Monika Tomkiewicz, Ponary były miejscem największej zbrodni dokonanej przez Niemców na północno-wschodnich kresach II RP w okresie II wojny światowej, Warszawa, 2022. 432 p. ISBN 978-83-8229-459-0 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the Kražiai Massacre in Lithuania and Poland
Lithuanian Historical Studies
The Imperial Russian authorities closed the Benedictine convent church in Kražiai in 1893 and put down the Catholic community’s opposition with such brutality that the event came to be known as the Kražiai massacre. Soon after the events in Kražiai, a conflict broke out between Lithuanians and Poles over the division of the symbolic capital associated with the Kražiai massacre, as both sides argued over their respective merits in defending the church. On the eve of the First World War, the Kražiai massacre had become a place of memory for Lithuanians and Poles alike. This article presents an analysis of how the 40th anniversary of the Kražiai massacre was commemorated in Lithuania and in Poland in 1933. I try to answer the following questions: what prompted the need to commemorate the anniversary of this event, what meanings accompanied the commemoration of the event in Lithuania and Poland, and did the political elites of these countries try to exploit the Kražiai massacre’s annive...
Polish-Jewish Studies, 2020
After the Polish defeat in 1939, the German occupiers established a new police force within the General Governorate, formed of pre-war officers of the Polish State Police. They named it Polnische Polizei (Polish Police). The new police gained the name of the ‘Navy Blue Police’ because of the colour of the uniforms, and has become engraved under this name in social awareness and historical research. The officers of the Polnische Polizei were to implement the orders imposed by their German superiors. Among these tasks, anti-Jewish operations played an important role. The paper discusses the participation of Polnische Polizei policemen in the deportation of Jews from Wodzisław in the Jędrzejów district in 1942; it also attempts to verify the charges raised during the post-war trial of two functionaries. The analysis unambiguously proves that during the Jewish deportation period at least two policemen, including Józef Machowski, were involved in the murders of Jews. In addition, the same policeman, together with Józef Klepka from the Wodzisław police station, participated in the murder of the Rajzman family; Machowski was the one who shot them. For these crimes, Machowski was sentenced to capital punishment, and the sentence was carried out.
Early 2011 saw the publication in Poland of three noteworthy studies exploring Polish behaviour toward the Jews during World War II and the various forms of Polish participation in the Holocaust. These publications clearly advance the state of research, although they do not completely exhaust the topic, or even come close to that. They interrogate the image of the Holocaust as a largely German undertaking that has had a strong presence both in German and Polish research down to the present. The existence of this image is bound up with the historiographic circumstance that now as before, German Holocaust research is more closely connected with the German regime of occupation or the German Einsatzgruppen and execution units and less with the population under occupation, and in this way concentrates on the perspective of the German perpetrators. There is a concomitant tendency to neglect the perspective of the non-German perpetrators (and in part also that of the victims). By contrast, Polish Holocaust research has until recently viewed the Poles solely as victims of the National Socialist regime of occupation, and seen the murder of the Jews as an exclusively German matter. All three publications are written contra these continuing tendencies in thought and inquiry.
Pogroms Across the Former Poland-Lithuania: A Historical Overview
2023
This article-length review presents the comprehensive four-volume Polish-language work on pogroms, which took place across the former Polish-Lithuanian (or more narrowly, ‘ethnically Polish’) lands during the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century. The work is titled Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku [Pogroms of Jews in the Polish Lands During the 19th and 20th Centuries] (2018-2019). Apart from presenting selected pogroms, the sixty contributors probe into various aspects of anti-Jewish and its multifaceted ramifications, including the press coverage of these pogroms locally and broad, and the reflection on this phenomenon as observed in literature and visual arts. The discussion is wrapped up with a look at the history and current state of research on the pogroms themselves and on the phenomenon of anti-Jewish violence in general. Furthermore, the review is enriched with information on relevant literature, if released after the publication of the work under review or authored by its contributors, especially when available in English. Quite a few of such titles mentioned are in Polish though, given that the discussion develops most intensively in present-day Poland (including international scholars with ties to this country), where most historians and social scientists use the medium of Polish for research.
Krakowskie Studia z Historii Państwa i Prawa
Files of Polish Regional Courts as Sources for Research on Selected Examples of Postwar (1945-1950) Crime The study of postwar crime is becoming more and more popular among Polish researchers. The basic source for conducting this kind of research is criminal files, primarily those of the regional courts operating in the years 1945-1950. The author calls attention to both statutory and actual restrictions on access to source materials. He also notes how using other, non-official sources or witness accounts in this type of research will not always be appropriate. He postulates that research on postwar crime in Poland should be designed primarily as research on crime in the juridical sense. The author also indicates that research on postwar crime has many points in common with the so-called historical criminology.
Scientific Journal of the Military University of Land Forces, 2021
The study presents the contents of the letters from the private archive of Major Jerzy Sosnowski, a Polish military intelligence officer operating in Berlin in 1926-1934. The letters are addressed to his father and come from 1937 and 1938. The text presents Major Sosnowski’s profile. Then the circumstances in which the letters were written and their meaning are discussed. Their content was analyzed against the background of the criminal trial before the Military District Court No. I in Warsaw and regarding the current state of knowledge about Major Sosnowski’s fate from crossing the German-Polish border in April 1936 until the sentence in June 1939. The content of the letters proves their author’s personal harm and violations of the law preceding criminal proceedings before the Polish military court, and to some extent, also provide insight into the trial for which the primary sources (court records) have not been preserved. Opracowanie prezentuje treść pochodzących z archiwum prywatnego listów majora Jerzego Sosnowskiego, oficera polskiego wywiadu wojskowego działającego w Berlinie w latach 1936-1934, adresowanych do ojca w 1937 i 1938 r. W tekście przybliżono sylwetkę majora Sosnowskiego. Następnie omówiono okoliczności w jakich listy zostały napisane oraz ich znaczenie. Przeanalizowano ich treść na tle procesu karnego przed Wojskowym Sądem Okręgowym Nr I w Warszawie oraz w odniesieniu do dotychczasowego stanu wiedzy w zakresie losu majora Sosnowskiego od przekroczenia granicy niemiecko-polskiej w kwietniu 1936 r. w efekcie wymiany więźniów politycznych do wydania wyroku skazującego w czerwcu 1939 r.