National Bureau of Information and Search

From 1919 to 1921, the Information Bureau was involved in collecting information about the victims of national liberation uprisings in the lands of Poland and communicating information to prisoners of war. It also participated in preparing the reception at the border of Polish political prisoners arriving from the USSR and searched for their families and documents.

In 1934, a large publication titled "List of Losses of the Polish Army - Fallen and Deceased in the Years 1918-1920" was released.

With the outbreak of World War II, the Bureau immediately began intensified work. Contact was established with military authorities and hospitals. Efforts were made to record the fallen, injured, sick, and missing; information was gathered from military units. Even in the first days of the war, hundreds of people reported seeking their loved ones, and lists with the names of those about whom any information had been obtained were posted. Numerous deposits were secured. In this way, a personal registry was created, serving as the basis for conducting searches.

On September 23, 1939, the headquarters of the Information and Search Bureau was bombed. Employees, putting their lives at risk, tried to secure the surviving part of the documents and reconstruct information from charred scraps of paper. Names were also recorded from gravestones, which were increasingly appearing on the streets, squares, and courtyards. Employees of the Polish Red Cross (PCK) and volunteers—mostly youth—delivered information to families at their homes. This was a very difficult and dangerous task, as people were increasingly changing their place of residence, often sheltering in basements. Interviews were conducted with residents, search cards from PCK were left, and notices were posted on buildings. Information and Search Sections began to emerge around PCK branches in various cities across Poland. Information was registered from various sources—parish offices, municipal offices, city cleaning services, and private individuals. It was often recorded on scraps of paper or bits of fabric. The PCK registered prisoners of war in most transit camps and facilitated the delivery of letters from families.

Since December 1939, PCK Delegations began their activities in several countries. Among other things, they conducted searches for Polish citizens, both military and civilian, and compiled registers of prisoners of war held in camps, which they managed to reach with humanitarian aid. 

The Information and Search Bureau in Warsaw was also in constant contact with the Central Agency for Search of the International Red Cross Committee in Geneva and the National Societies of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. Thousands of inquiries about searches were sent, and numerous pieces of information regarding individuals who had been deported and interned were received. In this way, a new registry of the Bureau was created. 

After the discovery in 1943 of mass graves of Polish officers murdered in Katyn, a 12-member Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross was established, which participated in the exhumations from April 15 to June 7, 1943. Thanks to the work of the Commission and based on the numerous deposits found with the bodies, a list of 2,805 names was compiled in 1944 by the Delegation of the Polish Red Cross in Geneva. For a long time, it was the only basis for issuing certificates to the families of the murdered.

On August 2, 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, the Bureau of Information and Search was set on fire by an SS unit. At that time, the hard-earned card index of over one and a half million records burned down, along with about 14,000 deposits and thousands of valuable documents that could never be recovered. The losses were once again being recorded, deposits were being collected and described, and situational plans for graves were being prepared with a view to future exhumations. PCK hospitals were being established, books with the names of the sick, injured, and deceased were being compiled, and families were informed whenever possible. On October 21, 1944, the staff, along with all the accumulated materials, had to leave Warsaw. Branch offices of the Bureau were opened in many locations. Information reached families about those evacuated from Warsaw.

After the war, the most urgent issue was the search for children taken for Germanization. To carry out the Germanization campaign, the Germans established special institutions, the largest of which was "Lebensborn." Its tasks included placing children in foster families of German nationality, special facilities, and issuing false birth certificates. Determining the exact number was nearly impossible, particularly regarding children born to Polish forced laborers employed in Germany and taken from them immediately after birth. Documents and information from various sources suggest that the number of Polish children subjected to the Germanization campaign can be estimated at around 200,000. All teams of the Polish Red Cross at Polish repatriation missions, and subsequently the PCK delegation in Germany, were tasked with searching for children and handling matters related to their reclamation. In Poland, provincial and district PCK branches were instructed to collect materials concerning children missing during the occupation and taken to Germany for Germanization. The PCK Information and Search Bureau in Warsaw systematically sent lists of sought-after children, containing detailed personal data and circumstances of the child's removal, to the PCK Delegations in Germany. 

The Polish Red Cross was involved in receiving humanitarian transports. From June 5, 1946, to January 31, 1948, the Silesian-Dąbrowski District PCK in Katowice received transport of children arriving from Germany and Austria via PCK sanitary trains. Several tens of thousands returned to the country, while the rest live in various countries, unaware of their origins. 

Another very important task was the exhumation of bodies, conducted with the involvement of PCK clerks, throughout the entire country. In some areas, exhumations were carried out by city and district authorities. The documentation prepared was sent to the Bureau. Warsaw was one big cemetery. The prepared protocols and discovered deposits were immediately registered.

Based on the deposits, thousands of individuals were identified and information was passed on to their families. Accounts of individuals reporting to the Bureau, witnesses of mass executions, were also collected and recorded. Information about the graves of foreigners who died and fell on Polish territory was also received and forwarded to the Search Offices of the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. 

After the war, the Bureau took over the files of PCK Delegations operating abroad, national PCK branches, materials received from allied military authorities, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and many documents from various institutions that deemed them useful in search work. 

From 1950 to 1956, the Bureau's activities were limited. As a result of the repatriation action of Polish citizens from the territory of the USSR that began in 1956, there was a significant increase in inquiries regarding searches. Radio and the press were used in the work, and in the country and abroad, the PCK Information Bulletin was published, containing the names of those being searched for. It was possible to reunite thousands of families. 

The Katyn issue remained a very important and, at the same time, painful chapter in the history of the Bureau's work. 

After receiving photocopies of the lists of Polish prisoners held in camps in Kozielsk, Ostaszków, and Starobielsk from the Russian and Ukrainian authorities in the 1990s, as well as the so-called Ukrainian List, the documents were registered and constitute a separate file. Based on this, the Bureau issued over 10 thousand certificates to the families. In the 1990s, representatives of the Polish Red Cross participated in exhumations in Katyn, Kharkiv, and Mednoye. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, thousands of people resumed the search for their relatives who had been taken deep into the USSR. In the ongoing cases, we receive responses confirming arrests by the NKVD, detention in labor camps, execution of sentences, and rehabilitation. Unfortunately, in most cases, there is a lack of information about the burial places of the victims. 

In presenting the work on documenting the fates of the victims of World War II, it is also worth mentioning the ongoing campaign for former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps who were subjected to pseudomedical experiments. In 1960, as a result of years of efforts by the Polish side, the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany decided to grant a one-time financial aid to the surviving victims of pseudomedical experiments carried out in former Nazi concentration camps. Due to the lack of diplomatic relations between Poland and the FRG, this aid was obtained through the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. The Polish Red Cross was authorized to represent the interests of Polish victims before the ICRC. The Information Bureau gathered all the documentation and submitted it for consideration by the neutral ICRC commission, until the establishment in 1972 of the Office of the Minister of Health and Social Welfare's Plenipotentiary for financial aid for the victims of pseudomedical experiments, which took over these matters. 

At the turn of the 1990s and the 2000s, in connection with the payment of cash benefits by the German Federal Government to individuals harmed by the Third Reich, the Information Office issued thousands of certificates confirming the wartime fates of repressed individuals. 

Throughout this time, the Office has been issuing certificates related to World War II, conducting searches, determining the fates of individuals missing as a result of it, as well as those from contemporary armed conflicts and migration.