INDEX OF THE REPRESSED
'Index of the Repressed' is the only polish research programme comprehensively documenting fates of Polish citizens oppressed in the Eastern Borderlands during the Soviet occupation of Poland and in the Soviet Union in the years 1939-56.
The programme begun in January 1988, initiated by people related to the Karta Centre. Personal surveys of the oppressed, originally collected by the Eastern Archive, together with archival source materials allowed to build the "Index" database. This database (available only in the KARTA Centre) now contains about 946 000 biograms. There is more than the estimated number of oppressed. For each piece of information is put into the database separately so a person may appear several times.
The access to postsoviet archival materials, obtained after 1991 by the "Memorial" Association in Russia, allowed to systematically categorise repressions and take up the "Index" comprehensive research and statistical verification. The purpose of the programme, implemented in close cooperation with the "Memorial", was to develop within the various categories complete, verified personal records, in which data from Soviet sources are compiled with the Polish sources.
Information about the oppressed verified using this research method is available in a series of volumes of "Index of the Repressed". Published biograms contain basic personal data, information on the form of repression in the USSR and the signature of archival sources, in which a record about a particular person had existed. Since September 2001 these biograms have been available on the website - Internet Center "Index of the Repressed" (ICIR). Database withover 261 600 records can be found online. It includs biograms of the two original, unverified statements namely “Ukrainian list” and a list of cases kept by the authorities of the western Ukraine NKWD and Belarus, which is a reliable list of people who were arrested and against whom investigations were led during the Soviet occupation 1939-41).
Moreover since 2008 the "Index of the Repressed" programme has been carrying out verification of information about individuals or particular groups of people. Biograms of the best documented records will be published on the internet database, coming not from the archival lists, but obtained from reliable sources collected during twenty years of "Index of the Repressed" activity. These include "Index" surveys, a certificates obtained through the "Memorial" Association, the materials copied by the Military Commission Archive, the documentation of the Union of Polish Patriots, the Office of Information and Search of Red Cross, the Executive Board of the Sybir Association etc.
We would like to data located in the Internet Data Centre "Index of the Repressed” to be an informative service in commemoration of Poles and Polish citizens of the II Polish Republic, repressed by the USSR state authorities.
The effectiveness of the programme is possible through the cooperation of many groups and institutions in Poland and abroad such a "Memorial" Association in Russia, Centre for Research on Genocide and Resistance Residents of Lithuania in Vilnius, the "Pokajanije in the Komi Republic, The Information and Tracing Bureau of the Polish Red Cross, the Office for Veterans and Oppressed, Sybir Association, The Central Military Archive, Central Archives of Modern Records and other state archives and combatant organizations.
The programme operates thanks to the financial support of the Foundation for Polish Science, the Institute of National Remembrance and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (formerly the State Committee for Scientific Research).
In the years 1988-2008 the activity of the programme was also sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of National Defence, the Ministry of Justice, the National Endowment for Democracy (United States), Polonia Aid Foundation Trust (London), the Office for Veterans and Repressed.
In 1997-99 the programme was under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice. Since 2002, the documenting and research work of the "Index of the Repressed" has been under patronage of the Institute of National Remembrance.
The Karta Foundation is leading an investigation into personal documentation of the repressed by the USSR.
At the same time the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation is working on a documentation of the casualties and victims of repression durnig the German occupation.