Special Courts - Debate

Debate

There is an on-going debate whether the World War II Polish Special Courts were lawful and obeyed the elementary laws. According to the historians working for the Institute of National Remembrance the courts fulfilled the five basic conditions:

1. The courts operated in the name of the Polish State and were subject to both pre-war Polish law and the wartime legislation.
2. The courts penalized mostly the misdeeds included in the pre-war Polish law. Most of the trials were related either to high treason or collaboration.
3. There are no sources that would claim that the Special Courts sentenced anyone without sufficient evidence of guilt.
4. The Special Courts were always trying to reach the lawful verdict. 40% of all the judicial procedures ended up with the defendants found not guilty. 25% of the verdicts were capital punishment, while the rest included lash, infamy, banishment or fines. In many cases, the prosecution was suspended until the final liberation.
5. All of the procedures of the Polish law were obeyed. The only exception to that rule was the case of the so-called preemptive liquidation, when a person known for being a German spy or collaborator had to be executed before he could denunciate the resistance net.

However, some German historians claim that after 1939 Poland did not exist, and the execution of Polish law on German-held territory was therefore against international law. These claims remain controversial, since the annexation of Poland in 1939 was unilateral and acknowledged only by the Axis Powers and the USSR (which later declared its pact with Germany null and void).