Supreme National Tribunal
Encyclopedia
The Supreme National Tribunal was a war crime
tribunal
active in Poland
from 1946 to 1948, with jurisdiction over fascist-hitlerite criminals and traitors to the Polish nation.
The tribunal presided over seven high-profile cases (of 49 individuals total).
occupied Poland in 1939 and carried out many atrocities
. The 1943 Moscow Declaration stated that Germans judged guilty of war crimes would be sent back to the countries where they had committed their crimes and "judged on the spot by the peoples whom they have outraged". Poland, which suffered heavily due to Nazi atrocities, identified over 12,000 criminals it requested to be extradited; eventually about 2,000 German criminals were extradited to Poland (from 1945 onwards, most before 1949).
The Polish Underground State had its own Special Courts
in occupied Poland, which tried and passed sentences on some German war criminals. Polish communist authorities (of the Polish Committee of National Liberation
, PKWN) who did not recognize the Underground State (and in some cases actively persecuted people connected with it) established its own alternative structure, which with the victory of the communist authorities over the Underground State became dominant in post-war Poland. PKWN authorities authorized the establishment of the Special Criminal Courts on 12 September 1944 to try German war criminals. On 22 January 1946, the single-instance Supreme National Tribunal was formed, with a mission to try the main perpetrators of crimes committed by the Third Reich in the occupied Polish territories.
There was no appeal
from the verdicts of the tribunal.
s, four members of jury
, procurators
and defenders.
The best known judge was Emil Stanisław Rappaport
.
The first two of the above trials (of Greiser and Göth) were completed even before the sentence was passed by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg on 30 September 1946.
The Tribunal also declared that the General Government
was a criminal institution.
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
tribunal
Tribunal
A tribunal in the general sense is any person or institution with the authority to judge, adjudicate on, or determine claims or disputes—whether or not it is called a tribunal in its title....
active in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
from 1946 to 1948, with jurisdiction over fascist-hitlerite criminals and traitors to the Polish nation.
The tribunal presided over seven high-profile cases (of 49 individuals total).
Background
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
occupied Poland in 1939 and carried out many atrocities
Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles
In addition to about 2.9 million Polish Jews , about 2.8 million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished during the course of the war...
. The 1943 Moscow Declaration stated that Germans judged guilty of war crimes would be sent back to the countries where they had committed their crimes and "judged on the spot by the peoples whom they have outraged". Poland, which suffered heavily due to Nazi atrocities, identified over 12,000 criminals it requested to be extradited; eventually about 2,000 German criminals were extradited to Poland (from 1945 onwards, most before 1949).
The Polish Underground State had its own Special Courts
Special Courts
Special Courts were the underground courts organized by the Polish Government in Exile during World War II in occupied Poland. The courts determined punishments for the citizens of Poland who were subject to the Polish law before the war.-History:After the Polish Defense War of 1939...
in occupied Poland, which tried and passed sentences on some German war criminals. Polish communist authorities (of the Polish Committee of National Liberation
Polish Committee of National Liberation
The Polish Committee of National Liberation , also known as the Lublin Committee, was a provisional government of Poland, officially proclaimed 21 July 1944 in Chełm under the direction of State National Council in opposition to the Polish government in exile...
, PKWN) who did not recognize the Underground State (and in some cases actively persecuted people connected with it) established its own alternative structure, which with the victory of the communist authorities over the Underground State became dominant in post-war Poland. PKWN authorities authorized the establishment of the Special Criminal Courts on 12 September 1944 to try German war criminals. On 22 January 1946, the single-instance Supreme National Tribunal was formed, with a mission to try the main perpetrators of crimes committed by the Third Reich in the occupied Polish territories.
Jurisdiction and powers
The jurisdiction and powers of the tribunal were defined in Decrees of 22 January and 17 October 1946 and Decree of 11 April 1947. The law applied was a Decree of 31 August 1944, concerning the punishment of fascist-hitlerite criminals guilty of murder and ill-treatment of civilian population and of prisoners of war, and the punishment of traitors to the Polish Nation.There was no appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....
from the verdicts of the tribunal.
Composition of the tribunal
The tribunal had three judgeJudge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
s, four members of jury
Jury
A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to ascertain the guilt, or lack thereof, in a crime. In Anglophone jurisdictions, the verdict may be guilty,...
, procurators
Public procurator
A public procurator is an officer of a state charged with both the investigation and prosecution of crime. The office is a feature of a civil law inquisitorial rather than common law adversarial system of law and is usually found in current or former communist states...
and defenders.
The best known judge was Emil Stanisław Rappaport
Emil Stanisław Rappaport
- External links :* *...
.
Trials
Seven trials were brought before the Supreme National Tribunal in 1946–1948:- The trial of Arthur GreiserArthur GreiserArthur Greiser was a Nazi German politician and SS Obergruppenfuhrer. He was one of the persons primarily responsible for organizing the Holocaust in Poland and numerous other war crimes and crimes against humanity, for which he was tried, convicted and executed by hanging after World War...
