Title: Wladyslaw Anders Collection,

Date (inclusive): 1939-1946

Collection Number: 46004

Creator: Anders, Wladyslaw, 1892-1970

Collection Size: 92 manuscript boxes, 17 card file boxes, 1 oversize box (44 linear feet)

Repository: Hoover Institution Archives

Abstract: Orders, reports, card files, questionnaires, accounts, Soviet government documents and publications, photographs, microfiche, and printed matter, relating to World War II, the Polish Armed Forces in Russia, the Polish 2d Corps in Italy, Polish citizens arrested and deported under German and Soviet occupation, Polish foreign relations, the Polish government-in-exile in London, and Polish Jews. A digital copy of this entire collection is available at http://szukajwarchiwach.pl/800/1/0/-/ .

Physical Location: Hoover Institution Archives

Language: Polish.

Collection is open for research.

For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives.

Also available on microfilm (130 reels).

Digital copy in Poland's National Digital Archive at http://szukajwarchiwach.pl/800/1/0/-/ . It was digitized from microfilm by the Polish State Archives.

[Identification of item], Wladyslaw Anders collection, [Box number], Hoover Institution Archives.

The Wladyslaw Anders Collection is the core of the 1946 archival deposit to the Hoover Institution made by General Wladyslaw Anders, the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces. The collection is composed mostly of the archives of the Documents Bureau of the 2nd Polish Corps. The Bureau was established by General Anders in April 1943 to collect documentation on the 1939-1941 Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, and the fate of the hundreds of thousands of Polish prisoners of war, labor camp inmates, and deportees, as well as to prepare materials in support of the Polish cause for the future peace conference.

The collection contains over 18,000 original personal accounts and questionnaires of former prisoners and deportees, some documents dating back to 1941, most completed later, shortly after the 1942 evacuation from the Soviet Union. The materials were once filed in one sequence numbered 1 to 18,304. Later the file was broken into two sections, one labeled as "Relacje" and the other as "Ankiety", translated loosely as "Statements" and "Reports" in the present Hoover register, but with the old numeration retained. The highest number of the "Reports" file is 15,714, and the highest number in the "Satements" file is 18,304. The "Statements" and the "Reports" files are complementary, with numbers which are lacking in one file found in the other. The documents have an alphabetical card index, occupying the first 34 boxes of the Anders Collection, comprised of over 18,000 cards, listing the name, brief biographical data, and the corresponding personal account or questionnaire number. The 18,000 plus documents contained in the next 33 boxes of the Anders Collection (boxes 35-68) represent a variety of formats. Two questionnaires, one shorter, page-long ten point form, and the second, a four-page questionnaire, were commonly used. There were also specialized questionnaires -for the clergy, for Jews, one about working conditions, etc. Some less typical materials, such as general situation reports, regional compilations, and memoirs, are also numbered with "Reports" and the "Statements". The personal accounts and questionnaires of the Anders Collection have a detailed subject index with about 250 entries on cards (boxes 89-92). There is also a card index (boxes 93-107) of several thousand names of people who died in prisons and labor camps or who were probably left behind after the 1942 evacuation to Iran. Additionally, the index includes the names of suspected collaborators and of Soviet camp and prison personnel. Besides the original accounts and questionnaires and the card indexes, the Anders Collection includes a large number of internal documents and reports collected or produced by the Documents Bureau (boxes 68-81). Finally, the Anders Collection is supplemented by materials generated by a 1951-1952 U.S. Government study of Soviet labor camps. During that time, with the permission of General Anders, the entire Anders Collection and some files of the Poland-Ambasada (Soviet Union) Collection, were loaned to the Library of Congress. In exchange, the Hoover Institution received copies of the resulting works -nearly 1,300 English language abstracts of the personal accounts from the Anders Collection (boxes 81-87), card indexes on the geography and terminology of the Soviet camp system (boxes 108-109), and a final report of the study.

Two other Hoover Institution collections include original depositions of Polish soldiers and civilians, former prisoners and deportees in the Soviet Union. These are the Poland-Ministerstwo Informacji i Dokumentacji Collection, and the Poland-Ambasada (Soviet Union) Collection. Most of the holdings of the Documents Bureau were filmed in 1945-1946 in Italy, before the transfer of the archives to the Hoover Institution. These microfilms are now part of the Col. Wincenty Bakiewicz Collection in the Archives of the Polish Institute and the Sikorski Museum in London. The personal papers of General Anders are also at the Polish Institute.

Maciej Siekierski

June 1998