The Archive of the Documentation Office of the II Corps: Tasks and Challenges

Abstract

The article discusses the mission and character of the Documentation Office of the II Corps and the subsequent fates of its legacy. The Office was tasked with recording and archival-research works, as well as political propaganda toward convincing the Anglophone public opinion that the Soviet Russia was a totalitarian regime. The founders of the Office hoped that this would affect the Western allies’ stance toward the issue of Poland’s eastern border to be discussed at a future peace conference. The surveying campaign carried out by the Office was its most significant completed project. The questionnaires and surveys allowed for systematic collection of accounts given by POWs, internees, labor camps prisoners, and persons deported after 17 September 1939 who joined Anders’ Army. The outcome of the project is more than 30,000 reports of different kinds, which are kept at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, USA. They are a compelling record of the fates of Polish citizens confronted with the reality of Soviet occupation and the USSR.