Ultimately, the “Chronicles of Terror" are to become one of the largest collections of testimonies of the civilian population of occupied Europe. Thanks to an agreement with the Institute of National Remembrance, we publish testimonies collected by the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, which until now had been dispersed and locked deep in the archives. We began the development of the repository by making available accounts related to Warsaw, especially testimonies from the period of the Warsaw Uprising led by the tragic Wola massacre. We are constantly developing the project to include the database of testimonies from all over Poland. In the future, we will supplement it with accounts collected by the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes as part of other investigations and trials against German criminals from Auschwitz-Birkenau, which will allow us to complement the collection of testimonies from the trials of Rudolf Höss and 40 members of the staff. Pursuant to an agreement with the American Hoover Institute of September 17, 2017, the accounts of communist crimes submitted by soldiers of the Anders Army and the civil population upon liberation from the Soviet Union have also been made available in the “Chronicles of Terror”.
In times when the history of World War II is relativized and twisted, and the German crimes, including the Holocaust, are sometimes questioned, the prisoners' accounts restore the proper proportions to the phenomena and allow us to precisely distinguish the victims from the perpetrators.
We hope that through the “Chronicles of Terror” these testimonies will reach out to the scientific circles in Poland and abroad, draw the interest of journalists and creators of culture, reach the prisoners' families and, as such, contribute to a better understanding of and reflection upon the Auschwitz experience.
www.zapisyterroru.pl / www.chroniclesofterror.pl
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