Instytut Pileckiego

conference

Call for Papers | Exile Governments and Political Refugees in 20th-Century Europe: Sovereignty in the Face of Totalitarianisms (Deadline: November 15)

The year 2027 marks the 85th anniversary of the signing, on 13 January 1942, of the Declaration of St James’s Palace on the Punishment of War Crimes. To commemorate this landmark event, we are organising an international academic conference addressing the history and significance of governments in exile and political refugees in 20th-century Europe.

News

The Face of Crime: The Life and Death of Roman Shukhevych | Damian Karol Markowski

In recent years, the Ukrainian central and local authorities have been actively commemorating Roman Shukhevych, one of the leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), perceiving him as a powerful symbol of the fight for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union. Within the last few months, President Zelenskyy named a military unit after the UPA, while the Lviv Oblast Council declared 2027 as the year of the UPA and Roman Shukhevych. Crucially, however, Shukhevych – the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the commander of the UPA, and the deputy commander of the Nachtigall Battalion – had actively collaborated with Nazi Germany and was responsible for ethnic cleansings, pogroms of Lwów Jews, and the mass murder of Polish civilians in Volhynia in 1943. Among others, he was the author of an explicit order to murder civilians. We look back at his life story and involvement in these and other crimes.

News

The Second International Congress of the Pilecki Institute: A recap

Congress “Embracing the New, Preserving the Old: Studying Fascism, Communism, and Totalitarianism in the 2020s” took place on October 14 and 15, 2026 – two packed days of stimulating papers, keynote events, debates and discussions.

Research news

PhD Candidate from the University of Potsdam on a Research Visit to the Pilecki Institute

Between 1 October 2026 and 31 January 2027, Melcher Abramowski, a doctoral candidate in law at the University of Potsdam, is completing a research stay at the Pilecki Institute under the Erasmus+ program.

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Previously unpublished German archival materials from France’s ECPAD at the Pilecki Institute and the Warsaw Rising Museum

The Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Valor and the Warsaw Rising Museum have signed a strategic trilateral cooperation agreement with ECPAD (Établissement de Communication et de Production Audiovisuelle de la Défense / Defense Communication and Audiovisual Production Center), the French military audiovisual archive based in Ivry-sur-Seine, France. The agreement gives the Polish institutions access to unique Second World War photographs previously unseen in Poland, opens access to the vast holdings of the French archive, and launches a partnership of major significance for research into Polish history.

Research news

How Can Individuals Claim Reparation for Wartime Violations? A Seminar at the Pilecki Institute

On Friday, September 11, the Pilecki Institute hosted the seminar "Redressing Wartime Violations: How can individuals claim their right to reparation?" at its headquarters located at Sienna 82. The session analyzed structural mechanisms and legal frameworks for processing individual compensation regarding wartime violations.

News

Evil Woven into Everyday Life | Dr Joanna Nikel on the Memoirs of a German Official from His Stay in the General Government

"It is rare for a document to find its way into archival collections in which the voice of an official of the occupation apparatus himself – written down without any intention of accusation, and even stressing his own sense of normality – becomes one of the most eloquent testimonies to the criminal nature of the system he served", writes Dr Joanna Nikel in her initial commentary on the materials received by the Pilecki Institute.

News

14 books nominated for this year’s Witold Pilecki International Book Award

On Saturday, 5 September, at the Autumn Book Fair in Warsaw, the Pilecki Institute announced the titles and authors of 14 books nominated for this year’s Witold Pilecki International Book Award.

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The hitherto unknown memoirs of a German official from occupied Poland have been donated to the Pilecki Institute

A unique document has been added to the Pilecki Institute’s archives: the previously unpublished and unknown memoirs of a German official who worked in the civil administration of the General Government during the Second World War.

News

„Soviet Central Asia as a Totalitarian Testing Ground” - international academic conference

Three days, dozens of presentations, and researchers from Poland and abroad summed up the international academic conference held at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw on 2–4 September.

