Perpetrators’ Self-Portrait

Abstract

The article is a fragment of a more comprehensive study and at the same time a continuation of the subject originated in the article “The Participation of Poles in Crimes against Jews in the Świętokrzyski” (Yad Vashem Studies, 2007, No 35). By the thorough analysis of the files of several dozen trials that had taken place in the courts of Kielce during the 1940s and 1950s, I am looking for the answers for the questions focused on such issues as specific and diverse circumstances in which the crimes emerged (direct reasons and situational conditions), perpetrators (their profile based on such criteria as position/function, age, marital status, education, financial and social status, etc.), witnesses (both of the defendant and the plaintiff), and defense (the analysis of the defense strategies and arguments used during the investigation and the main trial, as well as the pleas for parole and other letters applied to defend the accused people). Special emphasis is going to be laid on the final issue—defense strategies of the perpetrators—which should enable the reconstruction of the then and, probably, still unchanged, attitude of the villagers of central Poland toward the crimes committed there and their victims.