In 1950, the secret police began cleaning its own party of alleged enemies of the system. Top officers were arrested on suspicion of alleged "military conspiracy" and espionage, and then brutally interrogated. The The Trial of the Generals resulted in many other arrests and side trials, not directly related to the case of high-ranking officers. In these splinter trials 86 other officers were sentenced, including 37 to the death penalty.
Adam Czerniaków (1880-1942) - engineer, economic, educational and social activist (for the integration of the Polish and Jewish nation), journalist, president of the Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw, president of the Warsaw Judenrat in 1939-1942. In 1942, on the day of the commencement of the great liquidation action, he refused to sign the announcement on the forced deportation of Jews from Warsaw (and in fact deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp). The next day, he committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide. A short letter to his wife was found on the table: "They demand me to kill children of my nation with my own hands. I have nothing to do but to die."
Agnieszka Haska - PhD in anthropology, currently works at the Holocaust Research Center. Together with Jerzy Stachowicz, she is the author of the book "Merciless. The Most Cruel Women of the Interwar Period" and the "Disgrace! Tales of Polish Betrayal" published in WAB.
Albin Siwak (1933 - 2019) - Polish worker, politician and communist unionist, author of memoirs and social activist. Member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, advisor to the Embassy of the Polish People's Republic in Tripoli. After retirement, he took up writing and journalistic activities. He was a board member of the Social Committee for the Defense of the Symbols of Remembrance of War Victims.
A graduate of the Faculty of Law at the University of Białystok. Journalist and publicist of "Warszawska Gazeta" ("Warsaw Newpaper"), author of a series of articles about the unsolved crimes of the Polish People's Republic and the mysterious deaths of people related to the most famous scandals of the Third Polish Republic, and a series of articles about the Cursed Soldiers, crimes and criminals of the Stalinist period. Commentator on political life in Poland.
Aleksander Bieberstein (1889 - 1979) - doctor, diarist of the Krakow ghetto. Throughout the entire period of World War II, Bieberstein kept notes and records documenting the fate of Krakow's Jews, which, however, were lost during the evacuation in the Gross-Rosen camp. After the war, he tried to recreate this documentation as accurately as possible from memory and from conversations with the surviving Krakow Jews.
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008) - Russian writer, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature. Author of moralistic works about the communist system of enslavement and terror, showing the Gehenna of life in the camps (including the three-volume work The Gulag Archipelago), and historical works about the 20th century history of Russia.
Alfred Karol Jaroszewicz ps. "Turczyński", "Zygmunt", "Fat" (1902-1981) - Polish officer, politician, participant in the Polish-Bolshevik war. He was active in the ranks of the Liberation Fighting Union (a communist underground organization fighting against the Germans), later the Home Army. Acting in a double role, he penetrated the structures of the General Headquarters of the People's Guard and its intelligence. He took part in the investigation, infiltration and combating of left-revolutionary movements.
Home Army soldier and unbroken prisoner of Stalin's casemates in Poland, secretary and chief liaison officer to the head of counter-intelligence of the Home Army Warsaw District Command.
(1924 - 2012) - German historian and writer, coming from Polish Jews from Będzin, concentration camp prisoner. He was one of the most famous witnesses and historians of the Holocaust in Germany, a well-known activist of Jewish organizations in Germany, and the author of highly regarded publications on the participation of Jews in the resistance movement during the Spanish Civil War and World War II.
Arnold Mostowicz (born 6 April 1914 in Łódź as Arnold Moszkowicz, died 3 February 2002 in Warsaw) - a recognised Polish writer, journalist, translator and populariser of science, born in Łódź to a Jewish family. Before the war he worked as a doctor. He was held in the German concentration camps of Auschwitz, Bad Warmbrunn, Dörnhau, Jelenia Góra and Cieplice.
Arseny Anatolyevich Goulevich (Гулевич, Арсений Анатольевич) (1866 - 1947) - russian military commander, lieutenant general, Entourage major general, prominent military theorist. Born in a noble family.
August Emil Fieldorf, ps. "Nil" (born 1895, murdered in court in 1953) - one of the most famous and distinguished heroes of the Polish underground during the Second World War, Brigadier General of the Polish Army, organizer and commander of the Home Army "Kedyw", Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army. After the war, despite his arrest and torture, he was never broken by the organs of the communist repression apparatus, and was sentenced to death by hanging on the basis of false evidence. Posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle.
(German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers and crematories; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of extermination of Poles and the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question.
Benjamen Blech (born in Zurich in 1933), is an Orthodox rabbi, a Professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University since 1966. In addition to his work in the rabbinate, Blech has written many books on Judaism and the Jewish people and speaks on Jewish topics to communities around the world), confirmed this in his book The Secrets of Hebrew Words.
Ber Baskind (or Bretsztein) - author of memoirs La grande epouvante. Souvenirs d´un rescape du ghetto de Varsovie (french: Great terror. Memories of escaping the Warsaw ghetto).
Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen - German concentration camp existing in 1940–1945 in the Third Reich near the city of Bergen. The camp was established in the first half of 1940 as a camp for prisoners of war. The prisoners were kept in the open air, so during the first winter 14,000 of them died of hunger and cold, as well as the typhus epidemic.
Beriowszczyzna - colloquially the period of "great terror" in the Soviet Union in the years 1938-1953. Then the Soviet apparatus of repression was led by Lavrenti Beria.
The Polish Police of the General Government (German: Polnische Polizei im Generalgouvernement), commonly referred to as the blue police - municipal police, financed by Polish local governments (residual local government structures, under the supervision of the German civil administration), subordinated to the local commanders of the German order police - Ordnungspolizei.
Bnei Akiba - Hebrew "Sons of Akiba", a Jewish youth organization named after Rabbi Akiba, a scholar, teacher and Jewish leader during the Bar Kochbywa uprising in the years 132–135. His martyrdom at the hands of the Romans became a symbol of Kiddush Ha-Shem [sacrificing his life for faith in God]. Bnei Akiba operated in Poland from 1924, it was a Zionist organization with particular emphasis on the Jewish tradition. Members of this organization were particularly active in Krakow and the surrounding area and formed the backbone of the ŻOB in this area.
The Bolsheviks (Russian: Большевики́ 'majority') were a far-left, revolutionary Marxist faction founded by Vladimir Lenin that split with the Mensheviks from the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, a revolutionary socialist political party. After forming their own party in 1912, the Bolsheviks took power during the October Revolution in the Russian Republic in November 1917, overthrowing the Provisional Government, and became the only ruling party in the subsequent Soviet Russia and later the Soviet Union. They considered themselves the leaders of the revolutionary proletariat of Russia. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism.
Bouena Sarfatty (1916-1997, born in Thessaloniki) was a Jewish Greek partisan from the Second World War, an author of poems and a well-known embroiderer. She belonged to the upper classes of Thessaloniki. After the Nazi invasion, she volunteered for the Red Cross and also carried messages between young men in labour camps and their families. She separated from Vital Hasson, a leader of Jewish collaborators. She was engaged to be married, but her fiancé was shot dead on the day their wedding was to take place, after Hasson informed the Nazis that the man had escaped from his work group. A film was made about her achievements.
Bronisław Szymański - an officer of the Soviet and Polish secret services. By the Soviet authorities, he was seconded as a soldier to the 1st Infantry Division Tadeusz Kościuszko, then directed to the NKVD course. Member of the UB group of Gen. Roman Romkowski, investigator in the UB Investigation Department. He was interrogated by the KGB as to the course of his service in the UB in Poland, and the materials from this interrogation were forwarded to the Polish side, serving, inter alia, to prepare a report on abuses in the Stalinist security apparatus in Poland.
The camp in Brzezinka (German: Birkenau) was part of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps, operating in the years 1940–1945 in Oświęcim (German: Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau). At first it was a concentration camp, but then it also became a place of mass extermination, where gas chambers and crematoria were placed.
