The article includes the basic data regarding the Integrated Archive Information System (ZoSIA) that has been implemented since 2007 in the state archives (up to March 2015 it functioned in seven archives). It replaces the current SEZAM (Evidence System of Archival Resources) and IZA (Inventories of Archival Fonds) bases combining their functions and allowing for registration of the archival resource (keeping accession and de-accession registers, registers of dislocation of the fonds and team inventory) as well as the inventory and preparation of the archival, photographic, technical, volatile documentation and cartography, recordings and films. ZoSIA also possesses the extended reporting module (particularly useful for reporting purposes) as well as the search engine. The system acts as the application in the Internet, thus it does not require financial resources for additional equipment or software. The data introduced into the system is automatically gathered and stored in the repository of the National Digital Archive in Warsaw.

The mass destruction of the archival materials by the Security Services in the years from 1989 to 1990, i.e. after the Round Table Arrangements provoked the society, opposition and journalistic circles to express their loud objection. Under the pressure of the mass press campaign on 31 January 1990 the Minister of Internal Affairs forbade to destroy the documents in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, including the archival documents that were attempted to get rid of contrary to the regulations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The author discusses the ordinance of the Minister of Internal Affairs from the years from 1956 to 1989 regulating the procedures with the materials created in the operational units of the Security Services. The objective of the article is an attempt to answer the basic questions regarding the ways and causes of destroying the documents by the Security Services, among others: what the attitude of the ministry to created operational files was, which operational materials were subject to storage and which ones were the subject to destruction, which were the criteria that the Ministry had during establishing the category of period of storing the operational documents, why they were destroyed and what were the grounds as well as the question whether sorting and destruction of the materials prepared by the Security Services was of the political nature in the People’s Republic of Poland.

An author discusses the archival sources, editions of the documents and memories concerning the biography and political career of Wołodymyr Szczerbyćkyj, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party during the period from 1972 to 1989. He belonged to the group of the Soviet Union activities that used to be referred to in the post-Soviet historiography and popular scientific literature as ‘the Brezhnev team’ – after the name of Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union or ‘the Dnipropetrovsk clan’ – as the activists coming from Dnipropetrovsk constituted the core of the Soviet nomenclature. His political career lasted exactly for 43 years. The author discusses the collections of the Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine (CDAHOU), Central State Archive of the Higher Organs of Government and Administration of Ukraine (CDAWOU), editions of the documents, materials and transcripts from the party congresses and sessions of the Political Committee regarding Szczerbyćkyj. He also qualifies articles and books published under the name of Szczerbyćkyj to the source database concerning the above-mentioned subject.

The fonds that previously comprised three separate historical archives: Committee of the State Security of Georgia, Soviet Police in Georgia and the Communist Party of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic constitute the resources of the present Archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. The authors presented origins of creation of those archives, their fonds, described the content of the most interesting archival fonds and organizational structure of the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The issues related to popularizing of the archival fonds that is conducted, among others, by publishing the magazine entitled ‘Archival Herald’ in the Georgian and English languages and participation in the production of documentaries have also been discussed in the article. Furthermore, the aspects concerning the international cooperation of the Archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia with foreign organizations, universities and museums as well as research projects conducted by employees have been considered.

Federal Attorney for the issues of the Materials of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic undertook numerous destroyed archival materials of Stasi (torn, shredded) and searched for solutions that allowed for faster reconstruction of the above-mentioned documents. In 2007 he started cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology in Berlin that prepared the complex system allowing for automated virtual reconstruction of the destroyed documents. The process includes digitisation, arrangement and preparation of the results. ‘ePuzzler’ software analyzes various features of the fragments (contours, colour of the paper, handwriting, linearization) and arranges the scanned fragments of the documents into the pages and, subsequently, into the archival units. During digitisation the image of the fragments is created and all recognized information useful for further preparation is transferred. The images of the fragments of a specific unit of the preparation are uploaded to ePuzzler software and afterwards they are arranged according to the strategy of the binary tree. The fragments may display a significant diversification within their features, consequently the variance of the number of all fragments is extremely huge. Reconstructions are checked taking into account accuracy and corrected. At the end of preparation of a particular unit all reconstructions are subject to the manual process of quality assurance. After its completion all reconstructions are automatically converted to the PDF/A archivization format by ePuzzler.

In the years from 1944 to 1956 Faustyn Grzybowski, Tadeusz Piątkowski, Józef Pluta, Władyslaw Szysz, Teodor Mikuś, Daniel Kubajewski, Stanisław Mrożek and Bolesław Krzywiński were respectively in charge of the Voivodeship Office of Public Security in Białystok. Their personal files include the information from private and professional life of the officers and they also reflect mentality of people holding the highest positions in the state. The essence of their ‘mission’ was to persuade about the validity of the communist idea and the leading role of the Soviet Union in building the communism all over the world. The emerging picture of ‘security services’ presents impunity of their employees, a low ethical level and lack of professionalism. Against the new reality some of them took an attitude full of cynicism and the post-war conditions opened the way for professional career for them. The work of the officers of the public security consisted in surveillance and persecution of the society whereas the preserved documentation left no doubt as to their real role and place in the current social and political system.

