Martial law was a unique period in Polish history, characterised in part by the extensive use of the Polish justice system by the communist authorities as a tool to suppress political opposition. Extraordinary powers were granted to military courts, which – acting as an ally of the oppressive state – issued harsh sentences. Some of them have even become model examples of judicial crimes. The settlement of judicial crimes, by holding judges criminally liable, poses one of the most challenging tasks for prosecutors at the Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation – Institute of National Remembrance. This category of acts even lacks a comprehensive legal definition. So far, attempts to create such a definition have been made mainly in the literature in the field. Another serious obstacle is the need to waive the immunity of a judge suspected of committing judicial crimes. Practice has shown that it is very difficult to waive immunity. Courts must deal with many legal issues. Only recently, thanks to the prosecutors of the Institute of National Remembrance, resolutions from the Supreme Court have been passed, offering hope that judges who, while serving the communist authorities, violated or distorted the law in force at the time of their adjudication will be held accountable.

After the imposition of martial law the judiciary was “cleansed” of individuals (including judges and prosecutors) who had become involved in the Solidarity trade union after its inception, and who, after 13 December 1981, did not recognize this involvement as a mistake and were therefore considered “extremists” by the authorities. This was to restore the rulers’ full control over the judiciary, which under martial law was intended to be used to crack down on the political opponents (opposition activists) and to intimidate those who were willing to protest against the curtailment of rights. The prosecutors and judges who remained in the profession were therefore subject to virtually constant pressure from the communist authorities (from the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party to the commissars – plenipotentiaries of the Committee for National Defense). As a result, the judiciary became – although not without problems – one of the pillars of martial law regime. However, it is worth noting that this was a “merit” of only a part and not the entire community of prosecutors and judges. Martial law was also, it should be recalled, a period of huge involvement of the military justice system, whose scope of action was significantly increased, including entrusting it with a conciderable portion of the most important political cases.

The article presents an analysis of the role of martial law and other communist crimes during the period of the Polish People’s Republic in the consciousness of Polish society. This analysis is based on the largest survey dedicated to Polish collective memory, conducted after the fall of communism. The authors discuss trends in the evolution of Poles’ perception of this event, their knowledge about martial law and their understanding of its underlying causes. They note that, over the past four decades, there have been changes in Poles’ interpretation of the events of 13 December 1981. Also nowadays, these shifts raise questions about the feasibility of accurately documenting the communist past, particularly in the realms of collective memory and historical education.

The system of “people’s” (in)justice during martial law, in addition to the “ordinary” repressive activities faced by the inhabitants of the Polish People’s Republic, sometimes decided – in executing political orders – to make unobvious actions. These included death sentences passed in absentia. After 13 December 1981, six defendants were sentenced in this way, including two defectors – ambassadors of the Polish People’s Republic: Romuald Spasowski and Zdzisław Rurarz. The sentences served an important political and propaganda function: they were intended not only to instil fear among those convicted (in addition to official bodies, there were also special services, which could be tasked with enforcing the sentences), but also to serve as a deterrent to other diplomats and citizens of the Polish People’s Republic who might consider following the path of these “traitors”. Did the courts’ actions meet the authorities’ expectations? Why did unexpected difficulties arise during Spasowski’s trial? What legal tricks were used to fulfil Jaruzelski’s wishes? In the article, the author will look for answers to these and other questions.

At the beginning of martial law, the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic carried out political verification of justice employees in the Opole Voivodeship. Judges belonging to Solidarity were forced to leave the union. One of the judges was removed from the position of head of the provincial study for trainees. No verification interviews were conducted with advocates, however, it was intended to conduct ongoing political verification when recruiting applicants. Political verification of prosecutor’s office employees was essentially abandoned. The only thing left to do was to conduct explanatory interviews with some people. As a result, one person was dismissed from work. However, it turned out that the communist authorities did not fully control the situation in this environment. In December 1981, twelve current and former employees of the prosecutor’s office submitted their communist party (PZPR) ID cards. The PZPR authorities reacted with party penalties. Initially, all twelve were disciplinary expulsed from the party. Later, the punishment was slightly softened and in five cases they were simply removed from the list of the PZPR members. Subsequently seven people expelled from the communist party were dismissed from their jobs at the prosecutor’s office.