The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (Russian: Хра́м Христа́ Спаси́теля) is the largest Orthodox church (sobor) in the world, located in Moscow on the banks of the Moskva River, near the Kremlin. The main church of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Pułk Osłonowy Kawalerii „Wołkowysk” - oddział kawalerii Wojska Polskiego w II Rzeczypospolitej improwizowany w trakcie kampanii wrześniowej 1939 roku.
A secret centre of Polish Communists in the USSR, set up by the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to seize power in Poland, operating between January and August 1944.
Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution and Sabotage / Speculation and Abuse of Power) - the acronym for the secret police in Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1922. From this name came the colloquial term for its officers - Chekists (Chekista); today it often refers also to officers of the state security organs such as KGB, FSB and SWR. The Cheka used methods such as hostage-taking and mass executions on an unprecedented scale. Machine guns were used for mass executions of counter-revolutionaries. So many death sentences were handed down in Petrograd that convicts were tied in pairs, loaded onto wooden barges in the evenings, taken out into the waters of the Gulf of Finland and sunk there. The establishment of internal order often involved mindless, appalling atrocities by the Cheka.
Chief Military Prosecutor's Office - the highest organizational unit of the military part of the prosecutor's office in Poland in the hierarchy, existing from 1919 to 2016. The military part of the Public Prosecutor's Office performed tasks similar to the civilian part, but towards soldiers and matters related to the Ministry of National Defense, its institutions and the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland.
Cichociemni (the "Silent Unseen") Paratroopers of the Home Army - soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces trained in Great Britain and Italy, who volunteered for special service in the underground Home Army in Poland occupied by the Germans and the Soviets. They were not a compact formation or a military unit, they did not have their own banner, colors, patron, or their own tradition. They were trained for individual activities in the field of sabotage, diversion, intelligence, communication, as well as officers prepared to perform staff and command duties. During the war, all information regarding the Cichociemni was strictly confidential.
Committee for Public Security (KdsBP) at the Council of Ministers - a collegiate supreme body of state administration of the People's Republic of Poland, operating from 1954 to 1956, serving as a special service (including intelligence, counterintelligence and political police, and in 1955-1956 also military counterintelligence). The name of the institution and its formula was a copy of the name and formula of the KGB of the USSR, or the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Under the lustration law, the KdsBP is considered a state security organ.
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern (from Russian: Коммунистический интернационал, trl. Kommunisticzjeskij internacionał) - an international organization founded on the initiative of Vladimir Lenin in Moscow in 1919. It was founded by 19 communist parties, including the Communist Party of Poland. The aims of the International were to promote communist ideas and to prepare for the world revolution.
Communist Party of Poland (KPP, polish: Komunistyczna Partia Polski) – a communist party operating from 1918 to 1938.
Communist Party of Western Belarus (Polish: Komunistyczna Partia Zachodniej Białorusi, KPZB; Belarusian: Камуністычная партыя Заходняй Беларусі, КПЗБ) - a political grouping active in the years 1923-1938 in the north-eastern Poland. KPZB was created in October 1923 in Vilnius. It was active in the areas claimed by the Soviet Union (Białystok, Vilnius, Nowogródek and Polesie voivodeships), it gathered communists regardless of their nationality (mostly Jews and Byelorussians). The Union of Communist Youth of Western Belarus, founded in 1924, acted as its annexe. It was dissolved in 1938 on Stalin's orders, as a result of accusations of collaboration with the Polish authorities. After Western Belarus was incorporated into the USSR, most of its activists were murdered.
Communist Party of Western Ukraine, (Polish: Komunistyczna Partia Zachodniej Ukrainy, KPZU; Ukrainian: Комуністична партія Західної України) - illegal communist party, active in the Second Polish Republic in the Lvov, Stanislaw, Tarnopol and Wolyn provinces. The party was dissolved in 1938, together with the Communist Party of Poland. Most of its activists, who stayed in USSR, were imprisoned by NKVD and executed during the great terror of 1930s, others suffered during Soviet occupation (1939-1941). The party was rehabilitated in 1956.
Congress Poland - the common name for the Kingdom of Poland or the Congress Kingdom, a state created by a decision of the Congress of Vienna, united with the Russian Empire from 1815 to 1832. Under a Russian-Austrian-Prussian treaty of 3 May 1815, these powers divided the lands of the Duchy of Warsaw. Article V of this treaty proclaimed that the lands of the Duchy of Warsaw remaining under Russian control were merged with Russia indissolubly by its constitution and placed for ever in the hands of the Most Serene Emperor of All-Russia.
Criminal Police (German: Kriminalpolizei, Kripo) - German criminal police. The Kripo formally dealt mainly with criminal matters, leaving the Gestapo with political matters and organizing terror. However, in fact, quite often there were cases of cooperation between the two police forces in the fight against political opponents of the Third Reich, in the extermination of Jews, sending people to concentration camps and for providing "guinea pigs" for medical experiments.
Cross of Merit - Polish civil state decoration, awarded for merits to the State or citizens. The Cross of Merit was initially the highest award for civilians who, after Poland regained independence in 1918, distinguished themselves in their work for the country and society, fulfilling activities that went beyond the scope of their daily duties. The Cross of Merit comes in three degrees: Gold Cross of Merit, Silver Cross of Merit, Bronze Cross of Merit.
Cursed soldiers or Indomitable Soldiers, Polish post-war independence and anti-communist underground - anti-communist, independence guerrilla movement, resisting the sovietization of Poland and subjugating it to the USSR, fighting against the security services of the USSR and subordinate services in Poland.
Czerwony Sztandar [pl: Red Banner] – a newspaper published in Polish language in Lviv by the occupying Soviet authorities, from 5 October 1939 to 27 June 1941.
Danil Samoylovich Pasmanik (Пасманик, Даниил Самойлович), Daniel Ben-Samueli (1869 - 1930) - Russian publicist and social activist of Jewish origin, a doctor, an associate professor at the Medical Faculty of Geneva University, an activist of Zionist movement. From 1917 he was a member of the Central Committee of the Kadet party. A participant in the White Guard movement which was trying to restore the old system by fighting against the Bolsheviks. He was an opponent of the Soviet Union and the Provisional Government.
A socio-political department of the Ministry of Public Security for "political purity". It infiltrated and invigilated government structures so that communist activists would not have access to information related to independence activities. It eliminated 'insecure' individuals, manifesting overly Polish thinking. It also pacified so called "religious associations" - brutally combating the Catholic Church and liquidating priests. It supervised various organisations and associations, education and culture.
Department X was a department of the Ministry of Public Security during the communist dictatorship in the Polish People's Republic and dealt with the fight against the so-called "provocation in the workers' movement". In fact, it was responsible for the mass, bloody repression of people opposing the regime and fighting for an independent Poland. Its director was Col. Anatol Fejgin.
East Berlin was the de facto capital city of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 1961 until 1989, East Berlin was separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall. The Western Allied powers did not recognise East Berlin as the GDR's capital, nor the GDR's authority to govern East Berlin. In 1990, the day Germany was officially reunified, East and West Berlin formally reunited as the city of Berlin and the Berlin Wall was destroyed.
Różański Eliahu, alias Elik, Elek - activist of Ha-Szomer ha-Cair, fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto. Before the Second World War he was a member of the Warsaw Ha-Szomer ha-Cair and attended a Jewish secondary school. After the outbreak of war, he went to the territories occupied by the USSR. In 1940, he returned to Warsaw. He actively participated in the conspiracy in the Warsaw Ghetto. He was a member of the Jewish Combat Organisation. During the Great Ghetto Action, he and his comrades were put on a train to Treblinka. They managed to jump off and return to the ghetto. In 1943, Różański was among a group of fighters who mingled with Jews being led to the Umschlagplatz and attacked German guards. During the fighting, Różanski was mortally wounded and died the next day.
The Emancipation of Labour was the first Russian Marxist group. It was founded in exile in Geneva in 1883. The group published the first Russian-language translations of many of Karl Marx's works and distributed them. In Russia, Emancipation of Labour influenced a separate group, the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, founded by Vladimir Lenin and others in St Petersburg in 1895. Lenin later wrote that the Emancipation of Labour "laid the theoretical foundations for the social democratic movement and took the first step towards a working class movement in Russia."