News

Karol Madaj appointed Director of the Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Valor

Marta Cienkowska, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, has appointed Karol Madaj Director of the Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Valor in Warsaw. His five-year term will begin on 30 August 2026. From 1 September 2025, Karol Madaj served as the acting director of the Pilecki Institute.

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Hacker attack on the websites of the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw, Berlin, and Augustów

On the night of August 13–14 our websites suffered another serious hacking attack. Content bearing the hallmarks of Russian propaganda and disinformation — targeting Polish history and reinforcing anti-Ukrainian narratives — was deliberately placed on the Institute's pages devoted to Augustów, Berlin, and Warsaw.

News

Academic conference “Oppositional Engagement of Women in Authoritarian and Totalitarian Systems of the 20th Century: Poland in a Comparative European Perspective (1919–1989)”

The second academic conference in a series “Oppositional Engagement of Women in Authoritarian and Totalitarian Systems of the 20th Century: Poland in a Comparative European Perspective (1919–1989)” brought together representatives of various fields of the humanities and social sciences from numerous research centers in Poland and abroad.

News

Accountability for War Crimes. New book from Pilecki's expert

It is an expanded English-language edition of the monograph "Problem odpowiedzialności karnej za zbrodnie wojenne w pracach rządu polskiego na emigracji (1939–1945)", which in 2023 was awarded a grant under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education’s “Excellent Science II” program for the translation and open-access publication of the book abroad.

Commemoration of Rozalia Socha, Murdered for Helping Jews During the German Occupation | Called by Name

On 2 June 2026, in Wola Rafałowska near Rzeszów, the Pilecki Institute unveiled a stone with a plaque commemorating Rozalia Socha, who in 1942 was murdered by the Germans for hiding a group of Jews: Izaak, Fajga, and Regina Goldman, as well as two women and three children. This was the 41st commemoration held as part of the “Called by Name” program.

News

On better protection against crimes against humanity: Summary of the international conference “The Roots of Crimes Against Humanity”

The international conference “The Roots of Crimes Against Humanity: Bridging the Normative Gap” successfully concluded at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw. Organized on the 20th and 21st of April 2026, in cooperation with the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the event aimed to provide historical and academic foundations for the first-ever United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity.

News

April 30 Deadline: Poland Proposes "Child-Sensitive Approach" for New UN Convention

Beginning with today’s (April 30) deadline for all nations to submit their official comments to the United Nations on the draft of the proposed Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity, Poland has made an aggressive bid to become one of the leaders representing the globe’s most vulnerable victims.

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Research cooperation between the International Centre for War Crimes Trials (ICWC) and the Pilecki Institute

The Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Valor has entered into official cooperation with the International Centre for War Crimes Trials (ICWC) at Philipps University in Marburg.

News

Research paper of an employee of the Pilecki Institute in a Q1-indexed journal

Dr. Tomasz Chinciński published an article in the Q1 journal Cogent Arts & Humanities on the attitudes of the German population in Poland incorporated into the Third Reich.

News

Second debate in the “Berlin in Warsaw” series. Discussion on reparations and compensation [video]

“Compensation, damages, reparations: what is realistic, what is symbolic?” This was the title of the second debate in the “Berlin in Warsaw” series. Experts on Polish-German relations presented different perspectives on the difficult relationship between the two nations.

News

Pilecki in NYC. The debate “Lessons from Nuremberg for the 21st Century”

The debate “Lessons from Nuremberg for the 21st Century” focused on the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials and their real impact on the development of contemporary international law and the methods of prosecuting war criminals.

News

Germany on Poland: Images, Memory and “Blind Spots” | Event video recording

“What is one ‘missing frame’ in the German imagination of Poland?” Dr. Aleksandra Burdziej asked the German guests in the opening question of the discussion launching the “Berlin in Warsaw” series.

News

"Germans Appropriate the Polish Experience of Victimhood. Colonial patterns of thinking emerge in the debate on collaboration" by Hanna Radziejowska and Mateusz Fałkowski

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 11, 2026. Article translated from German into English.