This article focuses on political trials against activists of Solidarity trade union and the political opposition that occurred in the Central and Eastern regions of Solidarity during martial law. According to preserved court and prosecutor’s records, at least 73 political trials took place in this area. The first trials took place in the last ten days of December 1981. The last three trials ended in August 1983. Fifty court cases (seventy percent) were resolved before common courts; the remaining 23 cases were heard before military courts. In all, 147 people were accused, 120 of whom were convicted. Of those convicted, twenty-two percent received prison sentences of one year or more, while fifteen percent received sentences of imprisonment or restriction of liberty of less than one year, forty-six percent received suspended prison sentences, and eight percent were fined. The greatest intensity of the trials discussed, at the stage of court hearings, took place in January, February and May 1982. One-third of the cases concerned the organization of 1981 December strikes against the imposition of martial law, and over half (fifty-five percent) were related to the broadly understood resistance and underground activities undertaken in the following months.

The article aims to summarise three forms of repression employed during martial law against the residents of the Świętokrzyskie region: internment, judicial repression, and the confinement of opposition members in Military Internment Camps. The analysis of archival records allowed us to estimate that the Security Service in Kielce relatively often resorted to internment, which included 368 inhabitants of the Świętokrzyskie region, mainly activists of NSZZ “Solidarność”. This was more than in some much more active opposition centres. The number of underground activists affected by judicial repression was also large, 88 people in total. Many men from the Kielce Voivodeship were sent to Military Internment Camps where they were harassed due to their anti-communist attitude. In total, 65 people were sent there in the autumn of 1982. There were also cases of several different forms of repression being used against one person. During martial law, inhabitants of the Kielce Voivodeship relatively frequently faced various forms of harassment intended to suppress opposition activities, often proving effective.

The article discusses the activity of institutions and services of communist Poland, particularly the Voivodeship Commission for Combating Speculation (Wojewódzka Komisja do Walki ze Spekulacją, WKDS), in addressing the so-called negative phenomena in the trade of goods in detriment of the consumers’ interest in the Cracow Voivodeship (within its boundaries at that time) during martial law. The article outlines the genesis of the establishment of WKDS, discusses other institutions involved in similar activities, and presents the legal provisions that were used in the fight against people conducting illegal trade. The article is supplemented with an annex containing tables with statistical data illustrating various aspects of anti-speculation activities in Cracow and the voivodeship.

The article analyses the judicial repression used against Cracow activists of the independent publishing movement during martial law. This issue has not been the subject of detailed research so far. Existing literature has focused more on the operational activities of the communist apparatus of repression than on the legal sanctions imposed on individuals involved in the underground, illegal publishing. The article focuses on court cases conducted in connection with the editing, printing and distribution of underground magazines and non-serial publications. Cases brought against people printing and distributing leaflets and notices with anti-state content were excluded from the analysis.

The author of the article presents the local aspect of the functioning of the justice system during martial law (13 December 1981 – 22 July 1983), using the Kalisz Voivodeship as an example. The aim is to present the case law formed by civil and military courts, misdemeanour councils and the activities of the prosecutor’s office in a peripheral area, which is neither a leading socio-political and economic centre on a nationwide scale, nor a strong centre of opposition and a region of NSZZ “Solidarność”. During the specified period, courts in the Kalisz Voivodeship pronounced at least 29 individuals accused under the Decree of 12 December 1981 on martial law and under the Penal Code guilty of various offences. These offences included among others continuing trade union activities after martial law was declared, organising and participating in strikes, editing, printing, and distributing underground materials, as well as charges of “public incitement to disobedience against the legal order” and “abuse of freedom of conscience and religion to the detriment of the interests of the Polish People’s Republic”. Apart from the civilian justice system, prosecutors’ offices and military courts also remained a tool for repressing Solidarity activists. A characteristic feature of the jurisprudence in the Kalisz Voivodeship was that the courts imposed imprisonment on only one individual.