In January 1946 district military prosecutor’s offices were established in the People’s Republic of Poland. In Gdańsk the Prosecutor’s Office started its activity on 1 April 1946 and its area property included the whole Gdańsk voivodeship, i.e. districts: Gdański, Morski, Kwidzyński, Kościerski, Starogardzki, Tczewski, Elbląski, the cities of Gdynia, Gdańsk and Sopot. Among the prosecutors who completed the military service in it during the time period from 1946 to 1955 were, among others, Franciszek Mateja, in the future Deputy General Military Prosecutor, Brigadier General and Wacław Krzyżanowski, Colonel who led to sentencing to death of Danuta Siedzik, pseudonym ‘Inka’. In general, during the whole period of functioning of the District Military Prosecutor’s Office in Gdańsk 41 prosecutors, law enforcement officers, assessors and legal trainees; 37 people of the military and civil court personnel and 34 soldiers of active military service worked in it. Graduates of the various types of schools and legal courses that were organized after the war by the communists for the ‘proper’ training of the ‘submissive’ legal staff constituted the majority of them. The communists planned to fill a large part of the court and prosecution apparatus with these ‘lawyers’, which would enable them to make the illegal methods of fighting with opposition in the country legal.

The article discusses the course, course and effects of the ‘hunger strike’ organized by the students of the Mikołaj Kopernik University in Toruń in November 1957. This event has not been described so far yet it was only invoked in the memories written by students and lecturers of the Toruń university. Among the causes of such ‘state of affairs’ it would be necessary to indicate mostly the shortness of the students’ boycott, the social character of the submitted postulates and not numerous sources. This last cause was levelled thanks to the operational documentation of the Security Service regarding Eugeniusz Synak who was one of the co-organizers of the students’ strike. The files includes typical material of the security services, e.g. reports and accounts from the operational work, documentation related to inspections of the correspondence as well as original posters and leaflets prepared by the students. These materials supplemented with the archival ones stored in the Archives of the Mikołaj Kopernik University in Toruń and State Archives in Bydgoszcz allowed to reconstruct the preparations for the strike and its course as well as getting to know the moods of part of the students’ society. The evaluation of the effects of the students’ boycott and factors that influenced the accomplished result was obtained by the transcripts from phone taps, in particular from the call of the present Vice-Chancellor of the Mikołaj Kopernik University with Vice Minister of the Higher Education.

The article documents the contacts of the prominent Polish Germanist of Professor Karol Sauerland from the Security Service in the second half of the 70s in Warsaw. Sauerland acted in specific conditions informing the Security Service about the activities of the German and Austrian cultural institutions and diplomatic offices. Was it the price of freedom that this prominent scholar exercised? Did he play a specific game with the Security Service or was he used by them? The author of the article tries to answer these questions.

The Germans established the ghetto in Otwock in autumn in 1940. After the Warsaw ghetto it was the biggest object of this type in the Warsaw District of General Governorship; about 14–15 thousand of Jews were closed in it. In August 1942 the Germans liquidated the Otwock ghetto murdering its inhabitants on the spot or taking them to the camp for mass extermination in Treblinka. The eye witness of these events was a Jesuit, Rev. Jan Wojciechowski – a soldier of the war of 1939, a priest of the Home Army, a participant of the Warsaw uprising, in the years 1946–1949 a head of the Polish Church for the British zone in the occupied Germany, Polish community activist in the Unites States of America. In April 1947 Rev. Wojciechowski prepared the account where he described the history of the ghetto in Otwock. However, the narration of this source focused mostly on the liquidation of the ghetto and included numerous details that had been unknown in that up to that time.

The Frontier Guards during the time period from 1949 to 1954 were in the structure of the ministry of the Public Security. This situation had a direct impact on directing the activities of the army guarding the borders of the state and influenced the methods of operational work applied by Head of Directorate of the 7th Reconnaissance Command of the Frontier Guards. At the moment of establishing the Ministry of Internal Affairs securing the borders and counterespionage protection of the borders was in the competences of this ministry. Undertaking sovereignty of the Ministry of Internal Affairs over the Headquarters of the Frontier Guards did not involve breaking the present contacts with the units of the intelligence apparatus. The cooperation with the Head of Directorate of the 7th Reconnaissance Command of the Frontier Guards was continued by the Committee for Public Security in the years from 1954 to 1956. The presented text aims at providing the information about the changes that took place in the years from 1954 to 1955 in the organization and the scope of the operational actions conducted by the Head of Directorate of the 7th Reconnaissance Command of the Frontier Guards. The characteristic feature of this period is a clear evolution of work methods that were applied in the contacts with the intelligence network. The guidelines and recommendations in this scope can be found in the report prepared by Stefan Sobczak, Colonel, the Head of Directorate of the 7th Reconnaissance Command of the Frontier Guards in June 1955.

Marian Gołębiewski, an officer of the Home Army, sentenced in the trial of the first management of the organisation ‘Freedom and Independence’ (February 1947). After leaving prison in June 1956 he was subject to surveillance by the Security Service. O 21 January 1957 the Third Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs launched the registration and observation case regarding Gołębiewski. For several years the Security Service did not obtain the evidence confirming conducting the anti-national activity. Simultaneously, since 1965, he was involved in forming the secret independent organization known under the name of ‘Movement’. As late as in February 1970 it was established that he kept contact with Andrzej Czuma, kept under surveillance by the Fourth Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs within the framework of the case of the operational inquiry of the cryptonym ‘Auditor’ (Polish: Rewident). Gołębiewski was arrested on 20 June 1970. In the process of the leaders of the ‘Movement’ organization (from 21 September 1971 to 23 October 1971) he was sentenced to 4.5 years’ imprisonment.