Legal Department of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland

Collection description

Holding institution (official language):: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. E. Ringelbluma

Title (official language):: Wydział Prawny Centralnego Komitetu Żydów w Polsce

Creator/accumulator:: Legal Department of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland

Language:: Polish; Yiddish; German; English; French; Russian; Czech; Italian; Spanish; Castilian; Hungarian

Scope and content:: The collection comprises materials produced by the Legal Department, operating within the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKŻP), from 1945-50, as follows:

Organisational dossier (circulars, minutes and records, correspondence): units 1-19.

Personnel files: units 20-23.

Personal dossier: unit 24.

Financial dossier: unit 25.

Normative acts and deeds, including statutes: units 26-29.

Real estate and other asset- and property-related affairs (correspondence; realty-related materials): units 30 -62.

Real estate and other asset- and property-related cases: private persons (lists of proprietors or their inheritors; correspondence): units 63-93.

Personnel and personal, miscellaneous (document issuance applications; searching of persons; requests for intervention for those who aided Jews during German occupation; correspondence regarding wartime and postwar crimes against Jews; requests for intervention for persons arrested, detained or imprisoned in Poland and the USSR; intervention requests for those willing to repatriate to Poland; correspondence on care and custody of children: units 94-123.

Regional branch files (correspondence on real estate and cemeteries owned by Jewish religious communities/organisations): units 124-192.

Duplicates and copies: units 193-197.

Archival history:: Once the CKŻP was dismantled in 1950, the documentation of its Legal Department unit joined the collection of the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH). The original volume of the archive and the details of initial ordering or rearrangement work and sorting out of the fund are unknown.

Administrative/biographical history:: In February 1945, a Department for Legal Aid and Intervention was set up and soon re-established as the Central Legal Commission, affiliated to the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKŻP), then renamed again as the Legal Department. The unit’s tasks encompassed a number of areas including pronouncing opinions and preparing normative documents, conducting court cases, registering the properties or assets of prewar Jewish religious communities and reclamation of real estate. The department had two autonomous branches: a reclamation department (dissolved in 1948, its documentation taken over by the main department), and the civic court, later renamed the people’s court). The department operated till 1950 and was known in its last days as the Legal Section (Referat) affiliated to the CKŻP.

Subject terms:: Cemeteries; Children; Holocaust; Holocaust--Rescue and resistance; Legal matters; Prisoners; Real estate; War crimes

Finding aids:: A catalogue in Polish was compiled in 2010 and is accessible online.

It includes indices of personal and geographical names.

Author of the description:: Monika Taras; Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. E. Ringelbluma; 2015