Coming to Terms with Nazi Crimes in Post-War Poland
Interaction between law, state and society
The reappraisal of Nazi crimes in Poland was almost written into the establishment of the new socialist system of government in 1945. It was a reaction to the trauma of war, but it also applied the rules of legal integrity – it was a complex panorama, which eludes simple interpretation.
Just as there was no zero hour for the end of the war and the establishment of a new political order in , the same was true of the punishment of German war crimes. The processes were complex, and the transitions fluid.
Poland was the only country that was occupied by two totalitarian regimes during the Second World War, in part simultaneously: the Nazi State and the. Both occupations claimed several million victims. While the national-socialist crimes were punished directly after as well as during the war, the offences of the Soviet Union remained off-limits until 1989.
There was a significant transition period before a state-socialist political order supported by the Soviet Union had become established in Poland. There was room for maneuver between the Lublin Manifesto
Polish People’s Republic
deu. Volksrepublik Polen, pol. Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, deu. Republik Polen, eng. Polish Republic, pol. Rzeczpospolita Polska
The People's Republic of Poland was a socialist state in the Soviet sphere of influence that existed from 1944 to 1989 (until 1952 as the Republic of Poland). Its borders correspond to those of present-day Poland. The formal legitimization of the political system was based on the referendum of 1946 and the election of 1947, while the results of both were falsified. The parties of the so-called Democratic Bloc were forcibly united in 1948 in the Socialist Unity Party of the One-Party State, the communist Polish United Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR), which ruled until the end of the People's Republic.
Poland was the only country that was occupied by two totalitarian regimes during the Second World War, in part simultaneously: the Nazi State and the
Soviet Union
deu. Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken, deu. Sowjetunion, rus. Sovetskiy Soyuz, rus. Советский Союз, . Совет Ушем, . Советонь Соткс, rus. Sovetskij Soûz, . Советий Союз, yid. ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, yid. סאוועטן פארבאנד, yid. sovətn farband, yid. sovʿtn-farband, yid. sovətn-farband, . Советтер Союзу, . Совет Союзы, deu. Советий Союз, . Советон Цæдис, . Совет Эвилели
The Soviet Union (SU or USSR) was a state in Eastern Europe, Central and Northern Asia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It emerged from the so-called Soviet Russia, the successor state of the Russian Empire. The Russian Soviet Republic formed the core of the union and at the same time its largest part, with further constituent republics added. Their number varied over time and was related to the occupation of other countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Soviet republics that existed only for a short time (Karelo-Finlandia) or the division or merger of Soviet republics. In addition, there were numerous autonomous republics or other territorial units with an autonomy status that was essentially limited to linguistic autonomy for minorities.
Before its formal dissolution, the USSR consisted of 15 Soviet republics with a population of approximately 290 million people. At around 22.4 million km², it was the largest territorial state in the world at the time. The Soviet Union was a socialist soviet republic with a one-party system and an absence of separation of powers.
There was a significant transition period before a state-socialist political order supported by the Soviet Union had become established in Poland. There was room for maneuver between the Lublin Manifesto
Lublin Manifesto
also:
The Lublin Manifesto was an appeal to the Polish population issued by the executive body of the transitional state socialist regime, the “Polish Committee for National Liberation” (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego). It laid the foundations for the new ruling order in Poland from 1944. Its origins lie in Moscow, where the document was approved and printed by Josef Stalin. It recognized the National Council as the only legitimate power in Poland, emphasized the alliance with the Soviet Union and radically broke with the Polish government-in-exile and the interwar regime. Until 1989, July 22 was considered a national holiday in Poland and was called the “National Day of the Rebirth of Poland” (Narodowe Święto Odrodzenia Polski).
