Institute of National Remembrance

Research

Archive at the former IPN headquarters at 28 Towarowa Street in Warsaw

The research conducted by IPN from December 2000 falls into four main topical areas:

• Security Apparatus and Civil Resistance (with separate sub-projects devoted to Political Processes and Prisoners 1944–1956, Soviet Repressions and Crimes committed against Polish Citizens and Martial Law: a Glance after Twenty Years);^[11]
  • Functioning of the repression apparatus (state security and justice organs) – its organizational structure, cadres and relations with other state authority and party organs^[12]
  • Activities of the repression apparatus directed against particular selected social groups and organizations^[12]
  • Structure and methods of functioning of the People's Poland security apparatus^[12]
  • Security apparatus in combat with the political and military underground 1944–1956^[12]
  • Activities of the security apparatus against political emigreés^[12]
  • Security apparatus in combat with the Church and freedom of belief^[12]
  • Authorities dealing with social crises and democratic opposition in the years 1956–1989 f) List of those repressed and sentenced to death^[12]
  • Bibliography of the conspiracy, resistance and repression 1944–1989^[12]
• War, Occupation and the Polish Underground;^[11][13]
  • deepening of knowledge about the structures and activities of the Polish Underground State^[13]
  • examination of the human fates in the territories occupied by the Soviet regime and of Poles displaced into the Soviet Union^[13]
  • assessment of sources on the living conditions under the Soviet and German Nazi occupations^[13]
  • evaluation of the state of research concerning the victims of the war activities and extermination policy of the Soviet and German Nazi occupiers^[13]
  • examining the Holocaust (Extermination of Jews) conducted by Nazis in the Polish territories^[13][14]
    • Response of the Polish Underground State to the extermination of Jewish population^[14]
    • The Polish Underground press and the Jewish question during the German Nazi occupation^[14]
• Poles and Other Nations in the Years 1939–1989 (with a part on Poles and Ukrainians);^[11][15]
  • Poles and Ukrainians^[15]
  • Poles and Lithuanians^[15]
  • Poles and Germans^[15]
  • Communist authorities – Belarusians – Underground^[15]
  • Fate of Jewish people in the People's Republic of Poland^[15]
  • Gypsies in Poland^[15]
• Peasants and the People's Authority 1944–1989 (on the situation of peasants and the rural policy in the years 1944–1989)^[11][16]
  • inhabitants of the rural areas during the creation of the totalitarian regime in Poland;^[16]
  • peasant life during the Sovietisation of Poland in the years 1948–1956;^[16]
  • attitudes of the inhabitants of rural areas towards the state-Church conflict in the years 1956–1970;^[16]
  • the role of peasants in the anti-Communist opposition of the 1970s and 1980s.^[16]

Among the most widely reported cases investigated by the IPN thus far is the Jedwabne Pogrom, a pogrom of Polish Jews "committed directly by Poles, but inspired by the Germans" in 1941. A selection of other cases include:

• Bloody Sunday (1939), an alleged massacre of ethnic Germans by Poles after the German invasion of Poland
• German camps in occupied Poland during World War II, the system of extermination, concentration, labor and POW camps operated by the German Nazis in occupied Poland
• Holocaust in Poland, persecution of the Jews by the German Nazi occupation government in Poland
• Katzmann Report, a detailed German report on extermination of Polish Jews
• Kielce pogrom, a post-war pogrom of Polish Jews^[17] by Poles
• Koniuchy massacre, a massacre carried out by Jewish and Soviet partisans
• Kraków pogrom.^[18]
• Massacre of Lwów professors, the mass execution of approximately 45 Polish professors of the University of Lwów
• Massacres of Poles in Volhynia, an ethnic cleansing conducted by Ukrainians in Volhynia during World War II
• Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against ethnic Poles by Nazi Germany during World War II
• NKVD prisoner massacres, a series of mass executions committed by Soviet NKVD against Polish prisoners
• Occupation of Poland (1939-1945) and treatment of Polish citizens by the occupants in that period
• Operation Vistula, the 1947 deportation of southeastern Poland's Ukrainian, Boyko and Lemko populations by the post-war Soviet installed communist government of Poland in cooperation with Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union to the Western territories attached to Poland from Germany after World War II, the so-called "Recovered Territories"^[19][20]
• Pawłokoma massacre, a massacre in 1945 of Ukrainian civilians by Polish partisans
• Ponary massacre, the mass-murder of about 100,000 people performed by Germans and Lithuanians on Poles and Jews
• Poznań 1956 protests, the first of several massive protests of the Polish people against the communist government of the People's Republic of Poland
• Przyszowice massacre committed by the Red Army on Polish villagers of Poland and other Red Army atrocities in Poland
• Salomon Morel, a case of a Polish Jew running a post-war camp where political prisoners were persecuted
• Special Courts, the underground courts organized by the Polish Government in Exile
• Wąsosz pogrom, a pogrom of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland
• Żegota, Polish underground organization with the purpose of aiding persecuted Jews in German occupied Poland.