Feliks Edmundowicz Dzerzhinsky (1877 - 1926) - Polish and Soviet revolutionary and politician. After the Bolshevik coup he was the organiser of the Soviet security services. From 1917 he headed the Cheka, GPU and OGPU. Due to his co-responsibility for political repressions during the Red Terror he became known as Iron Felix, Bloody Felix or Red Executioner.
Freedom and Independence (pl. Wolność i Niezawisłość) - Polish civil-military underground organization founded in 1945 in Warsaw. Its core were the remains of the disbanded Delegation of the Armed Forces for Poland. WiN took over its organizational structure, staff, property, and partly forest departments. The commanders of the Delegation of the Armed Forces areas became the presidents of the WiN areas. WiN demanded that the Red Army and the NKVD leave Poland. The organization rejected the shape of the eastern border established in Yalta. The organization was also against political persecution and the devastation of the country committed by the Soviet army.
A nationwide social and political opinion-forming journal with a centro-liberal profile, published since 1989 in Warsaw by the Agora company; the editor-in-chief of the journal since its inception is Adam Michnik, who was born of an informal union of pre-war communist activists of Jewish origin: Ozjasza Szechter and Helena Michnik, his brother was a communist judge Stefan Michnik, mentioned by the Mazur commission as one of the Stalinist judges breaking the rule of law, responsible for the court murders of Polish patriots. Gazeta Wyborcza was established on the basis of the Round Table arrangements as the press organ of the Solidarity Citizens' Committee in the election campaign before the parliamentary elections in 1989. After the union broke off cooperation, she continued her activity as an independent newspaper. Gazeta Wyborcza is accused of an anti-Polish character of many articles. In 2020, it was the 10th most read daily newspaper in Europe. She has received the Grand Press awards many times.
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia was a secular Jewish socialist party initially formed in the Russian Empire that existed from 1897 to 1948 and was active in several European countries from the 1890s to the second half of the 1940s. The Bund was an autonomous part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from 1898-1903 and 1906-1912. Organisational remnants of the group are still active in the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK.
(german: Geheime Staatspolizei) The Secret State Police established in the Third Reich, which ruthlessly fought against all forms of resistance in the occupied territories. Identified with the most terrible German crimes against Poles, and after 1942 also against Jews. Disbanded with the fall of the Third Reich in 1945. Recognized as a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.
Geoffrey Swain is the Alec Nove Chair in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow. He has written extensively on the modern history of Russia and Eastern Europe, including biographies of the dissident communists Trotsky and Tito.
Wielka Akcja - (niem. Grossaktion Warschau) – akcja likwidacyjna getta warszawskiego połączona z masową eksterminacją jego mieszkańców)
Gulag (abbreviation for Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Colonies) - government agency existed from 1930, in charge of concentration camps (gulags) in the USSR, in which prisoners included both criminal offenders and political prisoners. The gulag network consisted at its peak of several thousand forced labour camps spread throughout the USSR. The camps had extremely poor living conditions, similar to those in German concentration camps, and the people placed there were forced into exhausting, slave-like labour. The poor conditions and overworking caused massive mortality, reaching up to one third of the population per year in some camps and periods.
Hashomer Hatzair was a Socialist-Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary. By 1939, Hashomer Hatzair had 70,000 members worldwide. They focused their attention on resistance against the Nazis. Its members were involved in jewish resistance movement; took a part in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, rescue jews in Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia. After the war, the movement was involved in organizing illegal immigration of Jewish refugees to Palestine.
Henryk Piecuch (born December 4, 1939 in Bielsko) - retired colonel of the Border Guard and Border Guard Forces, journalist, writer, researcher and promoter of the activities of special services, especially Polish.
Hilary Chełchowski (born 10 January 1908 in Mosaki-Stara Wieś, died 10 December 1983 in Warsaw) - Polish carpenter and communist politician. Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (1950-1952), Minister of State Farms (1951-1954) and a member of the State Council (1955-1957), Member of the National Council and of the Legislative Sejm and the Sejm of the People's Republic of Poland of the first term.
Hitlerjugend (literally "Hitler's Youth") was a German NSDAP youth organisation organised as a paramilitary group in 1922 as an offshoot of the Storm Troops. The Hitlerjugend promoted the cult of a strong and healthy Germanic race, hence there was a strong emphasis on physical and military exercises combined with discipline and the cult of the individual. Girls were prepared for their role as German mothers and wives. The woman was to be the guardian of family, heritage, race and blood, domestic virtues and the priestess of family and nation. A sense of superiority was instilled in the youth, their own code of honour was used for this purpose, the organisation had banners, anthems and martyrs who died in the fight against political opponents. Harvest relief actions, scrap metal collections, winter relief actions, second-hand clothing collections were organised. Use of weapons was practised, marches were organised, and cartography were taught. Urban youth were sent to the countryside for compulsory training.
Home Army (AK, polish: Armia Krajowa) – the clandestine armed forces of the Polish Underground State during World War II.
The Institute of National Remembrance (pl: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN) is a Polish state research institute in charge of education and archives with investigative and lustration powers, to protect the reputation of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation. The IPN investigates Nazi and communist crimes committed between 1917 and 1990, documents its findings, and disseminates them to the public.
International Red Aid (Russian: Международная организация помощи борцам революции (МОПР / MOPR) - a social organization founded in 1922 in Moscow with the aim to help revolutionaries, political prisoners and their families, leading also international protest campaigns. It had 70 sections and around 14 million members and was subordinated to the Communist International until its dissolution in 1947. The MOPR created national sections (usually illegal). In Poland it was the Red Aid in Poland, in the United States the International Labour Defence.
Irene Harand (1900 – 1975) was an Austrian human rights activist and campaigner against antisemitism. She was born a Roman Catholic in Vienna and was an early organiser of protests against Nazi Germany's persecutions of Jews. She started the Harand Movement, an organisation World Movement Against Racial Hatred and Human Suffering in 1933 and actively campaigned throughout Europe before World War II.
Jakub Biskupicz (1926 - 2002) born in Hrubieszów, the author of memoirs from Sobibór titled From Hrubieszów to Sobibór.
Jan Stanisław Jankowski, pseud. Otles, Doktor, Jan, Klonowski, Sobolewski, Soból (born on 6 May 1882 in Krasowo Wielkie in the Wysokie Mazowieckie Voivodeship, died on 13 March 1953 in Włodzimierz nad Klaźmą in the USSR) - Polish political activist, Government Delegate for Poland from 19 February 1943 (formally from 21 April 1943) to 27 March 1945, chemical engineer. He was repeatedly decorated with orders for his merits in the fight against the occupying forces. In March 1945, together with other leaders of the Polish Underground State, he was arrested by the NKVD and deported to Moscow and imprisoned at Łubianka. He was probably murdered two weeks before the end of his sentence.
Janusz Korczak, full name Henryk Goldszmit, ps. "Old Doktor" or "Mister Doktor" (born on July 22, 1878 or 1879 in Warsaw, died in August 1942 in Treblinka) - Polish-Jewish doctor, educator, writer, journalist and social activist. A theoretician and practitioner of children upbringing, creator of an original system of work with children, based on partnership, self-governing procedures and institutions, and stimulating self-education. Researcher of the world of children. He was a pioneer in the field of educational diagnosis and a precursor-activist for the human-children rights. In 1926 he initiated the first periodical, mostly edited by children - "Little Review" (polish: "Mały Przegląd"). As a Jew-Pole, he felt a double national identity.
Jehoszua Perle also Joszua Perle (1888 - 1944) - Jewish writer, publicist and translator, a representative of realism and naturalism, writing exclusively in Yiddish. During the German occupation in 1940, he was in the Warsaw Ghetto and worked in the Propaganda Department of the Judenrat Supplies Department, where he edited posters. In 1943, he crossed over to the "Aryan side", but fell victim to a German provocation at the Polish Hotel in Długa Street. He and his son were deported to Bergen-Belsen and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he died in the spring of 1944.
