The daughter of the Jewish doctor Baruch Milch, famous composer Ella Milch-Sheriff wants to recover her father’s diaries, being at present part of the collection of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. The diaries consist of 61 notebooks – over 1600 pages describing the events that took place between July 1943 and March 1944.

In June 1946 Baruch Milch supposedly handed his manuscript over to the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Katowice, without making any conditions. In 1947 the Commission was transformed into the Jewish Historical Institute Association and it is actually in the JHI collection that the diaries are today. However, Milch’s daughter claims that the author never handed the diaries over to the Commission permanently and that for years he had been trying to recover them. Since he received no answers to the letters he sent to Poland, before he died he managed to reconstruct the diaries in Hebrew. His second daughter Shosh Avigal published a book based on this reconstruction.

In 2001 the KARTA Center published the book “Testament” based on Milch’s diaries, which constitute a shocking record of the events of the Second World War and of the Holocaust, which took place right before his eyes. During the war Baruch Milch was helped by Helena Sobkowiak née Tymuś and her first husband Józef Ojak, who were honored with the Righteous Among the Nations title in 1987. During the war the couple moved to the town of Tłuste. Probably in 1941 the Hertman family – local Jews – asked them to settle in their house. The Hertmans built a special hiding place under the house and told other Jews about it. That is how in April 1944 two doctors: Baruch Milch and Jakub Weinles arrived there. At first, the town was occupied by the Soviet army, but afterwards the Nazis entered Tłuste once again and both doctors asked the Ojaks for help. They stayed in the hiding place for about 10 days. After the war they both emigrated to Israel.

The daughter of Baruch Milch will demand the Polish court to grant her the ownership of the diaries of her father. If necessary, she will turn to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. However, the director of the Head Office of the State Archives in Poland, Dr. Sławomir Radoń, claims that even if she is granted the ownership of the diaries, according to the Polish law she will not be able to take them abroad, as they are part of the national archives and are a document of significant importance to the country’s history.