- Description
- The collection contains selected investigative files of the Staatsanwaltschaft bei dem Sondergericht Warschau (State Prosecutor of the Special Court Warsaw) relating to breaking the law during German occupation in Poland by Poles and Jews. Includes files concerning crimes such as illegal political activities, participation in resistance movements, administrative and official violations of the law, crossing country borders, anti-German declarations, listening to the radio, using force against Germans, possessing a weapon, bribery, an offence against regulations concerning foreign currency, desertion, sabotage, forgery of documents, leaving the ghetto, not wearing an identification band with the Star of David, racial offences, forbidden sexual relations (“Rassenschande”), trading at black market prices, illegal trade, slaughter, hiding food products, robbery, homicide, rape, theft, and other crimes.
- Alternate Title
- Staatsanwaltschaft bei dem Sondergericht Warschau
- Date
-
inclusive:
1940-1944
- Credit Line
- Forms part of the Claims Conference International Holocaust Documentation Archive at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This archive consists of documentation whose reproduction and/or acquisition was made possible with funding from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
- Collection Creator
- Staatsanwaltschaft bei dem Sondergericht Warschau
- Biography
-
In October 1939, the German authorities announced that in addition to the existing Polish judicial system will also operate the German courts. The German Courts (Deutsches Gericht) and Sondergericht (Special Court) were established with the ordinances of the Governor General in Feb. 19, 1940 (in Chełm, Kraków, Lublin, Radom, Rzeszów and Warsaw). The courts tried German citizens, Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), Poles and Jews. In 1941 the German judiciary system in the General Government (GG) started actively participating in the implementation of the discriminatory policies and widely used terror court applying death penatly and a special criminal law especialy for Poles and Jews; E.g. for all forms of resistance against the German occupation authorities; for failure to register by the officers of the Polish Army; for failure to quotas by farmers; for hiding Jews the death penalty in force since 1942 and was often carried out without the judgment of the court ad-hoc , so-called. execution on the spot; for offenses against the laws and regulations of the German occupation authorities, etc. The judges were supervised by the district governor. Appeals of the verdicts of the German Court were settled by the Higher German Court (Deutches Obergericht) and its decisions were final. The court arbitrated the cases consistently under German civil and criminal law. The Staatsanwaltschaft bei dem Sondergericht Warschau (State Prosecutor of the Special Court Warsaw) was directly subordinate to the Department of Justice of the General Governor’s Office of the Warsaw District. It conducted investigations in criminal cases and transferred them to the Sondergericht (Special Court). See also: Warsaw under Deutcher Herschaft. The Structure od the Administration of Justice: http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/deutsch/archiv/warschau/wdh09.html.
