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Introduction
Title: Poland. Ministerstwo Informacji i Dokumentacji records
Date (inclusive): 1939-1945
Collection Number: 59008
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material:
Polish
Physical Description:
247 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box, 8 envelopes, 13 microfilm reels, 1 oversize folder
(105.2 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Correspondence, reports, bulletins, memoirs, and photographs, relating to conditions in Poland during World War II, deportation
of Poles to the Soviet Union, the Katyn Forest Massacre, and activities of Polish armed forces and of the Polish Government-in-Exile.
Includes release certificates and reports of several thousand Polish deportees released from the Soviet Union in 1941. A digital
copy of this entire collection is available
here .
Creator:
Poland. Ministerstwo Informacji
Access
A digital copy of this entire collection is available
here . The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
Use
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Poland. Ministerstwo Informacji i Dokumentacji Records, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution
Library & Archives.
Alternative Form Available
Also available on microfilm (279 reels).
Digital copy of collection at Poland's National Digital Archive:
here . It was digitized from microfilm by the Polish State Archives.
Introduction
The origins of the Ministry of Information and Documentation go back to the inception of the Polish government in exile in
October 1939 in Paris. At first it had neither a definite organizational structure nor a name. It was referred to as the Office
(urzad) or Bureau of Information and Documentation. By April 1940, the unit was named Center of Information and Documentation, and
in September 1940 the Center was reorganized into the Ministry of Information and Documentation, a designation it carried
for the remainder of the war and in the years that followed.
During the early months of its existence the office, comprised of information and documentation sections, was headed by Deputy
Prime Minister Stanislaw Stronski, who was directly in charge of its documentation section. The information section was headed
by Minister Marian Seyda. Stanislaw Stronski was in charge of the Ministry of Information and Documentation until March 1943,
when his position was taken over by Stanislaw Kot, who headed the Ministry in the cabinet of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, until
the resignation of that government in November 1944. Kot's successor was Adam Pragier, who was Minister of Information and
Documentation until 1949.
The Ministry of Information and Documentation was the main information and propaganda unit of the Polish government in exile.
It coordinated and facilitated the dissemination of information in support of the Polish war effort through its publishing
and radio programs. The Ministry also documented and analyzed the conditions and developments in occupied Poland. One of its
units, for example, the Research Section headed by Wiktor Sukiennicki, was assigned the task of systematically reviewing and
summarizing the testimonies of former Polish prisoners and deportees to Soviet Russia, with a view to document the entry of
the Red Army into Poland, the first weeks of Soviet occupation, the October 1939 "elections", and the consequent sovietization
of the occupied territories. Thousands of original Soviet camp release certificates, statements of survivors, and detailed
summaries of Soviet occupation compiled by the Research Section for every county of Eastern Poland, make up about forty percent
of the volume of the Ministry's collection.
Most of the archives of the Ministry of Information and Documentation, together with those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
were moved from London to Dublin at the end of the war, and remained in storage for more than a decade. In 1959, in keeping
with the agreement reached between the Hoover Institution and Aleksander Zawisza, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Polish
government in exile, the archives were shipped to their new home at Stanford.
The collection of the Ministry of Information and Documentation in the Hoover Institution Library & Archives occupies about
31 linear meters. A smaller portion of the Ministry's archives, 3.6 linear meters, is preserved in the Polish Institute and
Sikorski Museum in London. Two Hoover collections in large measure complement the archives of the Ministry of Information.
One of these is the Wladyslaw Anders Collection, consisting mostly of over 18,000 statements and reports of former Polish
prisoners and deportees to Soviet Russia. The other collection is that of the Polish Government Information Center (Polskie
Rzadowe Centrum Informacyjne), the New York agency of the Ministry of Information and Documentation.
Preliminary processing of the collection was provided in the 1980s by the late Helena Sworakowska. Detailed processing and
preservation microfilming were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1997 and
by matching funds from the Taube Family Foundation.
In addition, the grant provides depositing a microfilm copy of these materials in the State Archives of Poland in Warsaw
Maciej Siekierski
November 1998
Subjects and Indexing Terms
World War, 1939-1945 -- Deportations from Poland
Poland -- History -- Occupation, 1939-1945
World War, 1939-1945 -- Diplomatic history
World War, 1939-1945 -- Poland
Katyn Massacre, Katynʹ, Russia, 1940
World War, 1939-1945 -- Governments in exile
Poland. Polskie Siły Zbrojne. Armia Polska w ZSSR.