Wieś polska na ziemiach okupowanych przez Niemców w czasie II wojny światowej w postępowaniach karnych organów wymiaru sprawiedliwości Republiki Federalnej Niemiec

The main objective of the paper was to discover whether offences from 1939-1945 that took place in the territory of Poland, and especially in the Polish countryside, were the subject of penal proceedings of justice administration bodies in the Federal Republic of Germany, and if so to what extent they reflected the real state of affairs. Until September 20th, 1967, public prosecutor’s offices in the Federal Republic of Germany conducted 944 investigations on Nazi crimes on the territory of the Second Republic which still belonged to Poland. Until 1989, the former Main Committee for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes in Poland submitted to the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany (central office in Ludwigsburg) a notification on 2,310 crimes or sets of crimes together with evidence. In total, there were 3,254 war crime cases in Poland, of which 95 were investigated in the Federal Republic of Germany (75 connected exclusively with the crimes on Jews, 12 with victims of different nationalities, mainly in concentration camps, and only 8 where the victims were Poles (of which only one referred to mass executions in the Pomerania). There was no single trial on pacification of Polish countryside (when more than 80 Polish villages were completely destroyed and their inhabitants killed by Nazis), no trial connected with Wehrmacht crimes (with one exception – crimes during the Warsaw Uprising). Investigations were discontinued, frequently providing controversial justifications especially in connection with Wehrmacht crimes. Basing on 99 investigations connected with the Kielce Region it is evident that for German public prosecutor’s offices only persons in command were the offenders whereas those who carried out orders were treated as witnesses. Nevertheless, some grounds for discontinuation of trials testified to the crimes connected with destroying entire villages and killing newborns (in German: unmundige Kinder).