This article discusses the contribution of the Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance in the preparation of an archival collection called “SK-Skrzynie” (“Chests”) of the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust in London in the years 2013–2015. The method of processing thisarchival material was shortly presented, as well as the content of the collection, comprising of files from the Bureau for Homeland Matters/Division VI/Special Division of the Staff of the Commander in Chief/Special Liquidation Committee, files from subordinated bases and postsfor military foreign communication of the Union of Armed Struggle-Home Army, and financial records. The article also refers to the digitization process of the collection and the manner in which the contents of the scanned documents were made available.

This article discusses the activities of the Vetting Division of the Institute of National Remembrance with an example from the Branch Vetting Office, which has been in operation in Poznań since 2007. The author has made an attempt to present the most important official and archiving matters which are related to the ongoing flow of documents within the Vetting Division, the internal structure of the Branch Vetting Office and the cooperation between the Branch Vetting Office and the Central Vetting Office of the Institute. The article addresses the most important electronic applications to support lustration procedures and matters related to thematic catalogues. The analysis performed by the author focused on the flow and the significance of a lustration statement, as well as the consequences of its submission within the process of lustration. Polish lustration procedures were presented against the history of settlements with the communist past in other European countries.

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.

On 1st February 2008, an archive from the Security Service of the Czech Republic was created under the same statute as the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. Its collection contains approx. 17 km of archival material kept in special deposits in three locations in Prague and the village of Kanice (in the vicinity of Brno). The majority of archival material was taken from the former institution – the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior. The Archive now stores documents produced by the Czechoslovak Security Service, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and organizations of the so-called National Front from 4th April 1945 until 15th February 1990. The archives also comprise interesting audio-visual material produced by the Communist Security Service (StB). They were dispersed in different archives and often served as annexes under the proceedings conducted by the Security Service. For instance, the Operational Technique Division left behind 221 reels of various recordings. On the other hand, the collection of the Branch Office of the Intelligence Service of the General Staff of the Armed Forces comprises a series of 26 films on military equipment used by NATO. Similar issues are raised in 10 films gathered in the collection of the Military Counterintelligence Service. The majority of files have now been included in an archival collection called “Collection of films of the Security Service Archives”.

The Ministry for State Security of the German Democratic Republic (the Stasi) left behind a huge archival collection. Although files are its core resource, they are stored with millions of photographs, thousands of films and audio recordings in the current archive of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the German Democratic Republic (BStU). Scientists dealing with the history of the German Democratic Republic acknowledge the significance of the audio-visual collections from the former Stasi. Photographs, films and sound material may be an important source to study the dictatorship of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), the activities of the democratic opposition and the operations of the East German Security Service. However, their use in scientific studies in Germany is still relatively new, if compared with the use of the files. Therefore, this article presents the status, preparation and securing methods, as well as the historic value of the audio-visual collection which is currently stored in the archives of the State Security Service.

The Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute was founded in 2003. Its statutory tasks comprise of: evidencing, collecting, administrating and making available documents of the repression apparatus of the Third Reich, the USSR and state security authorities, which were produced and collected from 18th April 1939 until 31st December 1989, and referred to crimes committed on Slovak nationals or Slovak citizens of other nationalities. The Institute collects, inter alia, audio-visual material produced by the Security Service of the Communist regime. It was taken over from various institutions, inter alia, the Slovak Information Service, the Police Academy, state archives, and individuals. Above all, the film collections comprise of operational material (different types of evidence, recorded interviews, or monitoring), instructional and educational films for agents and officers, propaganda material, as well as many films confiscated by the Security Service from individuals. The article defines the most interesting examples of such material, currently stored in the collection of the Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute.

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.

In the second half of the 1980s, there were nearly one million VHS video recorders owned by Polish households; the technology turned out to be a significant break in the media monopoly of the state. However, the Security Service was not willing to accept that the Poles could watch whatever they wished. Its officers spared multiple efforts and resources in order to curb the “video revolution”. Repression was experienced by those who used to watch films which had not been admitted by censorship to distribution in Poland, owners of video rental shops, organizers of public shows, “pirate” distributors, as well as independent film makers for which the VHS technology was the only chance to approach recipients with their works. The “Security Force” was equally determined to prevent the Poles from accessing Western, purely light entertainment films (“Rambo”), political films (“Interview” by Ryszard Bugajski), as well as records of the satirical works by Jacek Fedorowicz. However, the effect of these attempts was the same – once confronted by the mass enthusiasm of the citizens for video films in the late People’s Republic of Poland, the Security Service turned out to be helpless.

In November 1931, Brig. Gen. Czesław Jarnuszkiewicz, commander of the District Corps no. I in Warsaw issued an order on the operational prevention of the Communist Party’s influencing the Army. It was addressed to information officers reporting to the Independent Information Office of the District Command of Corps no. I in Warsaw. The document was prepared in a period of intensified campaigning by branches of the Communist Party of Poland among troops of the Polish Army, in particular by the Party’s regional and district military divisions (the so-called militaries). Members of this strictly clandestine structure within the Communist Party of Poland were communist activists, trained in the USSR and cooperating with the Soviet Military Intelligence Service or NKVD. Any collected information related to the Polish Army were transferred via the domestic structures of the Communist regime to the Soviet Intelligence Service. Key passages of the documents refer to methods, forms and means of operational work. It is worth pointing out the classification of communist organizations operating in Poland in the introductory part. The published instruction is an important source to learn the forms, methods and means of operational work of the Military Counterintelligence Service of the Second Polish Republic during the 1930s.

Stanisław Orłowski, nick-named “Thunderbolt”, started his clandestine activity during the Second World War, first within the structure of the Peasants’ Guard, and from 1943 under the Home Army. He did not give up fighting for a free Poland after the Soviets’ entry to the district of Augustów in 1944. In spring 1946, he established his own unit; one, however, to be left outside of the structure of the Citizens’ Home Army. The Poviat Office of the Public Security in Augustów made multiple attempts to crack down on the group led by the “Thunderbolt”. During autumn 1949, it managed to set up an ambush which nobody but Stanisław Orłowski managed to survive. At that time, “Thunderbold” started cooperating with the unit of Edmund Krysiuk and Eugeniusz Gołębiewski, and afterwards with Edward Topczewski, nick-named the “Hatchet”. He was killed on 30th August 1952 during a manhunt launched by officers of the Security Office and the Internal Security Corps.

The process of the thorough reforms of the Ministry of the Public Security, carried out in Poland in the years 1954–1956, and the introduction of the Decree of the State Council of 7th December 1954 concerning the central organs of the state administration for the interior and public security led to an institutional change in the reporting line of the Border Guard Army. The establishment of the Ministry of the Interior, and the inclusion of the Border Guard Army in its structure, resulted in the Ministry taking over the responsibility from the dissolved Ministry of the Public Security for the security of the border and counterintelligence protection of the borderland. The cooperation with the Reconnaissance Board VII of the Border Guard Army (after following reorganizations of the Border Guard Army: the Reconnaissance Board II) was continued by operational divisions of the Public Security Committee in the years 1954–1956. Information was mutually exchanged between these units both on the central and regional level. This source edition is aimed at outlining basic information concerning the dimension and scale of the cooperation. The cooperation resulted, inter alia, in the arrest of persons suspected of passing the border illegally and acting “for a foreign intelligence service”. One of them was Adam Boryczka – a member of the Freedom and Independence Association.