Institute of National Remembrance

Purpose

IPN's main areas of activity, in line with its original mission statement, include researching and documenting the losses which were suffered by the Polish Nation as a result of World War II and during the post-war totalitarian period. The Institute informs about the patriotic traditions of resistance against the occupational forces, and the Polish citizens' fight for sovereignty of the nation, including their efforts in defence of freedom and human dignity in general. IPN investigates crimes committed on Polish soil against Polish citizens as well as people of other citizenships wronged in the country. War crimes which are not affected by statute of limitations according to Polish law include:

1. crimes of the Soviet and Polish communist regimes committed in the country from 17 September 1939 until fall of communism on 31 December 1989,
2. deportations to the Soviet Union of Polish soldiers of Armia Krajowa, and other Polish resistance organizations as well as Polish inhabitants of the former Polish eastern territories,
3. pacifications of Polish communities between Vistula and Bug Rivers in the years 1944 to 1947 by UB-NKVD,
4. crimes committed by the law enforcement agencies of the Polish People's Republic, particularly Ministry of Public Security of Poland and Main Directorate of Information of the Polish Army,
5. crimes under the category of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It is the IPN duty to prosecute crimes against peace and humanity, as much as war crimes. Its mission includes the need to compensate for damages which were suffered by the repressed and harmed people at a time when human rights were disobeyed by the state, and educate the public about recent history of Poland. IPN collects, organises and archives all documents about the Polish communist security apparatus active from 22 July 1944 to 31 December 1989.

Organisation

IPN was created by special legislation on 18 December 1998. IPN is governed by the chairman. This chairman is chosen by a supermajority (60%) of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) with the approval of the Senate of Poland on a request by a Collegium of IPN. The chairman has a 5-year term of office. The first chairman of the IPN was Leon Kieres, elected by the Sejm for five years on 8 June 2000 (term 30 June 2000 – 29 December 2005). The second chairman was Janusz Kurtyka, elected on 9 December 2005 with a term that started 29 December 2005 until his death in the Smolensk airplane crash on 10 April 2010. Franciszek Gryciuk was acting chairman from 2010 to 2011, when the current chairman, Łukasz Kamiński, was elected by the Sejm.

The IPN is divided into:

Main Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Główna Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu)

Bureau of Provision and Archivization of Documents (Biuro Udostępniania i Archiwizacji Dokumentów)

Bureau of Public Education (or Public Education Office, Biuro Edukacji Publicznej)

Lustration Bureau (Biuro Lustracyjne) (new bureau, since October 2006)

local chapters.

On 29 April 2010, acting president Bronislaw Komorowski signed into law a parliamentary act that reformed the Institute of National Remembrance.

Research

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);

Functioning of the repression apparatus (state security and justice organs) – its organizational structure, cadres and relations with other state authority and party organs

Activities of the repression apparatus directed against particular selected social groups and organizations

Structure and methods of functioning of the People's Poland security apparatus

Security apparatus in combat with the political and military underground 1944–1956

Activities of the security apparatus against political emigreés

Security apparatus in combat with the Church and freedom of belief

Authorities dealing with social crises and democratic opposition in the years 1956–1989 f) List of those repressed and sentenced to death

Bibliography of the conspiracy, resistance and repression 1944–1989

War, Occupation and the Polish Underground;

deepening of knowledge about the structures and activities of the Polish Underground State

examination of the human fates in the territories occupied by the Soviet regime and of Poles displaced into the Soviet Union

assessment of sources on the living conditions under the Soviet and German Nazi occupations

evaluation of the state of research concerning the victims of the war activities and extermination policy of the Soviet and German Nazi occupiers

examining the Holocaust (Extermination of Jews) conducted by Nazis in the Polish territories

Response of the Polish Underground State to the extermination of Jewish population

The Polish Underground press and the Jewish question during the German Nazi occupation

Poles and Other Nations in the Years 1939–1989 (with a part on Poles and Ukrainians);

Poles and Ukrainians

Poles and Lithuanians

Poles and Germans

Communist authorities – Belarusians – Underground

Fate of Jewish people in the People's Republic of Poland

Gypsies in Poland

Peasants and the People's Authority 1944–1989 (on the situation of peasants and the rural policy in the years 1944–1989)

inhabitants of the rural areas during the creation of the totalitarian regime in Poland;

peasant life during the Sovietisation of Poland in the years 1948–1956;

attitudes of the inhabitants of rural areas towards the state-Church conflict in the years 1956–1970;

the role of peasants in the anti-Communist opposition of the 1970s and 1980s.

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 by Poles

Koniuchy massacre, a massacre carried out by Jewish and Soviet partisans

Kraków pogrom.

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"

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 post-war camp were 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. 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. "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. Remembrance and Justice appears every half a year and is a scientific historical magazine. 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).

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. IPN gives opinions of curricula and textbooks on history that are used in Polish schools and is involved in teacher training activities. The IPN also co-organizes postgraduate diploma studies on history at the Jagiellonian University and the University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska.

Board games

The Institution of National Remembrance has created several board games to help educate people about recent Polish history

303 – a game about the Battle of Britain that focuses on the Polish 303 Squadron

Kolejka – a game about being forced to queue for basic household products during the Communist era.

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. 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.

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). 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.

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, the Communist Poland's internal intelligence agency and secret police. Przewoźnik was cleared of the accusations only after he had lost the election.

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

Praise

IPN actions have also attracted support. In 2006 an open letter was published, declaring that:

"History of Solidarity and anti-communist resistance in Poland cannot be damaged by scientific studies and resulting increase in our knowledge of the past. History of opposition to totalitarianism belongs to millions of Poles and not to one social or political group which usurps the right to decide which parts of national history should be discussed and which forgotten."

This letter was signed by a former Prime Minister of Poland, Jan Olszewski; the Mayor of Zakopane, Piotr Bąk; Polish-American Professor and member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council Marek Jan Chodakiewicz; Professors Maria Dzielska, Piotr Franaszek and Tomasz Gąsowski of the Jagiellonian University; Professor Marek Czachor of Gdańsk University of Technology, journalist and writer Marcin Wolski; Solidarity co-founder Anna Walentynowicz and dozens of others.