Jerzy Jarowiecki (born 1930) - press expert, literary scholar, press historian, professor at the Pedagogical University in Krakow, Poland.
Jerzy Łyżwa-Łyżwański, ps. Puchacz (pl. Eagle Owl) (1921 - 1990), soldier in the Home Army unit of Jan Orzel "Kmicic". He probably came from Warsaw. He fought in the province Rzeszów and Lublin. Partisan, courier, imprisoned in Kiev. Commander of the Polish Landing Unit in the Carpathians. A soldier of the 2nd Polish Army, honored with min. the Cross of Virtuti Militari and the Cross of Grunwald. Staff officer, imprisoned in 1951-56. Lieutenant colonel retired.
Jewish Combat Organisation (ŻOB) - an underground organisation of armed resistance of Polish Jews during the Holocaust, operating in several major cities, and the best known of the Jewish resistance formations during World War II.
German: Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst, literally Jewish Order Service, customarily Jewish police - during World War II, they ware partially subordinate to the Judenrat, collaborating with Nazi Germany, Jewish Police units operated inside ghettos, labor camps and concentration camps. The police dealt with requisitions, round-ups of other Jews, escorting displaced people and deportation actions.
Jonas Turkow or Yonas Turkov (1898 - 1988) - Polish actor and director, as well as a writer of Jewish origin, who became famous mainly for his roles in pre-war films and theater plays in Yiddish.
Józef Bratko - A graduate of journalism at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the Jagiellonian University. A journalist by profession. He deals with literary and historical documentary reporting, journalism, poetry, as well as easel painting and drawing. A respected journalist, known for his historical interests, years ago with diligent accuracy and persistent inquisitiveness, investigated various secrets related to the Nazi occupation and the police system of the Third Reich.
Józef Artur Rybak (born on 7 April 1882 in Delatyń, died on 8 May 1953 in Kraków) - a decorated major general of the Polish Army, army inspector, knight of the Order of Virtuti Militari. Arrested by the communist Security Office, but released soon due to poor health. Author of memoirs.
Józef Waszkiewicz (1917 - 1990) graduated from the Faculty of Law and Administration at the Jagiellonian University. After being drafted into the "People's" Polish Army in 1947, he was assigned to work in the military administration of justice. Initially, he was a judge of the Military District Court in Poznań, then deputy head in Rzeszów and head of the district military courts in Koszalin and Zielona Góra. In the years 1952–1957 he was a member of the Supreme Military Court. He was transferred to the reserve in the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1958. Author of memoirs entitled "Rehabilitations" (polish: "Rehabilitacje"), which deals with the operation of the communist apparatus of repression through the military judiciary.
Judenrat (Jewish Council or Jewish Council of Elders) - organizations established by Nazi German authorities during World War II with the task of administering Jewish communities and implementing German orders issued against them. In addition to collaborating with the occupier, most Judenrat also engaged in corruption and were aimed at the destruction of the Jewish population. Only a few of them undertook cooperation with partisans.
Julian Baltazar Józef Marchlewski (1866 – 1925) - Polish communist politician, revolutionary activist, publicist and chairman of the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee. Socialist press editor, columnist and publisher.
Juliusz Sobolewski, ps. Roman, (1917 - 1956) graduated from the Sapper Cadet School in the 1930s. As a platoon officer cadet he commanded a platoon in the 2nd sapper company. Home Army officer. Jeniec Stalagu X B Sandbostel, then Oflagu X-C Lübeck. Arrested by the UB in 1952. Accused of espionage for Anglo-American intelligence. He underwent a heavy investigation in the Mokotów prison. Sentenced to death, commuted during a trial review to 40 months in prison. After the sentence was changed, he was taken to be exposed to x-rays many times. In 1954, conditionally released from prison - already suffering from leukemia. For a year and a half, he worked at the Rubber Industry Office. Posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.
Kazimierz Krajewski (born in 1955) - Polish historian specializing in the history of Poland and world history of the 20th century, chief specialist of the Department of Historical Research of the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw. In 2012, he obtained a PhD in humanities at the Faculty of Humanities at UWM in Olsztyn. In 2009, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for outstanding achievements in disseminating knowledge about the recent history of Poland. In 2017, he was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for outstanding achievements in preserving the memory of the recent history of Poland, for his veteran and social activities.
The Politburo (abbreviation for Political Bureau) of the Polish United Workers (Communist) Party (PUWP; Polish: Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR) was the chief executive body of the ruling communist apparatus in Poland between 1948–1989. Nearly all key figures of the regime had membership in the Politburo. The Politburo of the PUWP typically had between 9-15 full members at any one time. Usually, several alternate (or candidate) members were also elected to the Politburo, but unlike full members, alternate members did not possess full voting rights.
The Kennkarte was the basic identity document in use inside Germany (including occupied incorporated territories) during the Third Reich era. They were first introduced in July 1938. They were normally obtained through a police precinct and bore the stamps of the corresponding issuing office and official. Every male German citizen aged 18 and older, and every Jewish citizen (both male and female) was issued one and was expected to produce it when confronted by officials.
The Kielce Pogrom - a series of attacks on the Jewish population that took place on July 4, 1946 in Kielce. The pogrom was carried out by the inhabitants of Kielce, soldiers of the Polish People's Army, the Internal Security Corps and officers of the Citizens' Militia. The immediate cause of the pogrom was the rumor that the Jews had imprisoned an eight-year-old boy in a basement for the purpose of ritual murder. As a result of the pogrom, 37 Jews were killed and 35 were injured. Three Poles were also killed. The Kielce pogrom outraged part of the public opinion in Poland and, to a greater extent, abroad. It caused almost mass emigration of Jews from Poland and other European countries to Israel and contributed to the spread of the stereotype of a Pole-anti-Semite in the world.
The name "Kremlin" is used as a synonym for the highest Russian and, in between, Soviet authorities, whose headquarters were traditionally located in the Moscow Kremlin. "Kremlin" means a fortified town or fortress situated within Russian cities, usually built on a hill.
Dr. Krzysztof Szwagrzyk - Polish historian, holder of a postdoctoral degree in history with a specialization in modern history. Associate professor at the University of Lower Silesia. He held the position of Head of the Branch Office of the Institute of National Remembrance Public Education in Wrocław, and was also a plenipotentiary of the President of the Institute of National Remembrance for the search of burial sites of victims of communist terror. Since July 2016, he has been Deputy President of the Institute of National Remembrance and serves as Director of the Search and Identification Bureau. He conducts searches for people murdered during the Stalinist period. His teams have conducted many exhumation works.
Leonid Kannegiser was born in 1896 in Nikolaev, Ukraine, (then part of the Russian Empire), into a wealthy Jewish family. His father, Akim Kannegisser, was a mechanical engineer and the head of Russia's largest shipyards, the Black Sea Shipyard, and his mother was a doctor. Kannegisser graduated from a private school and in 1913 became a military cadet in the Mikhailov Artillery School of the Imperial Russian Army. Kannegisser studied economics at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute and was a member of Popular Socialists, a moderate left-wing anti-Communist political party. An admirer of Alexander Kerensky, during the October Revolution, Kannegisser and several other cadets defended the Provisional Government at the Winter Palace.
Leopold Okulicki (born November 12, 1898 in Bratucice, died. 24 December 1946 in Moscow) - Brigadier-General of the Polish Army, co-founder of the Service for Poland's Victory (SZP), Union of Armed Struggle (ZWZ), Home Army (AK), the last commander-in-chief of the Home Army, commander-in-chief of the NIE (military organisation whose task was to continue the fight for Poland's independence after the entry of the Red Army), commander of the Lodz District of the ZWZ, commander-in-chief of the ZWZ in the areas under Soviet occupation, a Cichociemny (elite special-operations paratroopers of the Polish Army in exile). Imprisoned by the NKVD in the USSR, among others in Brygidki (1941), Łubianka (1941 and 1945), Lefortow (1941 and 1945) and Butyrki (1945-1946).