dated 22 July 1944, which declared the will of the new regime to exercise power, and the rigged elections of January 1947, which secured the government of the communist-aligned forces in Poland. This was also noticeable in the investigation of the Nazi crimes in Poland, which was not yet fully controlled by the Stalinist regime. The early legal basis, the composition of the actors involved and the forms of legal or spontaneous social punishments reflect these conditions. However, in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of post-war reappraisal practices, one must also consider the war, violence and fear that had been experienced by the Poles for almost six years.PKWN Manifesto, July Manifesto
First Commissions, legal basis for action and the space to process
The institutionalized processing of Nazi crimes in Poland began before the end of the Second World War, accompanying the first stage of the “liberation” of the country by the Red Army. Through the investigation commissions for
Majdanek
Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp
also:
The concentration and extermination camp in the Lublin district of Majdanek was initially set up in 1941 as a “POW camp of the Waffen SS Lublin”, but was officially designated a concentration camp from 1943. It had further satellite camps (mainly for forced labor) and functioned not only as a concentration and labor camp, but increasingly also as an extermination camp. From 1942, the camp was part of ‘Aktion Reinhardt’, in which the Jews and Roma living in the Polish General Government were systematically deported, interned and murdered. Of the approximately 150,000 inmates of Majdanek, at least around 80,000 people are believed to have died or been murdered in the camp, including 59,000 Jewish prisoners alone. Majdanek was the first concentration and extermination camp to be liberated by the Soviet army in the summer of 1944. It subsequently became known through the so-called ‘Majdanek Trials’, which were held in Poland from 1944 and 1946-1948 and in the Federal Republic of Germany between 1975 and 1981.
and
Auschwitz
Majdanek concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
also:
The concentration and extermination camps in and near Auschwitz represent the largest camp complex established by National Socialist Germany. There were actually three large concentration and extermination camps as well as around 50 subcamps, most of which were used for forced labor. The camps were set up from 1940 and liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. The three main camps are: The so-called 'Stammlager' (‘main camp’) Auschwitz I, set up from spring 1940; the large-scale Birkenau extermination camp, formally called Auschwitz II, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau; and the Auschwitz III concentration and labor camp in nearby Monowitz, which had been set up by the I. G. Farben AG and which itself functioned as a main camp for numerous satellite camps from 1943 on.
Due to the enormous number of people murdered here in industrialized form, the countless other war crimes committed here (including human experiments) and the enormous size and organizational complexity of the facilities, the Auschwitz camp complex and Auschwitz-Birkenau in particular stand today in many cases symbolically for the Shoah as a whole and the particularly cruel and excessive form of human extermination by National Socialist Germany. Of the total of at least 1.3 million people deported to Auschwitz, at least 1.1 million died in the camps, including around 960,000 Jews. The vast majority of them were murdered in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. However, the exact number of victims could never be determined. Shortly before the arrival of the Red Army, some of the concentration camp prisoners were evacuated from the camps on death marches and, if not already murdered on the march, taken to other camps.
, two central concentration and extermination camps and the crimes that had been committed there were brought to light and to the attention of the general public. Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps, Auschwitz death camp
Shortly afterwards, the “Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland” was formed to take over from the initial investigation commissions within the Presidium of the
National Council
State National Council
also:
The National Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa) was formally the highest legislative body in Poland from 1944 to 1947. It consisted of 444 delegated members. As a quasi-parliament, it had broad powers over legislation, budget approval, economic matters, amnesty, and military affairs. However, in practice, it functioned merely as a façade, with its activities subordinate to other institutions.
