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Purpose: The aim of this paper is to outline a history of the participation of Polish female soldiers in the World War I. Its outlines their commitment, struggle, and efforts made to contribute to Poland's military effort during the war. The article describes the legal situation of the military participation of women in Poland, and also deals with their role and place in society. Design/methodology/approach: The aim of the article was to organize, systematize and describe the knowledge about the role and participation of female soldiers of the Polish armed forces during the World War I. The above theoretical goal has been achieved by applying the methods of analysis, synthesis, deduction, induction and inference. Findings: In the course of the work were found results, which testify to historically underestimated contribution of women in war efforts. These, both in reinforcement and in other spheres of hostilities significantly contributed to the end of the war and its final result. Social implications: Publication of the article may contribute to increasing social awareness of the underestimated participation and involvement of female soldiers in military action during the war and of the social and cultural roles they fulfill. Originality/value: The article organizes and systematizes the knowledge about the military service of women in the described period. It is addressed both to people associated with all kinds of uniformed services, management and command, as well as people from the civilian environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How could the Holocaust happen – and why did the surrounding world not react? During the first decades after World War II, in Sweden as in many other countries, a common answer was "we did not know." The argument is still used. However, today we know that testimonies about the mass murder in concentration camps were spread through both diplomatic channels and international news reports. To what extent did this information also reach the Swedish citizens, living in a neutral nation? In this article I present two studies. One study analyses Swedish news about Jews from January 1933 to the end of May 1945. The results show an interest in "Jewish questions" throughout the 1930s, culminating in 1938 (Kristallnacht), but with a decreased attention thereafter and with very limited reporting in 1940 and 1941. A second study analyses articles about the extermination camps in Germany and Poland in 1938–1945 and shows that bits and pieces of news information can be found, but the publications are at the same time limited in facts and restricted in coverage. Information control by Swedish authorities and self-censorship contributed to the silencing of the German war crimes and the normalisation of "not knowing." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is based on a paper read as a invited speaker at a conference, entitled "Medical experts and expertise in cases of humanitarian crises "convened by the University of Geneva and the Committee of the International Red Cross in April 2007. The article starts with an overview of Polish history from the end of World War I up to the disclosure of the mass graves in the spring of 1943, but is otherwise a translation of the original English lecture with some additions from new findings.in archives. Helge tramsen was born into a bourgois family in Copenhagen. After graduation in medicine from the University of Copenhegen in 1936 he married a British woman and joined the naval medical corps and also embarked on a surgical career.. From 1940 to 1943 he was prosector at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Copenhagen. After the finding of the mass graves at Katyn, Germany requested from a number of European countries under German control forensic experts to join an international commission to investigate the findings. As the professor of forensic medicine declined perobably due to health reasons Tramsen was sent. During the German occupation of Denmark 1940 to 1945 Tramsen according to family tradition participated in the resistance movement and he consulted with members of the more conservative part of it and was recommended to go to Germany with an added purpose of being able to transport material out of Germany. He went with special plane from Copenhagen to Berlin, where he joined the international group, which later flew to Smolensk via Warszawa. He conducted a post mortem on the body of a Polish officer, selected by himself. Following that he attended in the discussion on the final report, which later in Berlin was handed over to the German minister of health, and which later formed an important part of the official German material accusing the USSR for the killing. During his stay in Berlin he claimed to have collected material, which in his opinion was drawings of the Eder Möwe dams and brought it back to Copenhagen with the severed head of the body of the Polish officer, on which he has carried out the post mortem. After Tramsen's return to Denmark, a British agent obtained his travel report and sent it to London and he later obtained additional information from Tramsen on the unanimous and voluntary conclusion of the experts. No information on the drawings and the head can be found in British archives. According to Tramsen's own account as a naval officer on activities during the occupation, he participated in sabotage actions, but that can not be substantiated by other sources. However, he participated in July 1944 in an attach on a fortress north of Copenhagen, held by the German Navy; the attach failed, and Transen went under ground, but later returned to his flat in Copenhagen, where he was taken prisoner by German security police. As prisoner he underwent torture and was subjected to mocked execution. He was transferred to a concentration camp, but probably due to the intervention by the permanent secretary of the Danish Foreign office, which after the Danish Government has stopped functioning in August 1943 kept the administration running and retained contacts with the German occupation authorities, Tramsen was not sent to a concentration camp in Germany, where survival rates were very low, but to one in Denmark. After the German defeat in May 1945 Tramsen continued his career in surgery, but went into general practice in Copenhagen in 1947, when he also obtained a permanent position in the naval medical service., where he remained until normal retirement in 1970, in the latter part as the highest ranking medical naval officer. He also served as medical chief at the Danish hospital ship Jutlandia serving as Danish contribution to the UN off the coast of Korea during the Korean war. He also attended as representative of the Danish Ministry of Defence the conference on the revision of the Geneva Conventions. No doubt Tramsen feared Soviet retaliation, but on the other hand he also showed courage by giving evidence at the US congressional hearings in 1952, where he confirmed that there had been no German pressure on the participants, and their conclusions had been voluntary and unanimous. He also gave an interview on Radio Free Europe transmitted to Poland in 1962. in which he desribed his experiences in Katyn. In 1971 his eldest daughter died in Warsaw, offially by carbon-monoxid poisoning from a gas heater. In theory it could be an accident, homicide or suicide. He felt it could be a revenge and in his grief he felt responsible and had a nervous break down. He died from a somatic illness in 1979 and during his terminal illness he told about his experiences from the war to a nephew.