The article presents the practical application of summary procedure provisions during martial law in Poland to individuals repressed as perpetrators of new political crimes specified in the martial law decree, particularly in connection with the December strikes in coal mines in the Katowice Voivodeship. The analysis focuses on assessments made by authorities applying the law (military prosecutors and military courts) regarding the premise of the summary procedure, which was based on the criterion of “particularly high degree of social danger associated with the act”. The text outlines the specific structure of the provision regarding this premise, which allowed for its arbitrary application, and confirms this arbitrariness in court cases. As a result, attempts were also made to demonstrate that the actions prompting repression were not actually harmful to society but raised concerns only for the architects of martial law. Moreover, the provisions on which judicial repression was based proved to be exceptionally effective in practice, from the perspective of the elimination goals of the imposition of martial law.

The trials against the members of the youth underground organisations besides their repressive function, achieved also propaganda objectives. The contents of indictments, prosecutor’s speeches, reasons for judgment and press coverage of trials perform all of the functions attributed to political propaganda. They were used to slander members of the underground. They should convince society of the advisability of sentences in respect of the convicted as well as the severity of the punishments. The effectiveness of the employees of the repression apparatus in combating anti-system activity was also emphasised. In effect, public opinion, especially that of young people, should denounce the young conspirators as a direct threat to their security. The goal of this article is to analyse the propaganda language and strategies used during the trials against the people mentioned in the title of the article. The basic hypothesis was verified: the trials of members of underground youth organisations between 1948 and 1956 served not only to eliminate them temporarily from society, but also to depreciate their image and consequently to remove them from social memory.

The most important event during the communist rule in Poland after the Second World War was the so-called October Breakthrough, which took place in 1956. Although the communists remained in power, the previous ruling team with strong ties to the person of Joseph Stalin was somewhat sidelined and replaced by less discredited people such as Władysław Gomułka. Poles living in various countries in Europe and around the world watched these changes closely. In France, their main source of knowledge about the world and Poland was the journal “Narodowiec” published by Michał Kwiatkowski. This newspaper followed and reported with great attention on the changes taking place in Poland as a result of the “October Breakthrough”. Its editorial office was enthusiastic about Gomułka, hoping that, like the communist leader of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, he would increase the scope of Poland’s sovereignty in relation to the Soviet Union.

The main aim of this article is to present a picture of school life in the 1970s and 1980s as it functions in the consciousness of today’s forty- and fifty-year-olds – the primary school students of the time. To present their experiences of the institution, the article is based on memories collected by the author and in her possession (which have some of the hallmarks of oral history), as well as those in print. Posts on social media forums and blogs were also used. The author’s premise was to appeal to the interviewees’ perspectives (subjective memory of school reality, memory of personal experiences and to present narratives about them). All accounts and memories are from the 21st century, so there is certainly a concern that the storytellers may not remember many things, others may be presented from a contemporary perspective, exaggerated or altered. Based on “memory research”, we know that people are able to flexibly compensate for memory deficits of events they have participated in with semantic (general, common knowledge) data. Individual views of the school past should make it possible to create a “common picture of school life” in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as to answer the question of which elements of this picture survive most strongly in consciousness and to what extent they relate to the school reality of the time. The reflections also attempted to answer the question to what extent the recollectors remember political realities, to what extent they shaped the memory of the school. Conclusions: few of the respondents recall ideological treatments. Although they were present in the reality of school, they do not occupy a central place in the memory of the years spent in primary school. Generally, students remember what was pleasant. They feel very sentimental about the school they graduated from 30 or 40 years ago and even idealise it in their memories, even if there were some unpleasant incidents. The memories are mainly of things that are not related to learning, but to extra-curricular time, breaks and school events.

The subject of the presented study is the image of three Polish national uprisings: the Kościuszko Uprising (1794), the November (1830–1831) and the January (1863) ones in the history textbooks written in the Polish People’s Republic. The author draws attention to the role of the school textbook in teaching, the organization of the school system, and the ideologization of the teaching of history in the communist Poland, having the varying degree of its intensity in particular periods. He then goes on to describe a selection of history textbooks for primary and secondary schools. He draws attention to the way in which they show national uprisings, the purpose of the struggle and the way in which the authors approached the presentation of the invader against whom these uprisings were organized. An important element is also to show the driving force behind the uprisings, which in the times of the Polish People’s Republic was considered to be the revolutionary movement and the peasants. In the opinion of authors of the textbooks the factor inhibiting the insurrectionary struggle against Russia was the nobility, especially its wealthier part. This vision corresponded to Marxist ideas about the creative role of the lower social classes, and at the same time placed the above-mentioned uprisings in the course of revolutionary changes of the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe. The author of the article also tries to present the didactic casing of school textbooks showing its generally low quality.

