Published: 2024-12-24

An outline of the operations of Sondergericht Warschau (the Warsaw summary court), 1939‒1945

Konrad Graczyk
Zeszyty Prawnicze
Section: Artykuły
https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2024.24.4.02

Abstract

This article outlines the basic facts about Sondergericht Warschau, the German summary court which operated in occupied Warsaw in 1939‒1945. It presents the circumstances of its creation, its local and material jurisdiction and discusses the way German Sondergerichte operated in occupied Poland, the status of their Präsidente (chief judges), and the personal data of their judges, prosecutors and officials. This paper also provides a set of statistics pertaining to the case law handled by Sondergerichte collected in various archives. Many of the records of these courts showing the vast number of death sentences handed down on Jews, were later destroyed, and hence this article gives a preliminary assessment of the operations of Sondergericht Warschau alongside a recommendation that a monographic study should be made of this issue, with particular emphasis on qualitative research on its extant case law.

Keywords:

German Sondergerichte, criminal law, das Generalgouvernment, the part of German-occupied Poland not directly incorporated in the Third Reich, World War II

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Graczyk, K. (2024). An outline of the operations of Sondergericht Warschau (the Warsaw summary court), 1939‒1945. Zeszyty Prawnicze, 24(4), 27–47. https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2024.24.4.02

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