Occupational Lots of Police Officers in Polish Historiography. State of Research and Research Postulates

Comparing the police activity during Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919-1920 and September Campaign of 1939 a huge disproportion in preserved archive materials and memoirs should be emphasized, especially those referring to the latter conflict. The reason for this was most of all the political situation in Poland after 1945. The attitude of communist authorities to the pre-war State apparatus was unambiguously negative. The situation was further made more complicated by the lack of access not only to the archive materials stored in the USSR (and later in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine), but also to those stored in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Warsaw. We can talk about the beginning of reliable research on the history of police organizations operating in the II Republic of Poland only since the 1990s. Above all, a breakthrough occurred when some materials stored within the territory of former USSR, among others in the National Archive of the Republic of Belarus, the Ukraine State Archive of Security Service and the State Archive of Russian Federation, were disclosed and made available. Despite advanced works that have been done so far, the lots of Polish police officers during World War II still require intensive research. Numerous materials gathered in national archives still require a thorough query, moreover, it is necessary to get acquainted with the material gathered in the archives in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, including the materials of former Secret Service. A comprehensive query is to be made of documents gathered, among others, in the London institutes: Polish Institute, General Sikorski Museum, and Józef Pilsudski Institute.