In the spring of 2017, the Institute of National Remembrance initiated a project named The Archives Full of Remembrance aimed at collecting and preserving legacies, family archives and private collections concerning the recent history of Poland. One of the most valuable family archives adopted by the Institute of National Remembrance are the materials regarding Ewa and Jerzy Stolarski – soldiers of the AK (Home Army) and PSZ (Polish Armed Forces) in the West and prisoners during the Stalinist period. The “Family Archive of Ewa and Jerzy Stolarski” consists of documentation created and collected by both spouses as well as materials inherited from members of their families. The chronological limits of the archives acquired fall approximately between 1860–2006. The archive includes about 1,5 running metres of materials divided into 302 units. The arrangement of the files is based on a breakdown into fourteen parts corresponding to individual family members, including materials from strangers and unrecognized persons, as well as numerous attachments. The materials belonging to the collection are divided in terms of physical form thereof into two series: documentation and photographs.

The article discusses both the legally regulated discarding of files conducted by the Main Directorate of Information of WP (Polish Army) and the Military Internal Service in the period of 1958–1991, as well as the deliberate destruction of materials in the years 1989–1990 which was carried out on the orders of the last head of military counterintelligence, General Edmund Buła. The rules for discarding files throughout the existence of the WSW (Military Internal Service) were subject to archive management provisions. Owing to changes made to the instructions, the officers were able to misinterpret them, so that the local military administration bodies were allowed to discard valuable materials independently – without any control. The destruction of documents belonging to the military counterintelligence was also carried out from a pragmatic point of view – to reduce the archival holdings and leave only the most valuable materials. However, its main goal, after both GZI (The Main Directorate of Information) and WSW had been dismantled, was to get rid of materials showing the true face of the military apparatus of repression.

Providing researchers and journalists with access to archival materials stored at the Institute of National Remembrance is the implementation of the freedom of speech and freedom of scientific studies and freedom to publish results thereof, as specified in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Access to archival materials was guaranteed to researchers already in the original wording of the Act of 18 December 1998 on the Institute of National Remembrance. The archival materials collected by the Institute of National Remembrance could be used by public authorities and other institutions, organizations and individuals in order to conduct research in the necessary scope and with respect for the rights of persons who had been under surveillance by the communist security authorities and of third parties. Provisions regarding the Institute making archival holdings available to researchers and journalists caused many problems of interpretation, and were also the subject of rulings issued by the Constitutional Court. As a consequence of the Court’s ruling of October 2006, journalists were temporarily prevented from access to documents, while the ruling of May 2007 prevented access to archives for both researchers and journalists until August of this year, when the amendment to the Act came into force. The regulations currently in force, ensuring researchers and journalists almost unlimited access to the collections of the Institute of National Remembrance, were set in 2007, and then developed in 2010.

The article is devoted to the issues concerning the operational fund for financing the activities of the security apparatus of the Polish People’s Republic in the years 1975–1990. Its author discusses the issues from the example of the Radom province and the Provincial Headquarters of the MO (the Police Forces called “Citizen Militia”) and the Provincial Office of Internal Affairs in Radom that existed at that time. He focuses on theoretical and practical aspects thereof, analysing inter alia the legal regulations that were in force at that time. He familiarizes readers with the state of preservation of the Security Service archival materials concerning the issues kept among holdings of the IPN Branch in Radom. Moreover, he stresses the importance of this type of documentation for the assessment of individual forms of SB (Security Service) operation, including such important areas as payments to informal collaborators (among the examples there is also – which is very rare – an informant who was employed in an undisclosed position).

The author discusses the results of research on the crime committed by the Germans in the Szpęgawski Forest near Starogard Gdanski in the years 1939–1940. He describes the beginning of the occupation of the Starogard and Tczew powiats (counties) by the Germans and the grounds for the extermination policy against the indigenous population (“Intelligenzaktion”) and people with mental disorders (“Action T-4”). He analyses the investigations of the District Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes in Gdansk, which contain data on the aforementioned crime and are kept in the Branch Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance in Gdansk. Each document is subjected to an examination to reveal the gender structure of a given group, place of origin and date of murder regarding its members. Also included are collections of documents containing residual information on the robbery and destruction of church property or cultural artefacts and pointing to the members of the Psychiatric Hospital crew in Kocborów as suspected of being involved in killing some patients. The data aggregation undertaken in the article has been carried out in the same way for each of the sources.

