Hakibbutz Ha'arzi Archives Collection: The Hashomer Hatzair Movement in the Lodz Ghetto

This Record Group is one of the most important Record Groups in the Hakibbutz Ha'arzi Archives Collection. The documentation regarding the Lodz Ghetto is extremely rich, but this material is unique and complements our knowledge of the lives of the Jews in the Lodz Ghetto. The material was gathered, organized and brought to Eretz Israel by Feival Podmesky. The documents were arranged in 35 files containing hundreds of original documents (thousands of pages), which were written in the ghetto by Feivel Podmesky and members of the chapter, mainly from the "Manof" and "Lechorin" troops and the "Bogrim" troop, from the years 1939-1944. Feivel Podmesky was one of the few who survived in the ghetto after the ghetto was liquidated. He gathered the material, hid it in the ground and extracted it after the liberation of the city by the Red Army.

The documents describe in chronological order the lives of the pioneering youth in the ghetto, ghetto life and the struggle of the youth. The documentation contains certificates and documents regarding agricultural farms (kibbutzim) in Marysin (a suburb of Lodz), a chronicle of the chapter's troops and the "Edut" troop. There are eight anecdotes on subjects related to life in the ghetto, such as:

1. Ktora ksiazka mi sie najbardziej podoba (Which Book Do I Like the Most?)
2. Co chialbyn zmienic w gdudzie (What I Would Like to Change in My Troop?)
3. My nasza praca w perespektywie ghetta (Our Work in the Perspective of the Ghetto)

In the Collection there are also illustrations of the "Manof" Troop from 1934, letters that arrived for members of the chapter from Tosia Altman and Yosef Kaplan in Warsaw and Natan Schwalb and Mordechai Anilevitz from Switzerland, official documentation from the ghetto, such as a calendar for 1944, notices of "Aktions", photographs taken in the Lodz Ghetto, forms and personal documents from the Lodz Ghetto and a collection of editions of the "Geta Zeitung" newspaper. Additionally, in the Collection there are essays (memoirs and journals) including a schedule of events in the ghetto and report-surveys regarding activities of the underground in the Lodz Ghetto.