Leszek Teofil Wichrowski (born 1932) is a doctor of humanities, publicist and reviewer. For many years he conducted research in the field of press history, cooperating with the Press Studies Centre, currently operating at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He published the results of his analyses in "Zeszyty Prasoznawcze" published by OBP. In the 1970s and 1980s, he studied methodology of research on the social function of the press at the Faculty of Journalism of Charles University in Prague. For years, he has specialised in recent Polish history. He researches phenomena threatening the future of the Polish state. He is a retired Polish Army officer. He graduated from the Military Academy. During martial law, he was dismissed from the army for his political views.
Lucille Eichengreen was a survivor of the Łódź Ghetto and the Nazi German concentration camps of Auschwitz, Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. She published From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust. She frequently lectured on the Holocaust at libraries, schools and universities in the U.S. and Germany.
Main Directorate of Information of the Polish Army - a body of military counterintelligence operating in the People's Republic of Poland in the years 1944-1957, responsible, next to the Ministry of Public Security, for mass arrest, torture and repression among soldiers of the Polish Army, the Home Army, underground anti-communist organisation Freedom and Independence, National Armed Forces and civilian population.
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (born 1962 in Warsaw) - Polish American historian, professor at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, specializing in the study of Polish-Jewish relations, the Shoah, and the history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Marek Chwalewski (born 1939 in Pabianice) - Polish energetic, politician, activist of the anti-communist opposition. He was repressed, arrested, sentenced for opposition activities and imprisoned many times. In 2002, he was awarded the medal "For Polish Independence and Human Rights", and in 2009, for outstanding merits in the activities for democratic changes in Poland, for achievements in the professional and social work undertaken for the benefit of the country, he was awarded by President Lech Kaczyński with the Officer's Cross of the Order Rebirth of Poland.
Mary Berg (born Miriam Wattenberg; 1924 – 2013) was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and author of a Holocaust diary, which contains her personal journal entries written during the occupation of Poland in World War II.
Commission for examining the liability of former employees of the Main Information Board, the Supreme Military Prosecutor's Office and the Supreme Military Court (the so-called Mazur's commission) - a commission established after the death of Bolesław Bierut to investigate cases of breaking the law in the highest military law enforcement and justice authorities. Following an investigation, the Commission concluded that the activities of some judges appeared to take on the characteristics of court murder.
Mensheviks (Russian: меньшевик, "being in the minority") - a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, formed in 1903 at the Second Party Congress in Brussels, opposing the revolutionary direction in which Vladimir Lenin intended to lead the party. From 1917 a separate political party, formally banned from Soviet Russia in 1921.
Michaël Molho (born 1891 in Thessaloniki, died 1964 in Buenos Aires) was a teacher, rabbi and local historian from Thessaloniki. He published several works on the history of the city's Jewish community. When Thessaloniki was occupied by the Germans in April 1941, they ransacked his personal library, rich in manuscripts and rare works on history, archaeology and religion in Hebrew, Judeo-Spanish and French. He managed to preserve part of the collection by hiding the books in the family textile workshop.
Michał Rola-Żymierski (4 September 1890 – 15 October 1989) was a Polish high-ranking Communist Party leader, communist military commander and NKVD secret agent. He was appointed as Marshal of Poland by Joseph Stalin, and served in this position from 1945 until his death. He supported the 1981 imposition of Martial law in Poland.
Mieczysław Bohdan Lepecki (1897 - 1969) – traveller, writer, publicist, major of infantry of the Polish Army.
Milicja Obywatelska - Citizens' Militia, commonly abbreviated to MO - a uniformed state police formation serving to maintain the state system, fight crime and ensure public safety, operating in the People's Republic of Poland and the Republic of Poland in the years 1944–1990. Equivalent to the police in other countries. Its number was approximately 80,000 officers.
Ministry of Public Security (MBP) - a ministry introducing internal security, public security, external security obtained by counterintelligence and intelligence, functioning during the formation of the communist dictatorship in the Polish People's Republic on the order and dictation of the Soviet authorities. In addition to the Main Directorate of Information of the Polish Army, responsible for the massive bloody repression of citizens during the Stalinist period. In the field, the Ministry was represented by the Public Security Offices (polish: Urzędy Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego - UBP) subordinate to it, which is why these institutions were colloquially referred to as UB.
Ministry of Public Security (UB, polish: Urząd Bezpieczeństwa) - secret police, intelligence and counterintelligence agency operating during the communist era of the Polish People's Republic. Identified with communist crimes; murders and bestial torturing of those fighting for independent Poland.
The Detention Centre in Warsaw-Mokotów, also known as Rakowiecka Prison or Mokotov Prison - a prison located in Warsaw at 37 Rakowiecka Street. Until March 1945 it was administered by the Soviet authorities, then it was taken over by the Ministry of Public Security. Many political prisoners were murdered here, especially during the Stalinist terror, and their bodies were buried secretly.
Montelupich Prison - a former prison in Krakow. During World War II, there was a Nazi police prison under the Gestapo. In 1940–1944, about 50,000 people were imprisoned here. Mass executions of prisoners took place on the premises of the prison. Most of those arrested, after heavy interrogations, were transported to the concentration camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Płaszów. After 1945, the building housed a heavy central penal and investigative prison of the Security Office and the NKVD, through which several thousand Polish soldiers passed through, some of whom were deported deep into the USSR.
Narodniks - activists of the Narodnik movement, fighting for democracy in the Russian Empire of 1870-1890. The Narodniks held anti-feudal views, which they combined with criticism of bourgeois progress, preaching the slogans of preparing a peasant uprising, overthrowing the Tsar and introducing a form of socialism of sorts.
National Armed Forces (NSZ, polish: Narodowe Siły Zbrojne) – Polish underground military organization of the national camp, operating in the years 1942–1947, with around 75,000 people at its peak. During the German occupation, it fought with the Germans and fought against Polish communist formations: the People’s Guard, the People’s Army, as well as the Soviet partisans and robber gangs.
National Military Organization (NOW, polish: Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa) – an underground military organization established by the Supreme Court of the Second World War.
National Party (SN, polish: Stronnictwo Narodowe) – polish political party, created in October 1928, the task of which was to conduct underground political activity of the national camp and fight communist influence in Poland.
Nikolai Selivanovsky (1901-1997) Major-General, senior officer in the Soviet security services. In the years 1944-1945, Deputy Head of the Smersh Military Counterintelligence, plenipotentiary of the NKVD, chief Soviet adviser to the Ministry of Public Security. After his return from Poland to the Soviet Union in 1946, he became Deputy Minister of Public Security, Head of the Third General Directorate for Military Counterintelligence of the Ministry of State Security - MGB (just recently transformed from the NKGB). In 1951, as a result of internal intrigues, dismissed from all functions, in 1953 transferred to the reserves.
The "Optima" factory was located in the Krakow ghetto in Podgórze district. After the deportation to the death camp in Bełżec on June 4, 1942, documents were checked and a blue-colored ghetto residence permit was issued, the so-called Blauscheins. Only those who had these permits were to remain in the ghetto. The rest were concentrated in the courtyard of the "Optima" factory awaiting deportation. They were deported to be exterminate on June 8, 1942.
Order of the Rebirth of Poland, Order of Polonia Restituta - the second highest Polish civilian state decoration (after the Order of the White Eagle), awarded for outstanding achievements in the field of education, science, sport, culture, art, economy, national defense, social activity, service state and developing good relations with other countries.
Order of the Cross of Grunwald - Polish high military state decoration of the communist People's Republic of Poland. The 3rd class order was awarded for personal heroic deeds on the battlefield or in underground activity.
A paraphrase of the saying "Yours are streets, ours are tenement" (polish: Nasze kamienice, wasze ulice), which supposedly Jews in Poland used to say at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is related to the Jewish stereotype, who - to quote Bolesław Prus (Polish novelist, a leading figure in the history of Polish literature and philosophy, distinctive voice in world literature) - "when it comes to competition with Christians they do not play, that is, they do not allow competition, they boycott them, lead to bankruptcy and still complain about oppression."