Labour camps for the Jewish population, so-called julags, within occupied Krakow, were located within today’s city districts called: Płaszów, Prokocim and Bieżanów, and were named: Julag I Plaszow, Julag II Prokocim and Julag III Pirschamo (Bieżanów). They were established in Krakow in connection with operation of the German companies intended to carry out large investments in the scope of railway and road works. Initially, the julags operated as independent camps subordinate to the SS and Police commander for the Kraków District. In the second half of 1943, they were joined to Zwangsarbeitslager (ZAL) Plaszow as branches of the main camp. This state of affairs lasted until the liquidation thereof in November 1943. The prisoners were Jews from Krakow, Krakow and Miechówpowiats (counties), and displaced persons from further areas. The camps are presented in the article as an element of the whole mechanism of extermination – through hard physical labour – of the Jewish people. The materials on which the article is based mainly come from the Archives of the Institute of National Remembrance. These are primarily the accounts of former prisoners who lived through the end of the war. The collections of the National Archives in Krakow and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw proved helpful as well.

Among the thousands of people who, in the years 1946–1955, faced military judiciary, there were also many women. Of the 5,848 people whose cases were examined by the Military District Court in Gdansk, women accounted for almost 5 percent of the defendants. Most of them were suspected of committing so-called political crimes, including possession of weapons without permission or involvement with independence organizations. Out of 77 women accused of independence activity by prosecutors of the Military Prosecutor’s Office in Gdansk, 61 were sentenced by the judges of the local WSR (Military District Court), one of them – Danuta Siedzik vel Siedzikówna – to capital punishment. After the verdict became binding, the gehenna for these women and girls continued – during their stay in prisons and labour camps, which most of them left only in 1956.

The “Zofia Kuszyńska case” refers to the operations of the apparatus of repression and judicial authorities carried out in the years 1951–1953 against a group of Wrocław residents. They were suspected of belonging to an anti-communist organization, for which in early 1953 they were sentenced to penalties ranging from several years in prison up to capital punishment. The article first describes the methods by which the civilian and military security apparatus led to the conviction of the accused, then the gradual withdrawal from the accusations related to them, which were considered as completely fictitious, and finally the outcome in the form of the rehabilitation process of convicts – which started just at the turn of 1953 and 1954 and lasted until the nineties. The political aspect of the Kuszyńska case was equally significant. In 1953, the communist authorities already recognized her as a glaring example of the violation of the “people’s rule of law” and “the preeminence of the security apparatus over the party”. Primarily it resulted in the punishment of a group of high UBP officers, beginning with the head of the Department of Investigation of the Ministry of Public Security Józef Różański, and secondly, the gradual emancipation of the prosecutor’s office from their dependence on the security apparatus. In this sense, the Kuszyńska case brought crystallization of the attitudes of the PRL and party elite officials in 1954–1956 and became a pretext for actions attempting to create new “political identities” and grafting them onto the liberalization trends inflowing from the USSR’s after Stalin’s death.

The Confederation of Independent Poland (KPN) as a nation-wide organization created its own units in various cities of the country, including Poznan. Despite the fact that some KPN co-creators came from Wielkopolska, the development of local structures progressed very slowly there. The two periods when the organization’s activity in the region was noticeable converged with the era when the Confederation’s importance grew in the national arena. The first took place during the Solidarity revolution, when initial attempts to create KPN structures were made in Poznan. The second was the period of political transformation, when most often the younger generation of oppositionists began to reconstruct the structures of the Wielkopolska division of KPN. The efforts of the oppositionists associated with KPN were often eroded by Security Service officers. The conspirators were subjected to continuous surveillance and repression. In the martial law period, almost all important Confederation activists were interned, and after leaving prison, the first leader of the local KPN Lech Kuroczycki emigrated to France. Only political changes at the end of the PRL period led to successful attempts to reconstruct the KPN structures. The functioning of a relatively small opposition group operating in a city or region that was not considered by the security police as a bastion of opposition is presented in the article. The issue is analysed in two ways: on the one hand, it is a study of a local opposition group, and on the other it shows how the functioning of such a group looked against the background of a nationwide oppositional organization whose leadership, when not in prison, was mainly based in the capital city.

