Given name: Basia Family name: Berman (5)

(1)

The manager of the library at Leszno Street No. 67

(2)

Adolf Berman's wife. Hasidic family. Her father was a well-educated Talmudist. She graduated from 'Free University', Social Science Department, she majored in Library science. Before the war she worked for a long time in Judaic department of the Polish National Library, she was the specialist of Jewish books. In her youth she was a member of Haszomer Hacair but she left because she did not agree with the negative attitude of this organization towards the Yiddish language and literature. Later she was a member of Poale Zion-Left. In the Warsaw ghetto she ran a Centos (the Central Organisation for Orphan Care) library for children. After the First Action in the Warsaw Ghetto she crossed to the 'Aryan side' with her husband. From September 1942 until January 1945 she worked in the underground as a Polish woman - Barbara Biernacka. During that time she administered many cells to save and help the Jews of the Underground Jewish National Committee. These cells, headed by Jewish and Polish underground activists, helped more than 2000 Jews. On the 'Aryan side' she also worked for the Ringelblum's archives; she gathered sources and documents connected with fight and destroying Jews. Some of these archival sources burnt down during the Warsaw Uprising. Some were saved. They are the database of the underground archive of the Jewish National Committee (ZKN) which is in Beit Lohamey Hagetaot. After the war Mrs Berman became a managing director of the Central Jewish Library at the Central Jewish Committee. This library consisted of more than 100 000 volumes which Basia dug out of ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto and other ghetto's in Poland.

(3)

In the Centos (the Central Organization for Orphan Care) - she worked with children; in YIKOR (the Jewish Cultural Organization)

(4)

she was a librarian by vocation; before the war she worked in the National Library in Koszykowa Street in Warsaw; in the ghetto from the very beginning, already from 1940; she tried to develop a network of libraries, especially for children; she belonged to Organisation to Help the Jews (on the 'Aryan side'); she got the the 'Aryan side' together with husband after the First Action

(5)

wife of doctor Berman - an active Jewish activist

(1)

No dates

(1)

Barski, Jozef; Przezycia i wspomnienia z lat okupacji (Experiences and Memoirs of the Occupation)

(1) , s. 30, (2) str.43-47, 53,56,118,136itd, (3) 64, 210, (4) s.209,261,270, (5) str. 275