.
 
 - Lists of deportees, inmates in the camps and those who perished provide numerical data, even if partial, pertaining to the methodical liquidation process conducted against Polish Jewry by the Germans.
 
 In the Collection there are mainly documents in Polish, but in German, Yiddish, English, Hebrew, Russian and other languages as well.