NAJWYŻSZY TRYBUNAŁ NARODOWY A OSĄDZENIE SPRAWCÓW ZBRODNI POPEŁNIONYCH PODCZAS TŁUMIENIA POWSTANIA WARSZAWSKIEGO – NIEWYKORZYSTANY INSTRUMENT

Abstract

The Supreme National Tribunal, which operated in Poland between 1946 and 1948, tried 49 Hitlerite criminals who had committed crimes against Poland and Poles during World War II. It was tasked not only with bringing individual perpetrators to justice but also with publicizing these matters to the world. It was in effect the Polish equivalent of the Nuremberg Tribunal. However, the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, including the Wola Massacre (Wola Slaughter), was not covered by these trials, even though initially The Tribunal planned to try Germans responsible for the crimes committed during the Uprising. In practice. these crimes were carefully omitted from the seven trials conducted by the Tribunal. Even when the high officials of the occupation administration in Warsaw were tried, the period of the Warsaw Uprising was not, as a rule, the subject were subsequently tried by the Polish common courts. The fact is that the then Polish authorities were not keen to publicize the martyrdom of those who had taken part in the Warsaw Uprising because this would have inevitably led to questions as to why USSR military forces did not come to the aid of the Warsaw residents being murdered by the Germans and also to what was happening to the Polish Home Army soldiers who had fought vigorously at that time and who, after the war, were subject to persecution by the new authorities installed in Poland by the Soviet Union. The Tribunal, whose task was to judge the perpetrators of the most significant German crimes, ceased its activities without even considering what was probably the largest single massacre of civilians in Europe during World War II, and the largest single act of extermination in the history of the Polish Nation: the Wola Massacre.