Polish Intelligentsia during the Second World War: Its Fate and History Throughout the Occupation (German Occupation, Soviet Occupation) - Instytut Pileckiego

The Polish society was particularly strongly affected by the German and Soviet occupation during the Second World War and in the Stalinist era. This became evident in the irreversible loss of the Polish intellectual, cultural and political elites. It is estimated that as a result of the criminal policies of the German and Soviet occupiers, 30% of researchers, 20% of teachers and representatives of culture, 21.5% of judges and prosecutors, 57% of attorneys and 39% of doctors perished. However, the data are incomplete, and as such require verification and supplementation following new research.

The policy of the extermination of the Polish nation involved the execution of Poles who held high public or local government office in the Second Polish Republic. As soon as regular military operations ceased in September 1939, the Third Reich began implementing its criminal plans against the Polish community. With the beginning of the occupation, arrests of mayors, aldermen, and people connected with the Polish local government and socio-patriotic organizations commenced. The majority of those arrested were brutally murdered or sent to concentration camps.

Polish communities within the territory of the Soviet Union experienced the criminal Soviet policies even before the outbreak of the Second World War. The conflict brought about the disintegration, dispersion and dissolution of such circles of Polish intelligentsia as existed in Wilno or Lwów. The Second World War had far-reaching consequences for many communities of its victims, Poland first among them. Throughout the occupation, our country suffered immensely as a result of the criminal policies pursued by the German invaders and later by the Soviet occupiers in the Stalinist era. Selected social strata, particularly the Polish intelligentsia, were decimated in a planned and murderous manner by both the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. We are still feeling the effects of the war today, including the far-reaching extermination of the Polish intelligentsia.

An analytical and synthetic study devoted to the history of the Polish intelligentsia during the Second World War has not been penned. Therefore, the main goals of the project are: to research the fates of the Polish intelligentsia during the Second World War (as regards losses, daily life, participation in the resistance – the Polish Underground State); to present the ethos of the Polish intelligentsia in the context of the catastrophe of the Second World War; to demonstrate that there was a gap in the postwar Polish society, resulting from the losses suffered by the Polish intelligentsia during the Second World War; to depict the postwar society as a society without its elites (and to show what survived of the wartime intelligentsia into the postwar period); to update or establish memorials to commemorate the fates of the Polish intelligentsia during the Second World War.

Principal investigator: Prof. Witold Stankowski