W artykule omówiono wkład Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej w opracowanie zespołu archiwalnego SK-Skrzynie ze zbiorów Studium Polski Podziemnej w Londynie w latach 2013‒2015. Pokrótce przybliżono metodę opracowania materiałów archiwalnych oraz zawartość zespołu, na który składają się akta Biura do Spraw Krajowych/Oddziału VI/Oddziału Specjalnego Sztabu Naczelnego Wodza/Komisji Likwidacyjnej Specjalnej, akta podległych mu baz i placówek wojskowej łączności zagranicznej ZWZ-AK oraz akta finansowe. Opisano również proces digitalizacji zespołu oraz sposób udostępniania treści zeskanowanych dokumentów.

The Social and Civic Women’s League was founded in August 1945 and renamed to the Women’s League four years later, while its final name “Polish Women’s League” has been in use since 1981. Its basic objective was to promote the policy of the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland among the citizens, thereby “educating a woman, a female citizen aware of her rights and obligations towards her homeland and society”. Documents related to the operations of the Social and Civic Women’s League/Women’s League/Polish Women’s League were transferred to the Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance in the years 2001–2011. The majority was produced by units of the state security authorities operating, inter alia, in the Ministry of the Public Security, the Corps of the Internal Security, the Ministry of the Interior, the Central Headquarters of the Citizens’ Militia and in regional sections of the units.The preserved material demonstrates not only the structure and operation of the organization in the years 1946–1989, but also the forms and specifics of operations carried out among officers of the Security Office/Security Service and the Citizens’ Militia.

The archive of the Branch Office of the Institute of National Remembrance in Wrocław comprises files from the Police concerning a Warsaw criminal and safe-bracker called Wincent Brocki, who acted before the Second World War. His pupil was another legendary Warsaw criminal called Stanisław Cichocki, nick-named “Tip Chin”. The discovered dossier was largely produced by the State Police of the Second Polish Republic. Its material was transferred from the Voivodeship Headquarters of the Police in Wrocław to the archive of the Branch Office of the Institute of National Remembrance. Dossier no. 7/7 was opened by the Theft Brigade of the Investigation Office of the State Police for the capital city of Warsaw in May 1927. It comprises, inter alia, personal questionnaires, several signal photographs, queries submitted to the Warsaw Address Office and answers concerning the place of residence of a criminal, data from the register of the sentenced kept by the Ministry of Justice, and radiotelegraphic correspondence with other Police units, mainly the one related to cases of detaining or arresting. Information included in the reserved dossier, supplemented by the press, makes it possible to make a general reconstruction of the life history of Brocki, with particular focus on his criminal activity.

In accordance with the ‘Instruction on the principles and manner of handling archival acts’ in the Ministry of the Interior, as annexed to Regulation no. 034/74 of the Minister of the Interior of 10 May 1974, personal files of secret collaborators archived in the years 1974–1985 should be assigned the archiving category of “A” or “B-30”, while work files should be given the category “B-15” respectively. However, personal files of some secret collaborators, which were archived at that time, were assigned the category “B-10”, while work files the category “B-5” respectively. The Instruction states that category “B-10” should refer only to personal files of candidates for secret collaborators, i.e. persons who had not been collaborating with the Security Service. On this basis, a hypothesis was formulated that the personal files of secret collaborators under the category of “B-10” referred to persons who had factually not taken up collaboration with the Security Service (despite being formally registered as secret collaborators). To verify the hypothesis, an initiative was undertaken to examine all personal files of secret collaborators under the category of “B-10” which were archived in the Voivodeship Headquarters of the Citizens’ Militia/the Voivodeship Offices of the Interior in the years 1974–1985 by three Divisions: III, III-1, and III-A/V. A thorough analysis made it possible to confirm the formulated hypothesis. Furthermore, instructions concerning the operational work of the secret collaborators and training manuals from the Ministry of the Interior also point out that the essence of the secret collaborators’ collaboration with the State Security consisted in providing operationally valuable information. If there was no such information in the work files of a secret collaborator, officers of the “C” Division could not assign category “B-10” to the respective files. Starting from 1985, the “C” Divisions of the Voivodeship Offices of the Interior were to follow a rule stating that a notice on the year of missing files would be placed on the cover of the files, memorandum on the preparation of the files and E-14 cards. This fact confirmed that the archiving category of the files contained important information – the evaluation of the operational value of the documents.

This article discusses the conditions under which the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland operated in Kiev on the eve and at the beginning of the Second World War, as well as the circumstances under which the Consul General with two co-workers went missing. The content of the article was based above all on archival documents of the former Soviet Special Service which have only recently been discovered. They indicate that the Consul General to Kiev, Jerzy Matusiński, and his two subordinates, Andrzej Orszyński and Józef Łyczek, were arrested by officers of the NKVD of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic during the night from 30th September to 1st October 1939. The respective order was issued by, inter alia, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, Nikita Khrushchev, and the People’s Commissioner for the Interior of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Lavrentiy Beria. The arrested were transferred to the NKVD headquarters in Moscow and accused of carrying out espionage activity against the Soviet Union.

Czesław Dominik Pawłowski, a prisoner of war in the NKVD camp in Starobelsk, son of Jan, born on 4th August 1908, and reserve second lieutenant of the Polish Army (veterinary) appears in the lists of victims of the Katyn massacre as murdered in Kharkov in 1940. Pawłowski was deemed a victim, as he was in the so-called Gaydidey’s list which served as a basis to reconstruct the Starobelsk list of the Katyn massacre. In reality, Pawłowski survived imprisonment in Starobelsk. Study of a document from the collection of the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London resulted in the discovery that Pawłowski was not murdered in Kharkiv in 1940. A notice by Czesław Pawłowski to an officer of the 3rd. Carpathian Rifle Division, submitted in Iraq in November 1942,contains a list called “Names of officers of the Polish Army I personally knew staying in the camp in Starobelsk/Don (USSR) from 25th September 1939 until 27th November 1939”. Under the list, there is an annotation concerning the further life story of Pawłowski which indicates that he was released from the camp for prisoners of war on 27th November 1939, arrested by the NKVD on 19th April 1940 and imposed the penalty of a Soviet work camp. The annotation was signed: “Pawłowski, Veterinary”. Pawłowski’s personal files, stored in the British Ministry of Defence, made it possible to restore the course of his service after he was released from a Soviet work camp in 1941, starting from the Polish Army in the USSR, the Polish Army in the East and the Italian Corps II, to the Polish Resettlement Corps in Great Britain. Personal files also depict the circumstances under which Pawłowski emigrated to the United States in January 1949. Czesław Pawłowski, promoted to lieutenant of the Polish Army in 1943, died in Chicago (USA) in 1986.