Previously unpublished German archival materials from France’s ECPAD at the Pilecki Institute and the Warsaw Rising Museum - Instytut Pileckiego

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.

The meeting was attended by Étienne de Poncins, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the French Republic to the Republic of Poland; Karol Madaj, Director of the Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Valor; and Jan Ołdakowski, Director of the Warsaw Rising Museum.

The agreement is based on three pillars:

• Unique photographs and their scholarly analysis. The Pilecki Institute and the Warsaw Rising Museum have received German press photographs from the Second World War that have so far remained largely unknown in Poland. They document the September 1939 campaign, occupied Poland, and areas that are today part of Ukraine and Belarus. In many cases, complete sequences of negatives have survived rather than only individual frames selected by German propaganda. The two institutions will jointly subject the materials to critical analysis, identification, and cataloging before making them available to researchers.
• Access to the extensive holdings of the French archive. The agreement gives Polish historians access to one of Europe’s largest military audiovisual archives. In cooperation with the French partner, ECPAD’s holdings will be made available in the reading rooms of the Pilecki Institute and the Warsaw Rising Museum, allowing them to be consulted in Poland.
• The beginning of long-term cooperation. This is the first partnership of such scope between Polish institutions and ECPAD. It provides a foundation for further archival research, research projects, scholarship programs, and joint publications. Joint work on the history of the Second World War reflects the spirit of the Weimar Triangle and creates a platform for dialogue between Warsaw, Paris, and Berlin.

An exhibition of photographs is planned for Paris, Berlin, and Warsaw, offering a reflection on the experience of the Second World War in the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

What the Polish institutions have received

Under the agreement, the first phase of cooperation has brought the following collection to the Polish institutions:

• 23 photographic albums (approximately 1,200 photographs),
• 3,431 photographs from 1939–1940 (including records of the September campaign),
• 5,701 photographs documenting the period from 1940 to 1945,
• 41 documentary and operational films, including issues of “Die Deutsche Wochenschau” newsreel and productions by the UFA film studio.

The holdings include, among other materials, records relating to the Wehrmacht ground forces (DAT series), the German Navy (DAM), and Luftwaffe aerial footage (DAA, LFT).

“The conclusion of this agreement fulfills the Pilecki Institute’s statutory objectives with regard to archival research, expanding national archival holdings, and systematically studying the mechanisms of 20th-century totalitarian regimes. The materials obtained will become part of the Institute Archive’s digital holdings, which comprise millions of pages of digitized documents from Polish and foreign archives, including those in Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Ukraine,” said Karol Madaj, Director of the Pilecki Institute.

“The ECPAD archive contains materials whose existence remained unknown to Polish historians for decades. For the Warsaw Rising Museum, the materials showing the capital in September 1939, its residents, and the scale of the destruction are particularly moving, as they foreshadow the city’s later tragic fate. Every new photograph and every film is another record of the wartime experience that we can preserve, study, and make available to future generations. Our duty is not only to collect such sources, but also to subject them to critical analysis and restore their proper historical significance,” said Jan Ołdakowski, Director of the Warsaw Rising Museum.

“This is an invaluable collection of photographs and films that has previously remained largely unknown and that, once professionally processed, will enrich the Institute’s archive. Through this long-term work, we will expand our knowledge of the realities of the Second World War and the German occupation of Polish territory. For historians and researchers, this means access to materials that for decades remained outside broader scholarly and public circulation in Poland. These holdings will not only help supplement documentation of the September campaign and the early stages of the occupation, but will also allow us to reconstruct more fully the context of events previously known only from individual frames, often selected for propaganda purposes. Today we are presenting the first stage of our cooperation: the acquisition of the materials. Critical analysis and cataloging still lie ahead. We will provide ongoing updates as the first batches of source material become available in our reading rooms,” Director Madaj adds.

About the ECPAD archive

ECPAD, the French Defense Communication and Audiovisual Production Center, collects and makes available the audiovisual archives of the French armed forces from 1900 to the present day. Its holdings comprise approximately 3.5 million photographs and 16,800 films. They include documentation of the First and Second World Wars, the liberation of France, the wars in Indochina and Algeria, and materials relating to NATO and United Nations operations. A separate part of the holdings is the so-called German collection: materials produced by German propaganda companies (Propagandakompanien) that were secured by the U.S. Army following the capitulation of the Third Reich in 1945 and subsequently divided among the Allies. Members of these companies included photographers and camera operators with professional experience. Under an agreement between the Propaganda Ministry and the Wehrmacht, the companies were incorporated into the structures of the German armed forces and accompanied the troops during successive military campaigns. ECPAD’s German collection comprises more than 353,000 photographs and 1,128 film titles, including 171 issues of the “Die Deutsche Wochenschau” newsreel and approximately 946 documentaries and so-called Kulturfilme produced between 1927 and 1945.