The paper informs about exhumations of Polish prisoners of war captured in 1939. The exhumations were carried out near Kharkov, Tver, and Smolensk in summer-autumn, 1991. Investigation of an International Soviet-Polish Commission confirmed the inquest version about contribution of People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR to execution of Polish prisoners of war.

Following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, millions of refugees have fled Ukraine for safety in neighbouring countries, including Poland. This movement of people has been facilitated by, and has produced, documentation that will have significant afterlives as evidence and memory. The records refugees have carried with them, the records they have made during flight, and the records created in their encounters with states and communities beyond their homeland, will be important in the prosecution of war crimes, the reconstruction of events, the reconstitution of communities and the protection of rights and entitlements. This article sets out the findings of a pilot study into the documentary experiences of Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Interviews conducted by and with Ukrainian refugees consider the removal of records, the documentation of the refugee experience, the documentary requirements of border crossings, and the informational requirements of life beyond the border. Although drawing on a limited study population, the research surfaces some significant issues related to the preservation of memory and culture, exclusionary and hostile government information systems, and research ethics. This article could help to inform archival solidarity with Ukraine; it underscores the need for trauma-informed archival research and practice; and finally suggests the need for a person-centered approach to this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article centres on an unconventional figure. Tadeusz Cyprian (1898–1979) was not only an outstanding lawyer but also a talented photographer. He contributed to the documentation of nazi crimes during WW2. Cyprian was a prosecutor before the Supreme National Tribunal (Najwyższy Trybunał Narodowy), and one of the four Polish delegates at the Nuremberg Trials. My investigation concerns the issue of responsibility for crimes committed by the Germans during WW2 from the perspective of Cyprian as prosecutor and as photographer. Illustrations loom large in the article, and still more so in the whole study, given the aims of the research. The research method that is presented here is not often used by lawyers for methodological reasons. Yet law is not a system detached from external reality. Legal research and the interpretation of the law should be conducted in an interdisciplinary way. My article is divided into four parts: (1) the theoretical and contextual framework; (2) key episodes in Cyprian's biography; (3) the dispensing of justice in Poland; and (4) the individual behind the legal principle of the punishment and prevention of genocide. The value of the first part consists, inter alia, in its highlighting of the importance of interdisciplinary research. This is especially relevant for legal biographical studies, for examining the functioning of a specific court, for its judges and for the specific category of trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Polish Supreme National Tribunal (NTN) was established in January 1946 for the purpose of bringing major Nazi perpetrators to justice. Between 1946 and 1948, the NTN heard the cases of forty-nine defendants charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. In sharp contrast to the numerous political trials carried out in the country during the same period, in which thousands of individuals accused of “hampering socialist reconstruction” were sentenced to death or long prison terms, the NTN's proceedings applied conventional legal and moral standards comparable to those used in Western courts and investigated each case comprehensively on its own merits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses various changes in the ways that the history of the World War II era has been discussed and remembered in eastern and central Europe. It focuses on the conflict between the Nazis and Soviets, the extensive war crimes committed by both of those groups, and the mixed emotions which people from that region feel about their heritage. Examples are largely drawn from the Baltic region and Poland, and changes in the regional historiography, particularly regarding the Holocaust, are analyzed.