Dr Tomasz Szczepański Participates in the National Academic Conference “The Wartime and Post-war Fate of Officers of the Polish State Police and the Silesian Voivodeship Police”
On 28 April 2026, the Department of Historical Education of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Police in Warsaw hosted a national academic conference entitled “The Wartime and Post-war Fate of Officers of the Polish State Police and the Silesian Voivodeship Police”. The event was organised by the Department of Historical Education in cooperation with the Institute of Social Sciences at the Faculty of Security and Legal Studies of the Police Academy in Szczytno.
The conference brought together representatives of academia, remembrance institutions, police organisations, and students from police training centres. Over the course of the event, participants heard ten scholarly presentations examining the wartime and post-war experiences of officers of the Polish State Police (Policja Państwowa) and the Silesian Voivodeship Police, covering such topics as the 1939 campaign, internment, service in the Polish Armed Forces in the West, underground resistance activities, and post-war persecution.
Among the speakers were Professor Maciej Franz of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, who discussed the activities of the State Police in Vilnius during the first weeks of September 1939; Krzysztof Drozdowski of the University of Siedlce, who presented research on police officers interned in Hungary and Romania in 1939; and Grażyna Szkonter, President of the Świętokrzyskie “Police Family 1939” Association, who spoke about pre-war police officers serving in the Polish Armed Forces in the West during the Second World War.
Further presentations were delivered by Professor Adam Ostanek of the Police Academy in Szczytno, Professor Piotr Kardela, who examined the post-war fate of Silesian police officers who had served in the Polish Armed Forces and the Home Army during the war, Marek Gajewski of the Institute of National Remembrance in Białystok, who discussed members of the State Security Corps operating in the Białystok region between 1939 and 1956, and Inspector Dr Piotr Uwijała, Chief of Police in Ruda Śląska, whose lecture focused on the lives of former police officers after the end of the Second World War.
Among the conference speakers was Dr Tomasz Szczepański of the Katyn Museum, who delivered a paper devoted to the fate of officers of the Polish State Police murdered in the Soviet Union in 1940. His lecture highlighted the tragic history of these officers—one of the largest professional groups among the victims of the Katyn Massacre—and recalled both their service to the Polish state and the fate that befell them in the spring of 1940.
The discussion sessions also addressed the current state of archival research on officers of the Second Polish Republic, particularly materials held in archives across the post-Soviet region and the challenges of accessing these collections. An important theme of the conference was the role of promoting the history of Polish police formations in shaping civic values and strengthening the professional ethos of today’s police service.
The Katyn Museum was represented at the conference by its Head, Sebastian Karwat, and Dr Tomasz Szczepański.
The conference served not only as a forum for presenting new research, but also as an important lesson in history for the younger generation of police officers, including students from the Police Training Centre in Legionowo, who participated in large numbers. The meeting reaffirmed that remembrance of the service and fate of officers of the Second Polish Republic remains an important element in shaping the identity of the contemporary Polish Police.
