When reading the history of political movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, I have often come across reference to underground newspapers. While I understand what they are, I am curious as to the practice of these illegal materials - the history I read often gives very generic descriptions of how these papers were made, transported and kept hidden, if at all. So I am curious for askhistorians to tell me how underground newspapers, in your period of study, were:
Thank you in advance for answering my question!
I study the Holocaust period, so approximately 1933-1945 plus some context before and after. The largest record we have of underground papers at this time is from the Oyneg Shabbes archive hidden in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, as well as survivor testimony. Of course this period has a hugely diverse range of types of underground papers so I'll focus primarily on the kind produced in ghettos. Most Jewish newspapers in places like Poland had to cease production either as soon as the Nazis invaded or soon after. The papers were generally produced by hand, on typewriters, or on hidden printing presses if they were available. The major partisan group in the Vilna (Vilnius) ghetto, the FPO (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye - United Partisan Organisation) was able to find a printing press and used it to establish an underground press. Some of their publications were posters put up in the ghetto, others were essentially newspapers, they were mostly distributed in secret either at underground meetings or hand to hand. The partisan groups had a great level of if not participation than level of support. Many ghetto partisan groups formed out of pre-existing political groups and youth groups, many of whom had their own publications prior to the war. About fifty small clandestine papers were published in the Warsaw ghetto alone. This allowed for a high level of knowlege of journalism, political organizing, and organizing in secret. Quickly networks of women called kashariyot (couriors) developed in most ghettos in Eastern Europe. These were women who spoke Polish and could pass as non-Jews using false papers. They gathered information from outside the ghettos, they smuggled information in and out of the ghetto and were vital in both distributing underground newspapers and gathering news for those papers to print. They also got information from the ghetto to the underground presses outside the ghetto. People acquired these papers mainly by having connections to people in underground units, this was partially how they were kept secret, but it also depended on the paper. Some papers were distributed more publicly, sometimes being posted on walls etc. or handing them out at meeting places. At periods around liquidations of the ghettos and times of organizing of uprisings the papers were distributed very broadly and were used to give calls of resistance in both the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos during uprisings.
https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/vilna/during/ghetto_underground_movements.asp
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/kashariyot-couriers-in-jewish-resistance-during-holocaust
https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20000831-resistance-bklt.pdf
"Who Will Write Our History" by Samuel Kassow
Oyneg Shabbes/Ringelblum Archive
https://www.jhi.pl/en/ringelblum-archive
https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/ringelblum/index.asp