"Today, we present our own finding, never-before seen memorabilia of Eilert Dieken. The very one who decided the death of the Ulma family" - the head of the Pilecki Institute Wojciech Koz艂owski said. On Wednesday, the institute presented the archive of Eilert Dieken - a German military police lieutenant who had been in charge of a unit responsible for killing the Ulma family and eight Jews they had been sheltering.
The Eilert Dieken archive was presented on Wednesday, March 24, which was the National Day of Remembrance of Poles Saving Jews under German occupation. The date marks the anniversary of a 1944 massacre of the Ulma family (J贸zef and Weronika and their six young children) and eight Jews they had been sheltering.
Today, we present our own finding, never-before seen memorabilia of Eilert Dieken. The very one who decided the death of the Ulma family" - the head of the Pilecki Institute Wojciech Koz艂owski said. He stressed that identifying war criminals was, first and foremost, a question of symbolic justice.
"Let's not forget that for a vast majority of Poles, especially in rural areas, German terror was completely anonymous, with the uniform being the only distinctive feature. The perpetrators wore German uniforms, but their identity was unknown. So nowadays, since the Germans did not prosecute their criminals, what we and the families have left is to individually seek those who had perpetrated the crimes" - Mr Koz艂owski added.
According to the Pilecki Institute, the documents from Dieken's private archive purchased in Berlin "shed a new light on the history of the Ulma family, and in wider perspective - on Poles persecuted by Germans for helping Jews - by updating it with the story of perpetrators: where they were from, who they were, and what happened to them after the war".
The Dieken archive includes, among other things, documentation of his career in German police - from the Weimar Republic, through the Third Reich, up to the Federal Republic of Germany - distinctions he received from the state, as well as a collection of photographs from his service and private life.
The Pilecki Institute director also said the Dieken archive has been purchased for 14,000 EUR from a collector in Germany.
The Pilecki Institute has been established to facilitate the interdisciplinary and international analysis of issues and developments that were of key importance for the political history of the 20th century, namely the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes and the global consequences of their actions.
殴r贸d艂o:聽TVN24 News in English, Pilecki Institute, PAP