One of the tasks of the Pilecki Institute is to collect and share documents depicting the realities of the last century. Until now, many of them had been scattered, undiscovered or forgotten. Some of them were stored in archives on other continents. Such was the case with materials, which constitute one of the largest collections of testimonies of the civilian population of occupied Europe.
Documents published on the portal Chronicles of Terror contain personal experiences of thousands of Poles - victims of totalitarian crimes, their families and loved ones. The materials include among others, the testimonies of Poles who left the USSR with the Anders Army, accounts of the victims of the Katyn massacre, testimonies of Poles who provided aid to Jews and the files of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, donated by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). The documents, scattered and locked up in archives over the years allow us to today, to unveil family and local stories and inspire scholars, journalists and people of culture. Thanks to the translations into English, they are circulated internationally, thus disseminating knowledge about the double occupation in Poland, and the memory of the victims of totalitarianism around the world.
A unique collection of documents are essays by Polish children related to their wartime experiences. The works were created as part of a competition that was announced in 1946 with the consent of the then Ministry of Education.
The materials made available on the website were obtained from the collections of the American Hoover Institute, the Committee for the Commemoration of Poles Rescuing Jews, the Institute of National Remembrance, the Katyn Museum - the Martyrological Branch of the Polish Army Museum, the Archive of New Files, the State Archive in Kielce and the State Archive in Radom.
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Zdjęcia w artykule dzięki uprzejmości Muzeum Reina Sofia