Writer and journalist for "Tygodnik Powszechny". Specialises in the history of the 20th century; in her work she always looks at great history through the prism of individual human fates. She has worked on oral history projects and documentaries.
Born in 1985, historian, PhD student at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, employee of the Historical Research Office of the Institute of National Remembrance. Author of books: General August Emil Fieldorf. A Military Biography (2016), Intelligentsia in the Security Services: Brystygier, Humer, Różański (2017).
Pawiak - the non-existent prison at Dzielna street 24/26 in Warsaw, erected in the years of 1830–1835 between Dzielna, Pawia and Więzienna Streets. In the years 1939–1944, the Pawiak prison was the largest German political prison in occupied Poland. According to estimates, about 100,000 people passed through Pawiak, of which about 37,000 were murdered, and about 60,000 were taken to concentration camps. The prison was destroyed by the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944.
A clandestine armed organisation of the Polish peasant movement numbering around 170,000 people. Active during World War II in the General Government and Greater Poland to defend the Polish countryside against German terror and economic exploitation. After the Home Army, it was the largest Polish underground armed formation; it had 70 partisan detachments and about 400 special detachments carrying out sabotage and combat actions.
People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR (NKVD, russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел) – a central state organ existing under this name in the years 1917–1946. He became a symbol of all crimes committed by the Soviets in the public consciousness.
People’s Guard (GL, polish: Gwardia Ludowa) – an underground communist armed organization, created by the communist Polish Workers’ Party in German-occupied Poland, sponsored by the Soviet Union, and aimed to armed fight against the German occupier.
People’s Army (AL, polish: Armia Ludowa) – a communist guerrilla set up to fight Nazi Germany in occupied Poland, support the Red Army and help in creating a pro-Soviet communist government in Poland.
Zgoda Square was the central square of the Krakow ghetto in Podgórze district. It was the equivalent of the Warsaw Umschlagplatz. This square was used to gather Jews during periodic deportations to the death camps in Bełżec and to Płaszów. During the resettlements, Jewish policemen could move freely and lead out of the square those who had sufficient funds for a bribe, and sometimes they did it selflessly.
Polish Operation of the NKVD - directed mainly against the Poles, the so-called national operation of the NKVD, carried out on Soviet territory in the years 1937-1938 in the period of great terror. According to the documents of the NKVD, 139,835 people were sentenced, out of which no less than 111,091 Poles - citizens of the USSR - were murdered with a shot in the back of the head, and 28,744 were sentenced to stay in gulags. The sentences were carried out immediately. The NKVD Polish operation was one of the so-called NKVD nationality operations, which targeted the representatives of other nations and ethnic groups living in the Bolshevik state - Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Finns, Latvians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Chinese, Koreans, Germans and others. In comparison with other national operations of the NKVD, the "Polish operation" was distinguished by the exceptional scale of repression, brutality and severity. Murdered Poles accounted for 44.9 percent of all victims of NKVD national operations.
The People's Army of Poland (polish: Ludowe Wojsko Polskie - LWP) - the unofficial name used for propaganda purposes of the Polish Armed Forces in the period 1944-1989. The Polish Armed Forces were dominated and controlled by the ruling communist party - the Polish Workers' Party, and since 1948 by the Polish United Workers' Party and as a part of Warsaw Pact structures (a political-military organization of the Eastern Bloc countries with a dominant role of the USSR) was subordinated to the command of the Soviet Army.
Polish People's Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) - the official name of the Polish state in the years 1952–1989. During this period, Poland was a non-sovereign, communist state, remaining under the political domination of the USSR.
Polish Workers' Party (PPR, polish: Polska Partia Robotnicza) - a Polish communist party operating from 1942 to 1948 in Warsaw during the German occupation by Polish communists from the so-called Initiative Group (parachuted by the Soviet Air Force in 1941) by merging several communist organisations. From 1944, the party ruled in Poland as a non-sovereign state, under the domination of the USSR.
The Polish-Bolshevik War (1919-1921) - war between the reborn Republic of Poland (the Second Republic of Poland) and the Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic (RFSRR), aiming to conquer European states and turn them into Soviet republics, in accordance with the ideology, political doctrine and political programme of the Bolsheviks, described as "revolution from outside".
Polish United Workers' Party (polish: Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza - PZPR) - communist monoparty established in 1948. Also referred to as real-socialist, ruling in the Polish People's Republic in 1948–1989. It existed until 1990. It followed the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. During its existence, the PZPR was a mass party, leading a centrally managed and bureaucratic economy, exercising state power in a totalitarian manner, seeking totalitarian control of all spheres of social life.
During World War II, the Gestapo headquarters and the temporary detention facility located in the basement were located on Pomorska Street. The testimony of those times are the inscriptions made by prisoners on the walls of the cells. Currently, it houses a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Krakow.
Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee (TKRP), Polrewkom (Russian: Польревком) - a political formation created by the Bolsheviks in 1920 in Smolensk to serve as the communist authority in the areas of the Second Polish Republic occupied by the Red Army during the 1920 summer offensive in the Polish-Bolshevik war.
Płaszów (Polish pronunciation: [ˈpwaʂuf]) or Kraków-Płaszów was a Nazi concentration camp operated by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków, in the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland. Most of the prisoners were Polish Jews. Many prisoners died because of executions, forced labor, and the poor conditions in the camp. The camp was evacuated in January 1945, before the Red Army's liberation of the area on 20 January.
Raymond McGovern (born August 25, 1939) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer turned political activist. McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, and in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President's Daily Brief. He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal at his retirement, returning it in 2006 to protest the CIA's involvement in torture. McGovern's post-retirement work includes commenting on intelligence and foreign policy issues. In 2003 he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
An award winning television producer/director, author and playwright. His television programmes have won prizes on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a Director of Fulcrum TV, a well established independent production company in London, and has made programmes for every British terrestrial channel as well as the National Geographic TV Channel, Discovery, the Arts & Entertainment Network and WGBH in the USA. He has been interviewed on radio and television as an expert on assassination and has been a guest speaker for Le Monde Diplomatique, the Forensic Science Society and at an international conference organised by the National Security Agency in the USA.
Righteous Among the Nations is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis for altruistic reasons. The term originates with the concept of "righteous gentiles", a term used in rabbinic Judaism to refer to non-Jews, called ger toshav, who abide by the Seven Laws of Noah.
Robert B. Goldmann (1921-2018) was a Jewish American journalist of German origin. For a long time he was also a senior employee of charitable foundations and organizations. Goldmann last lived in New York City.
Round Table - negotiations conducted in 1989 by representatives of the communist authorities of the Polish People's Republic, the democratic opposition and church parties. One of the most important events in the recent history of Poland in the public consciousness, from which the systemic changes of the Polish People's Republic began. In fact, it was a kind of sharing of power between the communists and the "opposition", part of which were communist agents (such as Lech Wałęsa) anyway. Thanks to the agreement, the regime was not responsible for its crimes, and its leading criminals lived to a peaceful old age (Jaruzelski, Kiszczak). In the statement of the Polish government-in-exile we read: "Elections to the parliament with the guarantee that 65% of the Seym will be left in the hands of the communist regime, imposed on Poland in Yalta by the Soviets, is a denial of democracy (...)".
Rudolf Körner was the head of the Gestapo in Kraków, stationed at 2 Pomorska Street. He was famous for his cruelty and effectiveness in fighting the Polish underground. Colleagues from Sicherheitspolizei called him "Big Theodore". He was a professional policeman from the Dresden Sicherheitspolizei, who came to Kraków in 1939 with a group of colleagues to fulfill an intelligence mission. His experience with the Dresden police quickly secured him a high position in the Gestapo.
A socialist political party founded in 1898 in Minsk (then in Northwestern Krai of the Russian Empire, present-day Belarus) and active until 1918. Formed to unite the various revolutionary organizations of the Russian Empire into one party, the RSDLP split in 1903 into Bolsheviks ("majority") and Mensheviks ("minority") factions, with the Bolshevik faction eventually becoming the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Säuberungskolonne (German: purification column) was a group of Jews employed in the ghetto after its final evacuation. Their task was to search for jewelry, valuable items, furniture or metals and other materials to be used as recyclable materials, and to clean streets and prepare buildings for re-use.
Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS (SD, Reichsführer SS Security Service) - an organ of intelligence, counterintelligence and the SS security service, operating in the Third Reich in 1931–1945.
The Social Democracy of the Polish Kingdom and Lithuania - a Polish Marxist political party active at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Initially it was called Social Democracy of the Polish Kingdom and since 1900, after extending its activity to Vilnius region - Social Democracy of the Polish Kingdom and Lithuania. Since April 1906 it was an autonomous section of Social Democratic Party of Russia, but it kept its ideological and organizational independence.
The Solovetsky special-purpose camp SLON (Russian: Solovetskyi Lager Osobovo Naznaczeniya) became a testing ground for developing the principles of a functioning gulag system. The camp was set up on an archipelago of islands in the White Sea. The authorities took over the old churches and monastery buildings scattered around the islands one by one. The poor hygienic conditions, overwork and malnutrition led to the spread of diseases, especially typhus. According to some calculations, the death rate was very high - every year between one quarter and half of the prisoners died of hunger, typhus and other diseases.
Sonderkommando - units created to perform special tasks, for example police and military units performing extermination tasks in relation to the jewish community, to service gas chambers and crematoria, created on the initiative of the Germans or the jewish administrations themselves in ghettos, which dealt with transporting their brothers to their extermination destinations, in return i.a. for protecting their loved ones and were especially hated by other Jews.
Barrister, Jewish Police (Order Service) officer. Resigned from his post, when the Germans started the deportation, his decision was accepted by the the Judenrat - he then became head of the Housing Office. In 1942 he lived in the area of big ghetto. He was privileged to move in-between the ghettos. He is a supporter of armed resistance. Escapes from the ghetto, hides in Saska Kepa, later in Anin. In July 1946 he becomes a honorary member of the law faculty in Warsaw University. After the Kielce pogrom he commits suicide. Autor of "In the Warsaw Ghetto 1940-1943 An Account of a Witness. The Memoirs of Stanisław Adler".
Stanisław Dąbrowa-Kostka (1924-2019) - lieutenant of the Home Army, lieutenant colonel of the Polish Army. During the Second World War, he was active in the Podkarpacie region. Awarded many times, author of books, studies and articles. Involved in scouting activities. He actively participated in the work of the Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes.
Stanisław Krajewski (born 1950 in Warsaw) - Polish philosopher of Jewish origin, mathematician and publicist, activist of the Jewish minority in Poland. Full professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw. From 2012 to 2020 Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Warsaw. Apart from academic work, before 1989 he published articles in the underground press (among others, under the pseudonyms Abel Kainer, Plusminus and Piotr Kamil) and in magazines of the Catholic intelligentsia. A member of Solidarity in the years 1980-1990.
Stanisław Radkiewicz (b. 19 January 1903 in Razmierki, d. 13 December 1987 in Warsaw). He came from a peasant family of Franciszek and Paulina née Lenczewska. He completed 3 forms of a primary school. A major general in public security, he held numerous high-ranking positions in the communist government apparatus. Responsible for numerous crimes in the post-war period.
Stefan Wyszyński (born 3 August 1901 in Zuzela, died 28 May 1981 in Warsaw) - Polish Roman Catholic clergyman, Primate of Poland in the years 1948-1981, known as the "Primate of the Millennium", statesman, perceived as a defender of human, national and Church rights, doctor of canon law, preacher, publicist, chaplain of the Polish Army. Posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle. Blessed of the Catholic Church. Surveilled by the security services of the People's Republic of Poland and placed in a place of isolation by the communist authorities of the People's Republic of Poland.
Szczepan (Szczęsny) Dobrowolski (born Feliks Zamieński) (1914 - 1961) - communist activist, journalist, member of the management of the Radio Bulletin Group, co-founder of the Liberation Fighting Union (a communist underground organization fighting against Germany), officer of the People's Army, Warsaw insurgent. In the fall of 1949, he was arrested and imprisoned on fabricated charges. Released and rehabilitated in 1956.
Szymon Datner (born 2 February 1902 in Kraków, died 8 December 1989 in Warsaw) was a well-known and respected Polish historian of Jewish origin. He mainly researched issues related to the Holocaust and the Jedwabne murder. His two daughters out of three died during the Holocaust.
Tadeusz Marek Płużański (born in 1971 in Warsaw) - Polish journalist, historian and publicist. In November 2016, he headed the National Social Tribunal, which announced an infamy for leading activists and criminals of the communist regime; Bolesław Bierut, Stefan Michnik, Władysław Gomułka and Zbigniew Domino. Awarded, inter alia, with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
Tadeusz Mazowiecki (1927 - 2013) - a poet of a Polish noble family of the Dołęga coat of arms, a Polish politician and journalist. The last president of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Poland and the first of the Third Republic. Knight of the Order of the White Eagle.
Tadeusz Pankiewicz (1908 - 1993) - Polish pharmacist, graduate of the Jagiellonian University, owner of the "Pod Orłem" (polish: "Under the Eagle") pharmacy in Krakow, the only pharmacy operating in the Krakow ghetto. He came from a family with patriotic traditions. For his activity in aiding and rescuing Jews, he was awarded the medal "Righteous Among the Nations". He described his wartime memories in a book entitled "Apteka w getcie krakowskim" ("The Cracow Ghetto Pharmacy").
Teresa Slawomira Torańska (born 1 January 1944 in Wołkowysk, died 2 January 2013 in Warsaw) is a Polish journalist and writer. She was awarded two Orders of Polonia Restituta and prizes for her journalistic work.
The basic party organization (pl. Podstawowa organizacja partyjna, POP)- the smallest unit (cell) of the Polish United Workers' Party (exercising power in the Polish People's Republic). Basic party organizations existed in workplaces, universities and cultural institutions in the years 1949–1989.
The Department of Public Security (polish: Resort Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego - RBP) - a department fulfilling the role of a civilian special service and leading the police formation and prison formation at the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN), the first organised security organ created and staffed by the NKVD on the pattern of Soviet security organs, in order to introduce a system of communist rule subordinated to the USSR on the Polish territories occupied by the Red Army and to protect this system. According to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance - Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, it is considered a state security organ.
The Great Purge or the Great Terror was Joseph Stalin's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union that occurred from 1936 to 1938. It involved large-scale repression of the peasantry; ethnic cleansing; purges of the Communist Party, government officials, and the Red Army; widespread police surveillance, suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. Millions of innocent were mordered. Historians estimate the total number of victims of the Stalinist repression in 1937–38 to be between 950,000 and 1.2 million.
The Silver Cross of the War Order of Virtuti Militari - is the highest Polish war decoration, awarded for outstanding combat services. It is one of the oldest war orders in the world. The motto of the order is: Honor and Fatherland. The silver cross - 5th class - was awarded to officers, non-commissioned officers or privates for deeds of outstanding bravery, risking their lives.
The Voivodeship Office of Public Security (polish: Wojewódzki Urząd Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, WUBP) - a field unit of the Ministry of Public Security (until 1 January 1945. It was established in August 1944 in Lublin. After the reorganisation it was replaced by the Provincial Office for Public Security (WUdsBP).
Thick line - a political slogan derived from the exposé of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki delivered to the Contract Sejm on August 24, 1989. He said: "The government that I will form is not responsible for the mortgage it inherits (...) We split away the history of our recent past with a thick line. (... ) ". According to Tadeusz Mazowiecki, these words meant the government's cut off from the previous political system. His opponents, on the other hand, interpreted the "thick line" as a symbol of a policy of nonpunishment for crimes committed by the communist regime, vetting and decommunization.
One of the world's most horrific prisons was located in Tobolsk, Siberia. Some of Russia's most prominent dissidents were sent here, including Fyodor Dostoevsky, Tsar Nicholas II and victims of Stalin's "purge."