, head of the Free City of DanzigFree City of DanzigThe Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig and surrounding areas....
and later, governor of Reichsgau WarthelandReichsgau WarthelandReichsgau Wartheland was a Nazi German Reichsgau formed from Polish territory annexed in 1939. It comprised the Greater Poland and adjacent areas, and only in part matched the area of the similarly named pre-Versailles Prussian province of Posen...
- Trial took place in PoznańPoznanPoznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...
, from 22 June to 7 July 1946. - Sentence: death penalty, carried out
- Trial took place in Poznań
- The trial of Amon GöthAmon GöthAmon Leopold Göth was an Austrian Nazi and the commandant of the Nazi concentration camp at Płaszów, General Government...
, commander of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp- Trial took place in KrakówKrakówKraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
, from 27 August to 5 September 1946. - Sentence: death penalty, carried out
- Trial took place in Kraków
- The trial of Ludwig Fischer, Ludwig Leist, Josef Meisinger, Max Daume, all four high ranking Nazi officials of occupied Warsaw
- Trial took place in WarsawWarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
from 17 December 1946 to 24 February 1947 - Sentences: Fischer, Meisinger, Daume — death penalty, Leist — 8 years, sentences carried out.
- Trial took place in Warsaw
- The trial of Rudolf HössRudolf HößRudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was an SS-Obersturmbannführer , and from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, where it is estimated that more than a million people were murdered...
, one of the commanders of the Auschwitz concentration campAuschwitz concentration campConcentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
- Trial took place in Warsaw from 11 March to 29 March 1947
- Sentence: death penalty, carried out
- The trial of 41 staffAuschwitz trialThe Auschwitz trial began on November 24, 1947, in Kraków, when Polish authorities tried 41 former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camps. The trials ended on December 22, 1947....
of the Auschwitz concentration campAuschwitz concentration campConcentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
(including one of the commanders, Arthur LiebehenschelArthur LiebehenschelArthur Liebehenschel was a commandant at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps during World War II. He was convicted of war crimes after the war and executed.-Biography:...
).- Trial (also known as the First Auschwitz Trial, with the Frankfurt Auschwitz TrialsFrankfurt Auschwitz trialsThe Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, known in German as der Auschwitz-Prozess or der zweite Auschwitz-Prozess, was a series of trials running from December 20, 1963 to August 10, 1965, charging 22 defendants under German penal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower-level officials in the...
known as the Second Auschwitz Trial) took place in Kraków from 24 November to 16 December 1947 - Sentences: 23 death sentences, 17 imprisonments from life sentences to 3 years of imprisonment, one person acquittedAcquittalIn the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
.
- Trial (also known as the First Auschwitz Trial, with the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials
- The trial of Albert ForsterAlbert ForsterAlbert Maria Forster was a Nazi German politician. Under his administration as the Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia during the Second World War, the local non-German population suffered ethnic cleansing, mass murder, and forceful Germanisation...
, governor of Reichsgau Danzig-West PrussiaReichsgau Danzig-West PrussiaThe Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia was a Nazi German province created on 8 October 1939 from the territory of the annexed Free City of Danzig, the annexed Polish province Greater Pomeranian Voivodship , and the Nazi German Regierungsbezirk West Prussia of Gau East Prussia. Before 2 November 1939,...
- Trial took place in GdańskGdanskGdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...
from 5 April – 29 April 1948 - Sentence: death penalty, carried out
- Trial took place in Gdańsk
- The trial of Josef BühlerJosef BühlerJosef Bühler was a Nazi war criminal, secretary and deputy governor to the Nazi-controlled General Government in Kraków during World War II.- Background :...
, state secretary and deputy governor to the General GovernmentGeneral GovernmentThe General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
- Trial took place in Kraków from 17 June – 5 July 1948
- Sentence: death penalty, carried out
The first two of the above trials (of Greiser and Göth) were completed even before the sentence was passed by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg on 30 September 1946.
The Tribunal also declared that the General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
was a criminal institution.
See also
- Commission for the Examination of German Crimes in Poland
- Institute of National RemembranceInstitute of National RemembranceInstitute of National Remembrance — Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation is a Polish government-affiliated research institute with lustration prerogatives and prosecution powers founded by specific legislation. It specialises in the legal and historical sciences and...
Further reading
- Tadeusz Cyprian, Jerzy Sawicki, Siedem procesów przed Najwyższym Trybunałem Narodowym, Poznań 1962
- Various authors. W czterdziestolecie powołania Najwyższego Trybunału Narodowego. Materiały posiedzenia naukowego 20 I 1986 (Forty years after the foundation of the Highest National Tribunal. Papers of a scientific session on Jan 20th 1986), Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Warszawa 1986
- David M. Crowe, The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermath, Westview Press, 2008, ISBN 0813343259, Google Print, pp. 423–425