Jan Sehn. Poland’s forgotten Nazi hunter

Jan Sehn (1909-1965) was a Polish lawyer and professor at the Jagiellonian University. Shortly after the war, he conducted research at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and also participated in preparing accusations against several dozen German war criminals who had worked at the camp. Additionally, he published a number of scientific papers on the functioning…


Operation Kutschera

On 1 February 1944, the Polish resistance carried out the assassination of Franz Kutschera, known as ‘the executioner of Warsaw’. The assassination of this SS officer and police commander in the Warsaw District of the General Government was one of the most spectacular operations in the history of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), because never…



An image of genocide

14 June 1940 the first mass transport to the German Concentration Camp in Auschwitz took place. The vast majority of the 728 men were Polish political prisoners. Overall, the group consisted of members of the resistance movement; social and political activists arrested under AB Aktion, Catholic clergy, and a small group of Jews. Every one…


“Genocide as a Crime under International Law”

Rafał Lemkin (1900–59) was an outstanding criminal law expert of Polonised-Jewish descent. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the John Casimir University (Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza) in Lwów. He contributed to the codification of the Polish penal law, and analysed criminal legislations of the totalitarian regimes of Italy and Soviet Russia. In 1933, he…


General Stanisław Maczek and His Soldiers

Krakowskie Przedmieście Street next to Zamkowy Square in Warsaw is now a venue for a unique open-air exhibition prepared by the Polish History Museum in cooperation with the General Maczek Museum in the Dutch city of Breda. After the Polish capital, where it can be viewed until 28 September, the trilingual exhibition (presented in Polish,…