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- Title
Criminals and Criminality on the so-called Recovered Territories (Poland) after the End of WW II (1945 - 1950) in the Light of Judicature of the Selected Polish Regional Courts.
- Authors
Siemaszko, Karol
- Abstract
This paper will be the result of research and query in the state archive in Zielona Góra. I want to present criminals and criminality after WW II on the western territory of Poland, which before 1945 was a part of Germany (Northern Silesia). On those territories there was an displacement of population after the war ended. The Germans were deported to Germany within its new borders and the Poles, in turn, arrived from Central and the former Eastern Poland which was annexed by the Soviet Union. After WW II those people started a brand new life on the so - called Recovered Territories. This paper will analyse judicature of two regional courts in Zielona Góra and Głogów based in Nowa Sól (Northern part of the former Prussian province of Silesia). The author of this paper will present the situation connected with criminality on those territories based on criminal cases and published diaries by Polish settlers living in that part of Silesia. That will include not only registered criminality but also crimes 'undetectable' for the statistics - unregistered crimes, whose victims were not reported to the police. Information about crimes committed on those territories was very often mentioned only in the diaries of those settlers. The main aim of this article is to depict characteristic of criminality and criminals when the population changed its place and social bonds were disintegrated. The author would like to ask some important questions: Who were the criminals? Were they average or maybe demoralized persons? What were the motives of the crimes they committed? What crimes were the most common? Criminal (e.g. robbery, rape, murder) or perhaps political ones?
- Subjects
EUROPE; RECONSTRUCTION (1939-1951); HISTORY of criminal justice systems; POLISH history -- 1945-1980; CRIMINAL law; NATIONAL territory; CRIMINAL justice system; HISTORICAL source material; COURT records
- Publication
Journal on European History of Law, 2019, Vol 10, Issue 1, p85
- ISSN
2042-6402
- Publication type
Article