Jaworzno Prison Camp 1947 - 1949

In 1995 the State Prosecutor's Office in Katowice, Poland released a document concluding an investigation into activities at the Central Worker's Camp in Jaworzno, Poland (COP Jaworzno). The report contains the names of many individual prisoners, along with sometimes gruesome details of their treatment.

The document, RESOLUTION on the investigation discontinuance (POSTANOWIENIE o umorzeniu śledztwa), dated 8 November 1995, issued by the Investigation Division of the State Prosecutor's Office in Katowice, is an extensive report (86 pages) terminating an investigation detailing "damages" suffered by prisoners of Ukrainian nationality during the period 1947-1949 at the Central Worker's Camp in Jaworzno (Centralny Obóz Pracy w Jaworznie, COP).

Item 1 of the report lists 161 Polish citizens having Ukrainian nationality who were murdered at the camp.

Items 2 - 114 provide a list with a short description of another 113 individuals who were tortured, beaten, injured or otherwise harmed at the camp.

The report then provides a lengthy substantiation (UZASADNIENIE) which details the creation, purpose, personnel and daily operations of the camp, namely, to house prisoners arrested during Akcja Wisła, that is, Ukrainians and members of UPA removed from various villages in southeast Poland.

As best that could be determined by the investigation 182 prisoners died of which 118 were Ukrainians during the period July 1947 - Dec 1947. The document then lists those 161 who died (starting on Page 52), that is, the same individuals named in Item 1.

The substantiation finally concludes with the establishment of the facts associated with the accusations made with regard to each of the 113 individuals who suffered damages.

The report is signed by the Regional Prosecutor, Leszek Goławski.

You can browse pages starting at page 1, page 10, page 20, page 30, page 40, page 50, page 60, page 70, or page 80.

Notes from the Editor

Thanks to Roman Kaluzniacki for writing much of the introduction and to Laura Haduch Skender for proofreading the names on every page.

I first saw the report on another site. That version is all digital images of a paper document. What's here is a text version of those images. The text is computer generated by a useful-but-imperfect process called OCR. Text, even slightly incorrect text, has one big advantage over images, which is that Google can index text.

The document presented on these pages are a product of the Polish government, I am not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that works of the Polish government are under public domain.

As to the remainder (the parts not authored by the Polish goverment), the authors (Philip Semanchuk and Roman Kaluzniacki) waive all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this page and the 87 related pages on this site at semanchuk.com/gen/places/jaworzno/PrisonCamp1947-1949/, thereby placing them in the public domain.