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed in 1918 between Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), that ended Russia's participation in World War I. The treaty was signed at German-controlled Brest-Litovsk, after two months of negotiations. The treaty was agreed upon by the Russians to stop further invasion. As a result of the treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on all of Imperial Russia's commitments to the Allies and eleven nations became independent in eastern Europe and western Asia.
Treblinka extermination camp - a German Nazi death camp in operation from July 1942. The extermination of the Jewish population was carried out there. The Germans sent him mainly transports from ghettos in occupied Poland, including the Warsaw ghetto. Moreover, Austrian, Czech, Greek, Yugoslav, German and Slovak Jews as well as Roma and Sinti were murdered in Treblinka. Victims were killed in stationary gas chambers using flue gases. The number of victims of Treblinka probably reached around 800,000. people. It was the largest extermination center in the General Government and the second, after Auschwitz-Birkenau, in occupied Europe.
In 1950, structures were set up in the secret police to purge within the party and track down imaginary enemies of power among communists. Approximately 9,000 people were removed from the army, allegedly for political reasons. officers. Some of them were arrested and accused of participating in a "conspiracy in the army" invented by the communists. High officers of the pre-war Polish Army and the Polish Armed Forces in the West were sentenced, who in 1945 established cooperation with communists and returned to the country, bringing with them funds stolen from the Polish government in exile (about $ 4 million). In 1949, they were arrested and subjected to a brutal investigation. Their and other officers were sentenced to many years' imprisonment on the fictitious charge of setting up an anti-communist plot in the army and collaborating with the US and UK intelligence services. The people who created the communist dictatorship and were responsible for the repression fell victim to the system they created.
A political union, organised by Polish communists in the USSR, constituting an instrument of Stalin's and the USSR's policy on the Polish issue - it prepared the conditions for the communists' seizure of power in post-war Poland. The Union carried out cultural and social activities and intensive propaganda among the Polish population in the USSR, fully developed after the USSR broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish Government in Exile as a consequence of the disclosure of the Katyn massacre.
The War Order of Virtuti Militari (VM, Latin for military bravery - (virtue) of military valor) is the highest Polish war decoration, awarded for outstanding military merits. It is one of the oldest war orders in the world, established by King Stanisław August Poniatowski in 1792. The motto of the order is: Honor and Fatherland.
Voivodeship Office for Public Security Matters (polish: Wojewódzki Urząd do spraw Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego, WUdsBP) - the new name of the office that replaced the Voivodeship Office ofPublic Security (WUBP) after its reorganisation.
Wanda Brońska (born 11 September 1911, died 9 February 1972) - journalist, translator and writer, daughter of Mieczysław Broński, an activist of the Polish Communist Party. Together with her parents, she accompanied Lenin on his train journey from Switzerland to Russia before the outbreak of the October Revolution. Later, her parents were executed in Moscow during the so-called 'Great Purge'; she herself was sent to the Gulag, to a gold mine in Magadan. After the Second World War, she returned to Poland and became a journalist here. She was sent to work in the German Democratic Republic, but from there she moved to West Berlin in 1949. She then took up a job at the Polish section of Radio Free Europe, describing from the radio airwaves, among other things, the truth about the Soviet gulag system.
The Great Famine in Ukraine, Holodomor (Ukrainian: "famine") - a famine artificially caused by the communist authorities in the USSR in 1932-1933. The actions that caused the mass famine resulted from the population's opposition to the collectivisation of agriculture and the extraction of agricultural products beyond the village's production capacity. Goods were extorted by force, with the use of the army and harsh penalties. As a result, millions of Ukrainians died. Various sources say that the number of victims in Ukraine alone ranged from over 3 million to as many as 10 million. The famine triggered horrific acts of cannibalism or trade in human flesh. There were cases where people ate their own children.
Wilhelm Ohlenbusch (born December 28, 1899, died 1997) - head of the propaganda department at the office of the Warsaw district, appointed on February 1, 1941 as the president of the main propaganda department (German: Haupteilung Propaganda) in the General Government subordinated to the Ministry of Propaganda of the Reich (German: Propagandaministerium) PROMI for short.
Wojciech Stanisław Borzobohaty pseudonym Jelita, Stanisław, Wojan (1908 - 1991) - second lieutenant of artillery in the Polish Army, lieutenant colonel of the Polish Armed Forces, first president of the Main Board of the World Association of Home Army Soldiers. Decorated with the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari War Order, the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, twice with the Cross of Valor, and the Home Army Cross.
Polish Armed Forces (Polish: Wojsko Polskie) were the armed forces of the Second Polish Republic from 1919 until the demise of independent Poland at the onset of Second World War in September 1939.
Vladka Meed or Władka Meed, actually Feigele Peltel (born December 29, 1921, died November 21, 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona) - Polish-Jewish resistance activist during World War II, courier of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB), author of memoirs and social activist. Smuggled dynamite into the Warsaw Ghetto, and also helped children escape out of the Ghetto.
Władysław Bartoszewski (1922 – 2015) was a Polish politician, social activist, journalist, writer and historian. A former Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner, a World War II resistance fighter, part of the Polish underground, participated in the Warsaw Uprising. After the war he was persecuted and imprisoned by the communist Polish People's Republic due to his membership in the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) and opposition activity. After the collapse of the communist regime, Bartoszewski served twice as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was also an ambassador and a member of the Polish Senate. He was a chevalier of the Order of the White Eagle, a honorary citizen of Israel, a Righteous Among the Nations - a honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis for altruistic reasons.
Władysław Gomułka, pseudonym "Wiesław", "Feliks Duniak" (1905 - 1982) - Polish communist politician, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Recovered Territories. Member of the National Council, the Legislative Seym and the Seym of the People's Republic of Poland, member of the State Council. Builder of the People's Republic of Poland. Gomułka's political line aroused distrust in Moscow. Gomułka believed that strong-arm rule and repressions could not replace social support for the people's government. He recognized that it was possible to build socialism in Poland without the dictatorship of the proletariat, terror and the annihilation of existing social structures.
Komunistyczny Związek Młodzieży Polski (KZMP) - a youth organization of the Polish Communist Party, active in the Second Polish Republic in the years 1922–1938. Its aim was to promote culture, education and sport among young people. She promoted the idea of fighting fascism and racism in a radical and decisive way, and strove to introduce a communist system in Poland. In 1933, it had 15,000 members, most of them of peasants. After the activists of the Polish Communist Party were murdered by the NKVD in the Soviet Union during the "great terror" period, the KZMP also ceased its activities.
The Zamojsko-Lubelska Case (also known as the “blood and tears” case) is a series of arrests of pre-war officers by the Security Office on charges of belonging to the anti-communist organisation Freedom and Independence (WiN) and seeking to overthrow the people's government. The documents on which the arrests were based were prepared by the security services of the then Polish People's Republic. 65 people were arrested. A confession was forced by torture. Eventually, 37 military and 11 civilians were convicted. They received sentences ranging from the death penalty to 7 years in prison.
Zbigniew Błażyński (born 8 January 1914 in Jablonowo, died 25 October 1996 in London) - Polish émigré journalist, interviewed Józef Światło for Radio Free Europe in the 1950s, later employee and director of the Polish section of the BBC.
Żegota - Council to Aid Jews with the Government Delegation for Poland - a Polish underground humanitarian organization operating in the years 1942–1945, as an organ of the Polish government in exile, whose task was to organize aid for Jews in and outside ghettos. The council operated under the underground code name "Konrad Żegota", often abbreviated to "Żegota". According to the Council's estimates, 40,000-50,000 people were provided with aid by the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944.
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (1899 - 1953) - a Soviet communist activist of Georgian origin, a communist criminal, head of the NKVD, who was largely responsible for the "great purges" of the Stalinist period. One of the main perpetrators of Stalinist crimes. Directly responsible for the murder of Polish officers in Katyn. The peak of his influence fell on the period of World War II and immediately after it. After Stalin's death, he was the author of the most liberal project of systemic changes in the USSR. As a result of a conspiracy against him, he was removed from his post and executed.