, at the centre of the new communist power. It existed without any legal basis until 10 November 1945. The concomitant effects of the transition period were also reflected in the concrete business of the commission: the fact that infrastructure had been destroyed made any inspections at Auschwitz extremely difficult. The Red Army units stationed there obstructed the work on the ground, for example by limiting the freedom of movement of the commission members and by prohibiting photography. As a result of the looting of the camp grounds by the neighbouring population, some of the documentation and evidence was destroyed. However, sometimes chaos and chance had positive side-effects: important documents, such as the camp plans, requests from the camp management and their correspondence with other authorities, which provided evidence of the planned mass-extermination at Auschwitz, could be securely stored in the cesspools and sewers of the camp.1 After several months of unregulated activity, the commission finally received the necessary legal authority with the decree of 10 November 1945. It was incorporated within the new order at the highest national level, as part of the Justice Ministry. Moreover, many of its staff were not directly connected to the new regime. National Council, Homeland National Council, National Council of the Homeland
The commission fulfilled an important social function beyond the work of coming to terms with the past: it was the main centre for the collection and evaluation of relevant documents and testimonies, but also for surveys relating to Nazi occupation. Its existence also sent a clear signal to the Polish population, which called for – and longed for – the punishment of the Nazi perpetrators. The commission thus opened up and maintained a space where Polish society, which had been traumatized by the crimes of the Second World War, could discuss and reflect on its experiences.2
Processes based on the rule of law
The commission was responsible for investigating and documenting the crimes, but not for conducting the trials. This task fell to other institutions. One of these was the “Highest National Tribunal” that was established on 22 January 1946. It was responsible for the war crimes that had been committed on Polish territory as well as those covered by the “Decree on the September Defeat and the Fascisation of State Life” dated 22 January 1946. The decree formed one of the legal bases for excluding political opponents from the new power regime in post-war Poland, together with the “Decree of 31 August 1944 on the Punishment of Fascist-Hitlerish Perpetrators who are Guilty of Murder and Torture of the Civilian Population and of Prisoners and of Traitors of the Polish State”, in short, the “August Decree”. However, during the two-year period during which it was active, the tribunal only exercised that part of its jurisdiction that related to the punishment of Nazi perpetrators. In total, seven trials against leaders of the Nazi occupation and the extermination camps were held:
Arthur Greiser
Arthur Greiser
Arthur Greiser (1897–1946) was the Reich Governor and Gauleiter of the NSDAP in the Reichsgau Wartheland from 1939 to 1945. He was arrested by the Americans in May 1945 and extradited to Poland. His trial took place in Poznań starting on June 21, 1946. On July 9, he was sentenced to death and publicly executed in front of the Poznań Citadel on July 21.
,
Amon Göth
Amon Göth
Amon Göth (1908–1946) was a SS-Hauptsturmführer, tasked with overseeing the construction of, and later managing, the forced labor and concentration camp Płaszów near Kraków from February 1943 onward. He was responsible for the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto in March 1943. Even before the end of the war, he was arrested for the extensive theft of victims' property but was later released due to health reasons. In May 1945, he was arrested by the Americans and initially succeeded in concealing his true identity. Once discovered, he was extradited to Poland, where his trial before the Supreme National Tribunal took place from August to September 1946. He was sentenced to death on September 5, and his clemency appeal was rejected. He was executed on September 13, 1946.
,
Ludwig Fischer
Ludwig Fischer
Ludwig Fischer (1905–1947) was a SA leader and the Governor of the Warsaw District in the General Government of Poland from 1939 to 1945. After the war, he was arrested by the Americans in May 1945 and extradited to Poland at the end of March 1946. His trial, along with others, began in December 1946 before the Supreme National Tribunal. On March 3, 1947, he was sentenced to death and executed on March 8.
and others,
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Höß (1901–1947) was a SS-Obersturmbannführer and Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp from May 1940 to November 1943. After the war, he was arrested and initially testified as a witness in the Nuremberg Trials before being extradited to Poland in May 1946. His trial before the Supreme National Tribunal took place in March 1947. The death sentence against Höß was carried out by hanging on April 16, 1947, on the grounds of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, in the presence of approximately 100 people, including former prisoners.
