The Supreme National Tribunal (; NTN) was a war-crime

tribunal A tribunal, generally, is any person or institution with authority to judge, adjudicate on, or determine claims or disputes—whether or not it is called a tribunal in its title. For example, an advocate who appears before a court with a singl ...

active in communist-era Poland from 1946 to 1948. Its aims and purpose were defined by the

State National Council Krajowa Rada Narodowa in Polish language, Polish (translated as State National Council or Homeland National Council, abbreviated to KRN) was a parliament-like political body created during the later stages of World War II in Nazi Germany, German- ...

in decrees of 22 January and 17 October 1946 and 11 April 1947. The new law was based on an earlier decree of 31 August 1944 issued by the new Soviet-imposed Polish regime, with jurisdiction over "

fascist Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...

- Hitlerite criminals and traitors to the Polish nation".United Nations War Crimes Commission, ''Law reports of trials of war criminals: United Nations War Crimes Commission'', Wm. S. Hein Publishing, 1997,
Google Print, p.18
/ref> The Tribunal presided over seven high-profile cases involving a total of 49 individuals.

WIEM Encyklopedia WIEM Encyklopedia (full name in - "Great Interactive Multimedia Encyclopedia"; in Polish, ''wiem'' also means 'I know') is a Polish Internet encyclopedia. The encyclopedia was based on the first printed edition was released in mid-1990s (with Vo ...

, Accessed on 22 September 2008

Background

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

occupied Poland ' (Norwegian language, Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV 2 (Norway), TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. ...

in 1939 and carried out many atrocities. The 1943 Moscow Declaration stated that Germans judged guilty of

war crimes A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hos ...

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 In an extradition, one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, into the custody of the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdic ...

; eventually about 2,000 German criminals were extradited to Poland (from 1945 onwards, most before 1949).Janusz Gumkowski, Tadeusz Kołakowski, ''Zbrodniarze hitlerowscy przed Najwyższym Trybunałem Narodowym'', Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, Warszawa, 1965, Introduction to (''przedmowa'') The

Polish Underground State The Polish Underground State (, also known as the Polish Secret State) was a single political and military entity formed by the union of resistance organizations in occupied Poland that were loyal to the Government of the Republic of Poland ...

had its own Special Courts in

, which tried and passed sentences on some German war criminals. Communist Polish authorities (of the

Polish Committee of National Liberation The Polish Committee of National Liberation ( Polish: ''Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego'', ''PKWN''), also known as the Lublin Committee, was an executive governing authority established by the Soviet-backed communists in Poland at the la ...

, 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. Andrzej Rzepliński,
Prosecution of Nazi Crimes in Poland in 1939-2004
'

Institute of National Remembrance The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (, abbreviated IPN) is a Polish state research institute in charge of education and archives which also includes two public prosecutio ...

Jurisdiction and powers

The jurisdiction and powers of the Tribunal were defined in decrees of 22 January and 17 October 1946 and a 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 In law, an appeal is the process in which Legal case, cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of cla ...

from the Tribunal's verdicts.

Composition of the tribunal

The tribunal had three

judge A judge is a person who wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...

s, four members of the

jury A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence, make Question of fact, findings of fact, and render an impartiality, impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a sentence (law), penalty or Judgmen ...

, procurators and defenders. The best known judge was Emil Stanisław Rappaport.

Trials

Seven trials were brought before the Supreme National Tribunal in 1946–1948: # The trial of

Arthur Greiser Arthur Karl Greiser (22 January 1897 – 21 July 1946) was a German Nazi Party politician, SS-''Obergruppenführer'', ''Gauleiter'' and ''Reichsstatthalter'' (Reich Governor) of the German-occupied territory of ''Wartheland''. He was one of the ...

, head of the

Free City of Danzig The Free City of Danzig (; ) was a city-state under the protection and oversight of the League of Nations between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) and nearly 200 other small localities in the surrou ...

and later, governor of

Reichsgau Wartheland The Reichsgau Wartheland (initially Reichsgau Posen, also Warthegau) was a Nazi Germany, Nazi German ''Reichsgau'' formed from parts of Second Polish Republic, Polish territory Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, annexed in 1939 during World War ...

#: Trial took place in

Poznań Poznań ( ) is a city on the Warta, River Warta in west Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business center and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John's ...

, from 22 June to 7 July 1946. #: Sentence: Death, executed # The trial of

Amon Göth Amon Leopold Göth (; 11 December 1908 – 13 September 1946) was an Austrian SS functionary and war criminal. He served as the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland for most of th ...

, commander of the

Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp Płaszów () or Kraków-Płaszów was a Nazi concentration camp operated by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków, in the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland. Most of the prisoners were Polish Jews who were targeted f ...

#: Trial took place in

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

, from 27 August to 5 September 1946. #: Sentence: Death, executed # The trial of Ludwig Fischer, Ludwig Leist, Josef Meisinger, Max Daume, all four high-ranking Nazi officials of occupied Warsaw #: Trial took place in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

from 17 December 1946 to 24 February 1947 #: Sentences: Fischer, Meisinger, Daume — Death, executed, Leist — 8 years # The trial of

Rudolf Höss Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; ; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, he w ...

, one of the commanders of the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...

#: Trial took place in Warsaw from 11 March to 29 March 1947 #: Sentence: Death, executed # The trial of 40 staff of the

(including one of the commanders, Arthur Liebehenschel). #: Trial (also known as the First Auschwitz Trial, with the

Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German language, German as , was a series of three trials running from 20 December 1963 to 14 June 1968, charging 25 defendants under German criminal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower- ...

known as the Second Auschwitz Trial) took place in Kraków from 24 November to 16 December 1947 #: Sentences: 23 death sentences (21 executed), 16 imprisonments from

life sentence Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life imprisonment are c ...

s to 3 years of imprisonment, one person (

Hans Münch Hans Wilhelm Münch (14 May 1911 – 6 December 2001), also known as The Good Man of Auschwitz, was a German Nazi Party member who worked as an SS physician during World War II at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1943 to 1945 in German oc ...

)

acquitted In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal means that the criminal prosecution has failed to prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the charge presented. It certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an o ...

for humane behavior and enabling the survival of numerous patients. # The trial of Albert Forster, governor of

Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia () was an Reichsgau, administrative division of Nazi Germany created on 8 October 1939 from annexed territory of the Free City of Danzig, the Greater Pomeranian Voivodship (Polish Corridor), and the Marienwerder (regi ...

#: Trial took place in

Gdańsk Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, Data for territorial unit 2261000. it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdań ...

from 5 April – 29 April 1948 #: Sentence: Death, executed # The trial of Josef Bühler, state secretary and deputy governor to the

General Government The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...

#: Trial took place in Kraków from 17 June – 5 July 1948 #: Sentence: Death, executed The first two of the above trials (of Greiser and Göth) were completed before the sentence was passed by the

International Military Tribunal International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...

Nuremberg Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...

on 30 September 1946. The Tribunal also declared that the

was a criminal institution.

References

External links

"Chronicles of Terror" testimony database - materials used by Supreme National Tribunal in trials from 1946-1948
{{Authority control 1946 establishments in Poland 1946 in Poland 1947 in Poland 1948 in Poland 1948 disestablishments in Poland 1940s trials Holocaust trials Trials in Poland

Background

Jurisdiction and powers

Composition of the tribunal

Trials

See also

References

Further reading

External links