Ringelblum was a member of Po'ale Tsiyon (Workers of Zion), which sparked his devotion to both the Yiddish language and the history of Judaism and its people.

When the party split in 1920, he aligned with the left half of the organization (LPZ), in which he played a large role in cultural work.

In 1932, Ringelblum began working for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), where he learned how self-help could provide both moral and economic assistance to Jews in Poland facing discrimination as a result of pogroms.

[3] Together with numerous other Jewish writers, scientists and ordinary people, Ringelblum collected diaries, documents, commissioned papers, and preserved the posters and decrees that comprised the memory of the doomed community.

He was also one of the most active members of Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna (Polish for Jewish Social Aid), an organisation established to help the starving people of the Warsaw Ghetto.

On the eve of the ghetto's destruction in the spring of 1943, when all seemed lost, the archive was placed in three milk cans and metal boxes.

[5] However, on 7 March 1944 their hiding place (prewar address 81 Grójecka Street) was discovered by the Gestapo after a Polish collaborator betrayed them.

[6] Soon after, Ringelblum and his family were executed, along with the Polish rescuers Mieczysław Wolski and Janusz Wysocki,[7] in Pawiak Prison.

[1] Among them were copies of several underground newspapers, a narrative of deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto, and public notices by the Judenrat (the council of Jewish leaders), but also documents of ordinary life, concert invitations, milk coupons, and chocolate wrappers.