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This article analyses unpublished memoirs of Adam Zurawin, a Gestapo informer, believed to have been involved in the so-called 'Hotel Polski Affair'. Zurawin wrote them shortly before his death. They offer a rare opportunity to look at a German collaborator through his own eyes. The analysis is carried out from a few complementary points of view: historical (comparison with other sources), literary...
As part of the purification and self-cleansing atmosphere in the newly liberated countries of Europe following the end of World War II, dozens of Jews were put on trial for their actions during the war, and some were even convicted. This dispensation of justice did not pass by the young Jewish state. In 1950, the 'Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, 5710-1950' was passed in Israel. Although...
This article follows the postwar trial of Shepsl Rotholc. He was a successful interwar boxer for the Jewish sports club 'Gwiazda'. In the Warsaw ghetto he joined the ranks of the Jewish police (sluzba porzadkowa). After the war survivors accused Rotholc of mistreating them during deportations from the ghetto, and the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Zydów w Polsce -CKZP), the principal...
This article deals with the most notorious political crime committed by the Germans on independence-oriented underground in German-occupied Poland. On 13 July 1944, Ludwik Widerszal and Jerzy Makowiecki with his wife were killed by a patrol of Andrzej Sudeczko's sabotage group. Both were prominent officers of the Information and Propaganda Bureau (BiP) of Home Army High Command, who exerted a powerful...
The main sources used in this article are investigation and court files of post-war trials of 15 former journalists of the 'Nowy Kurier Warszawski', so-called 'reptile newspaper' (gadzinówka), a newspaper published by German authorities in General Government throughout the entire occupation period. They were charged and convicted of collaboration on the basis of the so-called 'August decree' of the...
Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish 'national communism'. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers' Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this...
In this article, the author attempts to present the sensitive issue of denunciation of Jews during the occupation. The analysis is based on Polish sources, supplemented with memoirs and testimonies. The starting point and an important intellectual context is the pioneer book by Barbara Engelking 'szanowny panie gistapo' (Dear Mr Gistapo).Informers, acting anonymously, were therefore often more dangerous...
The author reflects upon Jan Blonski's essay 'Biedni Polacy patrza na getto' (Poor Poles look at the ghetto) nearly twenty years of its publication by 'Tygodnik Powszechny'. He points at the innovative character of the depiction of Polish-Jewish issues in the moral context, outside of all the political embroilments. Blonski's voice is unique, because it acknowledges, in the spirit of the Gospels,...
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