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The Criminal Liability of Nazi Informers in Post-war Germany and Austria and the Concept of Aiding and Abetting a Judicial Offence under Polish Law
Witold Kulesza
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2593-6801
Uniwersytet Łódzki
Jan Kulesza
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0574-9120
Uniwersytet Łódzki
Przegląd Archiwalny Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, Vol. 18 (2025), pages: 471-502
Publication date: 2025-12-30
https://doi.org/10.48261/PAIPN251816
PDF (Język Polski)
Abstract
The article contains a historical and legal analysis of the issue of legal responsibility for denunciations – an important issue from the point of view of holding both the Nazi and Communist systems to account. Informers were one of the foundations of the apparatus of repression in totalitarian states. For the political police of the Third Reich, they proved to be the most effective instrument for identifying and eliminating anti-Nazi activities of individuals and groups. The issue was examined from the point of view of the complicity of informers of the totalitarian repression apparatus in judicial crimes, assuming that the condition for their liability is the anticipation of the harmful effect of the act (denunciation). The article shows not only the relationship between the behaviour of the delator [usually a professional informer/accuser] and the judicial injustice suffered by the person denounced, as well as the criminal law solutions adopted in this regard, but also the practice of prosecuting accusers, using the example of the actions of the judiciary in Germany and Austria.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Przegląd Archiwalny Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode.pl
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