Poland’s Central Archives of Modern Records, established in 1919 by Marshal Józef Piłsudski, documented the country’s history after it regained independence the previous year as well as the emerging institutions of the newly re-established state.
At the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, its resources consisted of 37 kilometres of files.
After German troops quashed the Warsaw Uprising, a 1944 Polish insurgency which lasted 63 days, they carried out the carefully planned destruction of the Polish capital which would by 1945 see around 85 percent of the city razed to the ground.
On 3 November 1944, Germans entered the buildings housing the central archives in Warsaw and set the archive on fire.
Among the original resources of the massive archive which survived are the records of the Provisional Council of State, the Regency Council as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The surviving documents constitute only around 3 percent of the whole archive.
Nearly 6 million Polish citizens were killed throughout World War II.
(jh/pk)
Source: dzieje.pl