After the end of World War II, Turkey became an important country in Washington’s Middle East policy. In the event of its conflict with the USSR, Ankara would allow US forces to land in the ports of the southern Anatolia and on the islands of the Greek archipelago. It also provided a gateway to the Middle East. Therefore, President Harry S. Truman proposed placing Greece and Turkey under a program of economic and military aid aimed at keeping these countries from falling into the USSR’s sphere of influence. The purpose of this article is to look at American aid in its first years, and to answer the questions: Was it sufficient? How did its size compare with other countries that were covered by it? In the literature, one can find the statement that US material aid to Turkey was substantial and was an important part of relations between the two countries. It reflects the opinion of the US authorities, whose opinion was that it was sufficient. However, Ankara hoped that the financial support would be greater and that it would be allocated to the most pressing needs from its point of view. The size of the support for Turkey and Greece relative to the size of these countries was also a problem, unfavorable to Ankara. However, the overriding US and Western interest was to stop the spread of communism, hence the priority was Greece, where a civil war was underway.

The article consists of two parts. The first part recounts the history of seven skulls exhumed in Katyń in 1943. These skulls were transported by Prof. Gerhard Buhtz, the head of the exhumation, to Wrocław (then Breslau) and were later found after the war in the Institute of Forensic Medicine (Polish: Zakład Medycyny Sądowej) in that city. The authors present events related to skulls over the course of over 70 years, up to the present day and the activities of the Institute of National Remembrance prosecutor’s office investigating the Katyń massacre. The authors also present the background of the cooperation between the Institute of National Remembrance Branch in Wrocław and the local Institute of Forensic Medicine, as a result of which, among other things, the method of super-projection of Janina Lewandowska’s skull and the pioneering 3D projection of one of the skulls were made available for the first time. The second part consists of an edition of a previously unpublished report on the forensic and medical examination of seven skulls from Katyń, which was carried out by Institute of Forensic Medicine employees in Wrocław in 2002. This document, edited by the authors, contains a detailed analysis in the field of forensic medicine.

The Catholic Church and its faithful were particularly exposed to repression in the period 1917–1989, when two totalitarian systems – fascist and communist ones – developed their criminal activities. Crimes – including genocide – and other repressions against Catholics had become an everyday occurrence. Paweł Skibiński’s findings show that Poles were particularly repressed by the Soviets and Germans because of their nationality and Catholicism. German concentration camps, including Dachau – the place of execution of many priests – and Soviet labor camps, as well as the Katyn Massacre, a particularly important event from the perspective of the fate of clergy of various denominations, have become symbols of their persecution. The research of the author of the reviewed monograph indicates that the repressions of the Third Reich affected Catholics in all the countries occupied by it during World War II and in Germany itself. In turn, Soviet repression became the norm against Catholics in those areas that were occupied by the Red Army during World War II and, after the war, found themselves in the sphere of influence of the USSR. After 1945, local communists, often trained in Moscow, supported the Soviets in their criminal activities. The author of the reviewed book noticed and discussed in detail the role of John Paul II in the process of dismantling the communist political system in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Review of the book Zbrodnie organizacji ukraińskich nacjonalistów i ukraińskiej powstańczej armii na kresach południowo-wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej (1939–1945) w dokumentach. Studia i materiały. Ed. Tomasz Bereza. Rzeszów-Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2023.

Report of academic conference „»Niemcy, w ręce wasze oddaję Polaków, musimy ten naród wytępić…«. Polityka germanizacyjna niemieckich władz okupacyjnych na Pomorzu Gdańskim 1939–1945” [„»Germans, I hand the Poles over to you, we must exterminate this nation...«. Germanisation policy of German occupation authorities in Gdańska Pomerania 1939-1945”], Gdańsk, 25–26 October 2022.