Project

The Program “Victims of the Nazi Regime-Database of Polish citizens repressed under the German Occupation” was initiated by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in 2006.
The main goal of the Program is to create a personal database containing all possible information about victims of the German repressions on Polish citizens during the Second World War.

One could assume that 60 years after the end of the Second World War the exact number of irreversible civil losses among Polish citizens has already been calculated. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

During the Second World War, Poland suffered the largest demographic loss among all allied nations, caused by warfare and occupation. Up till today, the number of the above-mentioned losses and the scale of the repressions is still an estimation rather than a proper calculation.

Both the Third Reich and the Soviet Union set up a policy of harsh repressions (e.g. local genocides, resettlement and forced labour) on Polish citizens living in the Second Polish Republic.

In order to eventually calculate the exact number of Polish citizens who suffered, were repressed or died as a result of Nazi repressions, following steps have to be taken: professional evaluation of the available data; merger, standarization and supplement of various disintegrated data bases. These actions should have been undertaken already long time ago, yet, for different reasons, they haven't been carried out, either in the communist People's Republic of Poland or after 1989. This Program intends to break with using rough estimations only and, instead, to replace them with precise calculations based on concrete testimonies of the victims, their relatives or friends. In this way, the total number of the victims will no longer be a purely statistic data but will rather show people's lots and personal tragedies behind it.

This is why we decided to make not only the numbers but also some of the personal information (e.g. names, persons' lots) public. In this way we hope to present the victims as a group of individuals and not as an impersonal mass.

It is almost impossible to think of a single village or city whose inhabitants were not objects of Nazi repressions. There are hardly any families which relatives did not suffer as a result of German rules. Numerous commemorative plaques and memorials, spread all over the country, still remind us of these tragic events. Now it is high time to gather all the missing information, especially that some of the contemporary witnesses are still alive and their first-hand relations could help us fill in some blank pages in the archives. Some of Polish families still know a little about the fates of their relatives who disappeared without a trace. A unified, standarized database concerning Nazi repressions will not only serve as an excellent historical source but might also help the victims' relatives to find out more about their dearests' lots.

As a result of this Program, all data, concerning the victims of Nazi repressions, hitherto spread out or inaccessible, will be collected in one place and available for scientific research. These details will come from archives of various institutions interested in this field, and, more importantly, directly from the victims and their families. With this end in view, we would like to kindly ask anyone concerned to fill in an on-line [to be found here] or printed version of our questionnaire (please send the printed version to the address: Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation/ Fundacja Polsko-Niemieckie Pojednanie, ul. Krucza 36, 00-921 Warsaw, Poland). We also kindly encourage any persons, organisations, representatives of private or public archives, etc. who possess any further information concerning any Polish citizens (also including national minorities with Polish citizenship) to partake in this Program.

The Institute for Polish Remebrance together with the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage brought two advisory bodies in existance:

a) The Expert Commission – which determines substantial, content-related aspects of the Program
b) The Program Council – which establishes terms and conditions of Program partners' cooperation

Right now, both aforementioned bodies assemble representatives of 30 institutions engaged in issues connected with the World War II.

The Expert Commission

The Expert Commission determines substantial, content-related aspects of the Program. Members of the Commission are:

• Tomasz Szarota – Chairman
  
  
• dr Andrzej Chmielarz
  
  
• dr Waldemar Grabowski - Secretary
  
  
• dr hab. Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert
  
  
• mgr inż. Grzegorz Szczepański
  
  

The Program Council

The Program Council comprises of representatives of institutions dealing with issues related to the Second World War.

The Program Council is chaired by:

• Piotr Żuchowski - secretary of state in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
• dr hab. Jan Żaryn - advisor of the chairman of the Institute of National Remembrance.
  Members of the Council are:

Database

The main goal of the program is to create a personal database containing all possible information about the victims of the German repression on Polish citizens during the World War II.

The database is meant to gather all information concerning this issue, possessed by various institutions and private persons, in one, easily accessible place. This is why we hope to obtain files from numerous organisations and archives but also count on popular response of individual participants, volunteers and other people who possess suitable knowledge.

All information keyed in the database are being veryfied, standardized, compared and analised in order to avoid mistakes and duplications.

The Program documents the repressions in line with following categories:

• soldiers killed in action, imprisoned or died
• prisoners of ghettos, labour and concentration camps
• civilians arrested and imprisoned
• forced-labour workers
• resettled and deported
• juvenile war victims
• citizens murdered e.g. in pacifications or executions
• civilians killed as a result of warfare
• civilians forced to hide
• people in whose case only the fact of repression can be stated, (lacking any further information)

The Database is accessible under the following link. It contains some of the  personal information  (name, surname, date and place of birth/death, parent's surnames) and basic facts concerning the repressions (date, category of a repression, place). The Database is owned by the State Treasury, represented by the Institute of National Remembrance.