By establishing the Department of Border Protection Forces in September 1945 as the unit standing at the head of the formation, whose responsibilities were directly related to securing the state border and ensuring the proper control of border traffic, the communists made one more step towards the consolidation of their power in the post-war political reality. The established formation and, above all, its reconnaissance division, conducted operations using methods characteristic of special services. With a network of agents, the WOP (Border Protection Forces) reconnaissance effectively controlled the lives of people living in the border area and their contact with citizens from Western European countries. The cooperation of WOP and individual departments of the Ministry of Public Security also limited the citizens’ opportunities to leave the country freely. The study aims to explain the history and tasks of the reconnaissance division of the WOP. It also constitutes an addition to the few publications that cover the issues of Polish border protection after World War II.

The year 1948 is considered by many historians as the beginning of “formal” Stalinism in Poland. After the first period of relative liberalization, under the cover of which the suppression of the political opposition and the independence underground movement was enforced, the communists put their cards on the table. In the revolutionary reconstruction a great deal of attention was devoted to the most promising, but at the same time eminently “unruly” social group – young people. In the Common Organization “Service to Poland” (SP) established on 25 February 1948, the authorities saw the convenient possibility of implementing several strategic goals. The process of imposing military organizational forms and bringing young people uprooted from their own environments into the barracks, was supposed to serve a homogeneous ideological upbringing thereof and to create the nucleus of future party recruits. Szczecin, lying in the Recovered Territories and in need of support in the fastest possible reconstruction, became a location where up to three PO (Common Organization) Brigades of the “SP” were stationed. The youngsters, by virtue of a political decision, were directed to implement the flagship municipal investments of that period. Incidents that took place in Szczecin on 1 August 1948 with their participation could not be of benefit to the communist authorities. They meant the total failure of the bolstered propaganda image of the “SP” as an organization of the unbreakable leaders of socialist work. Although it is difficult to find a political context in the genesis of the events described in the sources, the date of occurrence thereof was undoubtedly used to the advantage of propaganda.

After the military operations finished, the pre-war organization of common courts was restored based on the Regulation of the President of the Polish Republic of 6 February 1928 – The Law regarding the System of Common Courts. The pre-war lawyers were accepted to serve in the judicial system. This legal status was maintained until 1950. In reality, however, from the beginning of the existence of People’s Poland, there were changes in the common judiciary. A new type of court defined as special was established, which included special criminal courts and common court departments adjudicating with participation of lay judges. A Special Committee to Fight against Fraud and Economic Malpractice was also created, as well as people’s courts. People devoted to the Communist Party were brought into those institutions. Lawyers who had been brought up and educated in pre-war Poland were considered by authorities ruling at that time as unadjusted to the new political reality and were removed from the common judicial system.

The source edition of the letter written in January 1958 by the British journalist Frederick Wills from Warsaw to his family provides an insight into its two main aspects. Firstly, the activities of the PRL repression apparatus against Western correspondents (as well as diplomats), who were almost automatically suspected of conducting intelligence activities. Secondly, when analysing such materials, rather than overemphasising the perspective of the SB and reconstructing its actions towards the foreign journalist, it might be worth focusing on the journalist himself and looking at how he perceived the Polish reality he had experienced. A private letter gives a good opportunity to choose such a point of view. Wills shared his observations with his loved ones, while looking as an outsider at the “post-thaw” Poland more or less consciously. His knowledge about Poland was quite superficial and not always accurate, and the style of the letter was chaotic, although (or maybe as a result) his loose notes may represent a significant – though obviously subjective and selective – cognitive value.

During the period of martial law, the judicial administration became – apart from the state security apparatus – one of the main tools used by the communist authorities to combat NSZZ “Solidarność”. The process discussed in the article was a consequence of the Security Service’s disclosure of a group of trade unionists involved in printing and distributing illegal materials in Tomaszów Mazowiecki. Two months later, the Military Garrison Prosecutor’s Office in Łódź, on the basis of the Decree of 12 December 1981 on martial law, opened an investigation into an alleged continuation of the suspended union, spreading “false messages” that could cause “public anxiety or riots” and editing, printing and distributing materials in a second print. A total of 12 people were arrested, 53 witnesses were questioned, and 33 searches were carried out. The trials before the Provincial Court in Piotrków Trybunalski took place on 17–19, 26 and 28 May 1982. Four persons were sentenced to two years in prison. A conditional suspension of the sentence was applied by the court in relation to 6 people. In relation to one person, the proceedings were discontinued, and one person was acquitted of the charges. On 12 January 1983, the Supreme Court suspended execution of the imprisonment sentences for four years, whilst the judgment of the Piotrków court was upheld in relation to the other defendants. After the collapse of the communist system in Poland it became possible to acquit the convicts, which the Supreme Court effected on 27 May 1993.