THE ARCHIVES OF TENENBAUM- TAMAROF AND MERSIK Life in the Bialystok ghetto was chronicled in sev- eral languages (Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish and German), under the supervision of Mordechaj Tenenbaum- Tamarof and Hersz Mersik. Tamaroff was one of the leading organizers of the armed resistance in the ghetto. When World War II erupted, Tamarof and Mersik, then 2 twenty-six-year-old man, lived in Wilno. Tamarof believed that Wilno had the tragic distinction of being the first city in which the Germans, together with their Fascist Lithuanian countrymen, carried out mass murders against the local Jewish population. From Wilno, additional barbaric ‘actions,’ meaning official German extermination campaigns, spread to other Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. Mersik and Tamarof were caught in the thick of the living hell that Wilno had become for its Jewish population. In fact, Mersik miraculously escaped death on three occasions, fleeing in a hail of bullets, some- times being captured, but managing to elude death. Tamarof leaped over roofs of buildings, cheating the devil. With the help of a German soldier, Tamarof, Mer- sik and several others left Wilno for Bialystok, which, relatively speaking, was still quiescent. In the spring of 1942, Tamaroff traveled on to Warsaw. Mersik remained in Bialystok and urged the Judenrat to have all barren land within the ghetto sowed and planted. Many young people volunteered for these activi- ties. Mersik became the spokesman and ideological mentor for his followers. Later, at the time the sur- rounding communities were destroyed, Mersik began collecting his documents for the ghetto archive. Tamarof later described Mersik’s role as “‘meeting with the survivors of nearby towns and collecting historical materials about the annihilation of the Jewish commu- nities in the area.” We can therefore safely establish that the Mersik- Tamarof archive was set up in November-December 1942, after Tamarof returned to Bialystok from War- saw. Both Tamarof and Mersik were motivated to set up the archive because of the following considerations: the destruction of Warsaw, the liquidation of the Bia- lystok provincial towns, the impending catastrophe for the Bialystok ghetto, the personal experiences of the two men, and the uncertainty whether anyone would survive the Holocaust to tell the world about the crimes of the Nazis. To Tamarof and Mersik it was essential that future generations find out what had befallen East- ern European Jewry and apply the lessons learned to their own times. 80 Unfortunately, in the midst of gathering docu- ments describing the ruination of the region around Bialystok, Mersik contracted typhus, apparently from one of the refugees who brought the disease with him into the Bialystok ghetto. On January 28, 1943, around midnight, Mersik died, but not before he left with Tamarof all the information about his archive activities. Three days later, on January 31, a massive funeral was held in tribute to Mersik, attended by large crowds within the ghetto. Mersik’s death was a horrible blow to Tamarof, who, a month later, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nevertheless, Tamarof found the strength to help prepare for the armed ghetto resis- tance, after which he decided to take his life. Tamarof also continued collecting materials for the archive, meeting with survivors and encouraging them to write about their nightmarish experiences. He also kept a personal diary. There he described his feelings about the situation in which he and his fellow Jews found themselves. Tamarof needed a safe place to hide the archive should the ghetto be liquidated. He felt that concealing the archive outside the ghetto in a secure location would ensure its ultimate retrieval. Two days before the first liquidation campaign in the Bialystok ghetto in February 1943, Tamarof made plans to transfer the archive outside the ghetto into the hands of Bronja Winicka, one of his contacts. The Archive Is Retrieved In August 1944, a year after the ghetto had been liquidated and Bialystok had been liberated from Nazi rule, Bronja Winicka began searching for the archive. Also looking for the documents was Dr. Lejb Blumen- tal, who finally dug up the archive in August, 1945, after a map pointing to its hiding place had fallen into his hands. Evidently, the archive was buried outside the ghetto sometime in April 1943, since the documents do not describe events after that month. Dr. Blumental, in addition to receiving the map, was informed by his brother that the archive had been hidden in two tin boxes. It took a year to unearth the documents because Blumental was drafted by the Polish army after the liberation. He carried the map with him that entire time. The archive was uncovered underneath a stable outside the ghetto that belonged to a trustworthy Pole named Filipowski, who helped conceal the records. The Bialystoker Memorial Book