, the guards of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp,
Albert Forster
Albert Forster
Albert Forster (1902–1952) was the Gauleiter of the NSDAP in Danzig from 1930 to 1945 and, after the outbreak of World War II, the Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) there. After the war, he was arrested by the British and extradited to Poland in August 1946. On April 29, 1948, the Supreme National Tribunal sentenced him to death. Due to his clemency appeals, the execution was initially postponed but ultimately carried out on February 28, 1952.
and
Josef Bühler
Josef Bühler
Josef Bühler (1904–1948) was the Secretary of State in the government of the General Government in Kraków, and from June 1940, Deputy to the General Governor Hans Frank. After the war, he fled but was arrested by the Americans in May 1945. Initially questioned as a witness in the Nuremberg Trials, he was extradited to Poland in May 1946. Following a trial before the Supreme National Tribunal, he was sentenced to death on July 10, 1948, and hanged on August 21, 1948.
.
The beginnings of the tribunal in early 1946 took place before the start of the massive Stalinist influence in Poland and the synchronization of state and social institutions. At this point in time, it was still possible to fill positions with a wide range of personnel, something which would be unthinkable just a few years later. Among the judges and lawyers of the tribunal there were representatives of different political affiliations who had completed their training in the inter-war years. The lay judges were selected by the National Council and the
Sejm
Sejm
also:
The Sejm is one of the two chambers of the Polish Parliament. However, after World War II and until 1989, it was the only chamber, as the second chamber – the Senate – had been abolished in the People's Republic of Poland.
, but heterogeneity still prevailed at this level too.Sejm of the Republic of Poland
In contrast to the political show trials against opponents of the new regime at that time, the trials of the tribunal adhered to international and Polish legal norms. The significance of the evidential and documentary material – collected by those affected or their supporting organizations, some of which were Jewish – together with the witness statements guaranteed the rule of law in the proceedings. The judgments point to a differentiated procedure that was adapted to the individual cases. All of the trials used only public defence lawyers, which was in keeping with the mood within the Polish population; any other possibilities were viewed as providing support to the occupiers and rejected on principle.
The trial against Rudolf Höss, the former Commandant of Auschwitz, before the tribunal illustrates the climate of the time extremely well. From the start, the proceedings were designed so as to have the greatest possible public impact. They took place in at the headquarters of the Association of Polish Teachers and were interpreted simultaneously into four languages (German, French, English and Russian). In order to enable as many people as possible to observe the trial, tickets were issued which allowed the holder to attend a single session. The media – Polish and foreign press, radio and not least the cinema newsreel – reported on the different stages of the proceedings. The trial was conducted with legal accuracy and integrity, both as a model for subsequent proceedings and to demonstrate the rule of law of the new regime. The questioning of Rudolf Höss by the Polish jurist
Jan Sehn
Jan Sehn
Jan Sehn (1909–1965) was a Polish lawyer and prosecutor, a key figure in the post-war investigation of Nazi crimes in Poland. He was a leading member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland, under whose direction he conducted examinations at the former Auschwitz concentration camp. He repeatedly interrogated Rudolf Höß during his trial and encouraged him to write autobiographical notes. In later years, Sehn actively promoted cross-bloc cooperation between Poland and West Germany in prosecuting Nazi crimes, particularly in connection with the First Auschwitz Trial.
and the psychological examinations conducted by the criminologist
Stanisław Batawia
Stanisław Batawia
Stanisław Batawia (1890–1980) was a Polish lawyer, psychiatrist, and criminologist. From 1946, he headed the Department of Criminology at the Chair of Criminal Law at the University of Warsaw. Between 1946 and 1951, he was a member of the Presidium of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland. He is best known for his criminological and sociological analysis of Nazi crimes, based on extensive interrogations of Rudolf Höß. His psychological portrait of Höß was published in 1951 in the bulletin of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland.
