We, the workers and the grassroots youth, should assume the role of initiators and guides of cultural and educational activity for the children and the young. The various encounters of youth and children must be imbued with our contents and spirit. The young people in the cellars and lofts must inhale our breeze. Otherwise, our Jewish cultural movement and the young people will be at grave risk of descent into bestiality and spiritual degeneracy. – Yugnt-Shtime, September 1941; The Jewish underground press in Warsaw under the Nazi occupation was a tangible expression of the momentum of the political-underground enterprise. Almost all of the dozens of newspapers and pamphlets written in Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew that were circulated in secret amongst the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were produced by a wide range of political organizations and youth movements – communist, socialist, and Zionist – such as the Bund, Hashomer Hatzair, Dror-Hechalutz and Betar. The different underground newspapers dealt with the major issues of communal and ideological significance. They presented descriptions of life in the ghetto; attitudes towards the Judenrat and its institutions; analyses of the nature of the war; and the Land of Israel and the future of the Jewish nation. They also addressed practical concerns of ghetto life such as welfare and mutual assistance, and publicized news of the fate of the Jews as it trickled through the ghetto walls. The differences in outlooks and ideological positions reflected in these papers were essentially the continuation of the prewar political platforms of each group, adapted to echo the new circumstances. The translation of The Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw, first published in Hebrew by Yad Vashem in six volumes between the years 1979-1997, and now introduced to the English reader, reveals an astonishing breadth of historical knowledge. This third volume covers the months July-October 1941. The editors of the underground press did not limit the writing only to analyzing the course of the war and reporting on the condition of the Jews in the ghettos and camps. In the midst of all the distress, they found a place to include literary essays and to publish book reviews and educational columns. In doing so, they expressed their confidence in the resilience of the Jewish people.