Education

IPN is involved in dissemination of its research results in the form of publications, particularly the IPN Bulletin (Biuletyn IPN, Pamięć.pl) and the Remembrance and Justice periodicals, exhibitions, seminars, panel discussions, film reviews, workshops and school curricula.^[11] Since December 2000 IPN has organized over 30 academic conferences (particularly the Warsaw Congress of Science organized every year in September); 22 exhibitions in various museums and educational competitions involving thousands of students.^[11] "IPN Bulletin" is of an informative and popular-scientific character and contains articles pertaining to the history of Poland in the years 1939–1990 as well as describes the current IPN activities.^[11] Remembrance and Justice appears every half a year and is a scientific historical magazine.^[11] IPN also publishes books which are usually edited as collections of documents, reports and memories, but also scientific elaborations (78 of such publications have appeared till April 2007).^[11]

The Public Education Office co-operates on a permanent basis with the Ministry of National Education and Sport, having signed a Co-operation Agreement in 2001.^[11] IPN gives opinions of curricula and textbooks on history that are used in Polish schools and is involved in teacher training activities.^[11] The IPN also co-organizes postgraduate diploma studies on history at the Jagiellonian University and the University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska.^[11]

Lustration

On 18 December 2006 Polish law regulating IPN was changed and came into effect on 15 March 2007. This change gave IPN new lustration powers.^[21] However, key articles of that law were judged unconstitutional by Poland's Constitutional Court on 11 May 2007, making the role of IPN in lustration unclear and putting the whole process into question.^[7]

Politicization

In 2008, Adam Michnik said that the IPN is "engaging in activities that destroy this memory. Today's memory police resort to the hateful methods of the communist secret services and direct them at a victim of this very secret service. These policemen violate the truth and fundamental ethical principles."^[22]

Concerns have been raised of politicization of the IPN, starting with its legal mandate (no comparable institution in any other European country holds prosecutorial power) and continuing to its choice of staff, which at times tended towards particular political views.^[23][24]

Role in lustration and Wildstein list

One of the most controversial aspects of IPN is a by-product of its role in collecting and publishing previously secret archives from the Polish communist security apparatus, the Służba Bezpieczeństwa: revealing secret agents and collaborators (a process called lustration).^[25] One incident which drew criticism involved the so-called Wildstein list; a partial list of names of people who allegedly worked for the communist era Polish intelligence service, which was copied from IPN archives (without IPN permission) in 2004 by journalist Bronisław Wildstein and published in the Internet in 2005. The list gained much attention in Polish media and politics, and during that time IPN security procedures and handling of the matter came under criticism.^[26]

IPN presidential election

The election of a new IPN president in December 2005 was controversial. Janusz Kurtyka, the incumbent IPN president, was contested by Andrzej Przewoźnik. Przewoźnik's candidature received a severe setback after documents were found which suggested his possible co-operation with Służba Bezpieczeństwa, Communist Poland's internal intelligence agency and secret police. Przewoźnik was cleared of the accusations only after he had lost the election.^[27]

Przewoźnik and Kurtyka both died in the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash.

Employee incidents

In September 2017, a historian in charge of education in Lublin for the IPN, wrote in a column in Gazeta Polska that "after the aggression of Germany into Poland, the situation of the Jews did not look very bad" and "although the [Nazi] occupation authorities took over, they ordered the wearing of armbands with the star of David, charged them heavy taxes, began to designate Jews-only zones only for the Jews, but at the same time permitted the creation of Judenrat, that is, organs of self-government."^[28] In 2014, the same historian said in an expert opinion to a Polish court that the Nazi party was a leftist party and that the swastika is an ambiguous symbol.^[28] These statements were widely criticized by other historians including Dariusz Libionka, and the IPN issued a statement saying that the "In connection with the thesis in the article by Tomasz Panfil in the Gazeta Polska, the Institute of National Remembrance declares that position presented there is in no way compatible with the historical knowledge about the situation of the Jewish population in Poland after September 1, 1939." and that it expects the historian "will, in his scientific and journalistic activities, show diligence and respect to the principles of historical and research reliability."^[29] In October 2017, education minister Anna Zalewska presented the historian with a medal for "for special merits for education".^[28]

In October 2017, the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged the IPN to fire the deputy director of its publishing office because he had published several books by Holocaust denier David Irving. The IPN responded that the official "is not a Holocaust denier himself so there is no reason to dismiss him".^[30][31]