Presentation of Pilecki Institute materials: Bydgoszcz and the persecution of the Jewish population through the lens of propaganda

During the presentation, the Pilecki Institute showed previously unknown photographic materials documenting events in Bydgoszcz and depicting the persecution of the Jewish population. These groups of materials were selected because of their particular value in deconstructing the German propaganda narrative.

“The materials have survived in their original versions and are available for research. Work on them demonstrates the extent to which German propaganda distorted the portrayal of the events of September 1939. Until now, historians had access only to individual frames circulated for propaganda purposes by the Third Reich. Access to complete sequences of negatives, as in the case of Bydgoszcz, helps us reconstruct the chronology of German repression against civilians and state officials without an ideological filter. The September campaign alone is represented by more than 4,500 photographs in ECPAD’s holdings. Processing such an extensive body of material requires systematic archival research conducted within scholarly programs,” said Rafał Ruciński, an archivist at the Berlin branch of the Pilecki Institute.

Bydgoszcz: the entry of the Wehrmacht and repression against the population

The photographs record the moment German troops entered the city, the soldiers being welcomed by the local German population, and the subsequent mass arrests of Bydgoszcz residents carried out by the regular army and probably by members of Einsatzgruppe IV. Those detained included state officials, women, and children. Individual images from these events had previously appeared in publications and online, but were presented out of the context of the full sequence of frames. The German propaganda apparatus deliberately selected individual images and assigned them a manipulated narrative. The complete roll of film obtained from ECPAD makes it possible to reconstruct the course of events minute by minute, compare known photographs with other images taken in the same place and at the same time, and conduct a comprehensive critical source analysis of the material.

The first acts of persecution against the Jewish population

The collection also contains photographs documenting the first acts of persecution against the Jewish population in occupied Polish territories. One photograph shows a group of Jewish men being marched in front of Wehrmacht soldiers while carrying a sign reading “Nach Palästina” (“To Palestine”). Another photograph shows a Jewish man sitting on a cart bearing the inscription “Wir wollten den Krieg” (“We wanted the war”). These photographs are particularly significant for research into the beginnings of the German policy of persecution against the Jewish population and the use of violence and humiliation for propaganda purposes.

Presentation by the Warsaw Rising Museum: fighting for the capital and wartime destruction

As part of the presentation, the Warsaw Rising Museum showed unique visual materials depicting the Wehrmacht’s operational preparations and the scale of the destruction of Warsaw in September 1939. The materials included images of German soldiers writing inscriptions on aerial bombs before air raids, as well as the immediate effects of the bombing, including the ruins of the Warsaw University of Technology’s Chemistry Building at 3 Noakowskiego Street. The picture of wartime destruction is complemented by images from Warsaw’s right bank showing soldiers posing on dismantled elements of a carousel against the backdrop of damaged apartment buildings on Grochowska, Kordeckiego, and Komorska streets.

A particularly important part of the collection consists of testimonies to the suffering of the civilian population during the final days of the defense of the capital. The photographs record residents fleeing the fighting in the Ochota district under the supervision of German posts at the brickyard near the Szczęśliwickie clay pits, as well as the presence of Wehrmacht units in the area. The presentation concludes with images from late September 1939 showing Warsaw residents amid the ruins near the “Strzelec” sound cinema in Okęcie, opposite the main entrance to the PZL works.

Stages of processing and rules for access to the holdings

All acquired archival materials will be incorporated into the digital repositories of the Pilecki Institute and the Warsaw Rising Museum. The digitization and metadata-entry process will be carried out in stages:

• Online access: thumbnail images of the photographs, accompanied by scholarly critical apparatus and metadata, will be made progressively available in the Pilecki Institute’s digital catalog and in the Warsaw Rising Museum’s photographic archive.
• On-site access: full high-resolution digital reproductions will be made available to researchers for scholarly and educational purposes in the reading rooms of the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw and Berlin and in the archive of the Warsaw Rising Museum.

Both institutions will provide access to the same collection within a unified metadata system.