A glass-walled symbolic grave of Oneg Shabbat members unveiled in Warsaw

The Jewish Cemetery Director Witold Wrzosiński said at the beginning of the ceremony that "there were plans to annihilate all traces of the world of Warsaw Jews". "Today, we pay tribute to the people thanks to whom these plans failed. We raise a headstone for them at the cemetery which itself is a monument to the greatness, diversity, and life of our community. It is an honour to the this cemetery, it is a moving moment for all Warsaw Jews," he said.

Israel's Ambassador to Poland Yacov Livne said the Oneg Shabbat group had consisted of "people who took chances, who took risks in order to preserve the memory, in order that the next generations, our generation, will be able to tell this unbelievable story of the Warsaw Ghetto".

"One of the books that was written by this group, Oneg Shabbat, was called, I will translate from Hebrew, "Who Will Tell Our Story?". This need to tell our story is very much a Jewish trait, but it is also a human trait," Livne said.

"And it was especially important for the people here because their story, their existence, was to be forgotten, erased forever. And the Oneg Shabbat heroes prevented this from happening," the ambassador stressed.

He added that the monument was a very important gesture for the Jewish community.

"For me, Oneg Shabbat, which I did not anything about before I came to Poland lasy year, is one of those keys that opens a glimpse into the reality of those days," Germany's Ambassador to Poland Thomas Bagger said.

He stressed he stood in humility before the gathered, paying homage to all Holocaust victims as well the victims of the German terror in general.

"They had an exceptional dedication and commitement to preserve the truth, preserve the memory, to tell about the reality of the terror in the ghetto, but also to preserve the memory of the cultural and intellectual legacy of the people that perished in the ghetto," he added.

Bagger also announced that a special exhibition dedicated to Oneg Shabbat would be launched in June at the Munich Documentation Center.

Poland's Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Jarosław Sellin said that the unofficial group Oneg Shabbat had consisted of dozens of members - social activists, scientists - entrapped in the Warsaw Ghetto. The group was established by historian Emanuel Ringelblum. "It documented life inside the closed Jewish residential district and safeguarded the memory of the Jewish nation murdered by the Germans," he said.

"This glass commemoration we are unveiling today refers in its form to the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. But at the same time, it is a wall through which one can see the world. It is a wall that separates, but does not obscure this day and the future, life and death, the world and the netherworld," he added.

The minister also said that the names of some members of Oneg Shabbat had been inscribed on the unveiled monument. He added that one of the survivors, Hersh Wasser, had revealed the place where the archive had been hidden. "He kept the secret knowledge of where the archive materials had been hidden in August 1942 and February 1943. It was thanks to him that the greatest treasure of the ghetto was extracted, the one which is still being read out, complemented, and popularized," Sellin said.

He also stressed that, thanks to the Ringelblum's initiative and work, the memory of the ghetto residents had survived its destruction, "in spite of the occupiers' plan to kill them all". " In September of 1946, hidden artefacts, documents, and compilations were extracted out of the sea of debris - the lifework of Emanuel Ringelblum and his associates from the Oneg Shabbat group," the minister said.

"The Oneg Shabbat group kept the memory of the Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto and their deaths in extermination camps. Its members undertook a unique form of intellectual resistance against Nazi Germany. The result, the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, is the most important testimony of the Holocaust," the Jewish Historical Institute (JHI) wrote at its website.

The JHI, together with the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland, established the Oneg Szabat Program in order to "disseminate knowledge about the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, to make the preserved wartime documents available to the public and to commemorate the members of the Oneg Szabat group".

"We continue the mission of Emanuel Ringelblum's associates – we want to save the memory of Polish Jews. We want the knowledge about the Archive and its creators to become commonplace. The Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, the so-called The Ringelblum Archive was entered in 1999 on the UNESCO Memory of the World list," the JHI added.