produced new insights alongside the taking of evidence. These included the reconstruction of how the camp at Auschwitz functioned, and knowledge about the machinery of power behind the Nazi state. It also produced a psychological portrait of Höss that was years ahead of Hannah Arendt’s remarks on the “banality of evil”. However, its distribution to the general public was unsuccessful, partly because it was written in Polish and partly due to the circumstances of the Cold War.3
Warszawa
deu. Warschau, eng. Warsaw, deu. Warszowa, deu. Warszewa, yid. Varše, yid. וואַרשע, rus. Варшава, rus. Varšava, fra. Vaarsovie
Warsaw is the capital of Poland and also the largest city in the country (population in 2024: 1,863,845). It is located in the Mazovian Voivodeship on Poland's longest river, the Vistula. Warsaw first became the capital of the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic at the end of the 16th century, replacing Krakow, which had previously been the Polish capital. During the partitions of Poland-Lithuania, Warsaw was occupied several times and finally became part of the Prussian province of South Prussia for eleven years. From 1807 to 1815 the city was the capital of the Duchy of Warsaw, a short-lived Napoleonic satellite state; in the annexation of the Kingdom of Poland under Russian suzerainty (the so-called Congress Poland). It was not until the establishment of the Second Polish Republic after the end of World War I that Warsaw was again the capital of an independent Polish state.
At the beginning of World War II, Warsaw was conquered and occupied by the Wehrmacht only after intense fighting and a siege lasting several weeks. Even then, a five-digit number of inhabitants were killed and parts of the city, known not least for its numerous baroque palaces and parks, were already severely damaged. In the course of the subsequent oppression, persecution and murder of the Polish and Jewish population, by far the largest Jewish ghetto under German occupation was established in the form of the Warsaw Ghetto, which served as a collection camp for several hundred thousand people from the city, the surrounding area and even occupied foreign countries, and was also the starting point for deportation to labor and extermination camps.
As a result of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from April 18, 1943 and its suppression in early May 1943, the ghetto area was systematically destroyed and its last inhabitants deported and murdered. This was followed in the summer of 1944 by the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupation, which lasted two months and resulted in the deaths of almost two hundred thousand Poles, and after its suppression the rest of Warsaw was also systematically destroyed by German units.
In the post-war period, many historic buildings and downtown areas, including the Warsaw Royal Castle and the Old Town, were rebuilt - a process that continues to this day.
Execution as a public event
Polish society participated in the punishment of the perpetrators, and not only in the courtrooms. Shortly before the end of the war and afterwards there were many instances of public execution.4 The first took place as part of the Majdanek Trial. On 23 December 1944, five defendants were hanged. Around 10,000 people watched the execution. The execution of members of the security guard from the concentration camp in
Stutthof
, Arthur Greiser, on 14 July 1946. There would always be a change in the atmosphere at the moment of execution, which was marked by shouts, screams, and sometimes fights over parts of the gallows rope, which was considered to bring good luck.
Stutthof concentration camp
also:
The Stutthof concentration camp was located east of Gdansk and emerged at the beginning of 1942 from a civilian prisoner camp that had already been prepared in the summer of 1939 and opened at the beginning of the war, which had also been used as a special SS camp at the turn of the year 1941/1942. Stutthof initially served primarily as a labor and transit camp with an extensive network of satellite camps. As the war progressed, Stutthof also took on the function of an extermination camp from the summer of 1944, particularly for Jews deported from the Baltic states, Poland and Hungary. Around 65,000 to 85,000 perished or were murdered in the camp. Stutthof is also known for the evacuation of the concentration camp via death marches, during which further massacres were carried out. As early as 1946 and 1947, four so-called ‘Stutthof trials’ were held in Poland, which were followed by further trials against individual members of the camp staff in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s and 1960s.
