Databases

Archiwum wschodnie (Eastern Archive) was created in 1987 as part of a social and civic movement to reclaim the history of Poland’s kresy (eastern borderlands) in the years leading up to World War II and beyond. The Eastern Archive launched five annual nationwide competitions between 1989 and 1993 in order to encourage eyewitnesses to record their memoirs and turn over to the archive any other private materials they were able to preserve during the intervening years. Most of the materials are memoirs composed during or after the Communist period, but the collections also include correspondence and dozens of diaries written during the Soviet and Nazi occupations, deportations, internments, and eventual repatriations.