(4 July 1946), among them six women, was followed by masses of observers. But it was not only their number (50,000 people) but also the make-up of this group and the manner of its participation that says much about the Polish post-war period: onlookers included both women and men as well as children. Transport to the place of execution was organised partly by companies, and there was a holiday atmosphere, with beer for sale. This pattern was repeated for the execution of NSDAP-Gauleiter of the Stutthof
Reichsgau Wartheland
pol. Okręg Warcki, pol. Okręg Rzeszy Kraj Warty, deu. Warthegau, deu. Wartheland, deu. Reichsgau Posen
The Reichsgau Wartheland, also known as Warthegau, was a Nazi administrative district in occupied Poland. It was created on October 16, 1939 as Reichsgau Posen and renamed on January 29, 1940. The Reichsgau was in large parts congruent with the historical landscape of Wielkopolska and had 4.5 million inhabitants. The capital was today's Poznań. Wartheland was finally conquered by the Red Army on January 23, 1945.
The almost six-year occupation period was characterized by the brutal persecution and murder of the Polish and Jewish population on the one hand and the targeted resettlement of German-speaking parts of the population on the other.
Image: „Map of the administrative division of the German Eastern Territories and the General Government of the occupied Polish territories as of March 1940“. Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association, map collection, inventory no. K 32 II L 43, edited by Copernico (2022). CC0 1.0.
Since public executions sometimes threatened to get out of hand, they ended with the hanging of Arthur Greiser. Fewer people therefore attended the executions of Amon Göth (13 September 1946) or Rudolf Höss (16 April 1947). As noted by historian Marcin Zaremba, the political mood in Polish post-war society was a mixture of a desire for vengeance, emotional numbness and superstition – a state that was easy to manipulate in order to distract from the establishment of a new dictatorial regime and its acts of violence.
How should the punishment of Nazi crimes in Poland after the war be interpreted? Should it be seen as the legitimization of the new state-socialist system of rule? It was located in the very centre of the new regime: the legal justifications for the prosecution of Nazi crimes were based on the same decrees that later enabled the persecution of political opponents. But the radical fight of the new rulers also took place at other levels. The demands placed on their own prosecution work of a precise, objective and authentic manner of proceeding were reflected in the context of the respective trials. The fact that the motivations behind them did not spring from pure altruism but were used to gain recognition for the new regime on the world stage does not diminish their enduring legal credibility, even decades later.
The legal integrity of the proceedings that took place in the postwar period was due in large part to jurists and experts who had obtained their professional training and socialization between the wars. They ensured the adherence legal standards until newly trained cadres could take away their positions and Stalinization began to gain ground.
However, this and many other aspects of the Polish prosecution of Nazi crimes in the immediate post-war period remained unknown to the broader public, particularly in Western Europe, for a long time. The Cold War and the “Western” conviction that justice had only ever been used for political purposes made these events invisible. The result was a generalized view that did not do justice to the complexity of the historical contexts.
English translation: Gwen Clayton
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Footnotes
1.
See: 1945 grudzień 18. Sprawozdanie z działalności Oddziału Krakowskiego Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce „od początku jej istnienia aż po dzień dzisiejszy” [8 December 1945. Activity Report of the Krakow Section of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland “from the beginning of their existence to the present day”], ed. Mieczysław Motas, Warszawa 1995, pp. 81–93.
2.
More on the historical origin and functioning of the Main Commission: Gulińska-Jurgiel, Paulina: Post-War Reckonings. Political Justice and Transitional Justice in the Theory and Practice of the Main Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland in 1945. In: Brechtken, Magnus/Bułhak, Władysław/Zarusky, Jürgen (Hrsg.): Political and Transitional Justice in Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1950s, Göttingen 2019, pp. 194–209. (open access, URL: https://www.wallstein-open-library.de/9783835335615-political-and-transitional-justice-in-germany-poland-and-the-soviet-union-from-the-1930s-to-the-1950s.html).
3.
The above extract with the information on the NTIN and the trial against Rudolf Höss is based on the following essay by the author: Gulińska-Jurgiel, Paulina: Der Prozess gegen Rudolf Höß, Polen 1947. In: Groenewold, Kurt/Ignor, Alexander/Koch, Arnd (Hrsg.): Lexikon der Politischen Strafprozesse, URL: https://www.lexikon-der-politischen-strafprozesse.de/glossar/hoess-rudolf/
