Court Grodzki in Warsaw, file Zg.1946 Sąd Grodzki w Warszawie, akta Zg.1946 (Sygn. 655)

This collection contains selected files, so-called “Zg.” of the Sąd Grodzki w Warszawie, i.e. contains cases of establishing somebody as deceased or issuing a death certificate. Cases apply to those who had perished (99 per cent of cases) during the Soviet or, mainly, Nazi occupation: who were arrested either by the Soviets or Germans, deported to the USSR or the Third Reich, sent to concentration camps, or murdered in ghettos or places of extermination. The files (app. 5-20 pages) contain an application for establishing that someone had died, testimonies of two witnesses on standard forms, related correspondence, and the sentence of the court. The law determined who could be declared as deceased ( Article 14, section 1): “Those who perished while participating in military operations can be declared/found dead after a year from the end of the calendar year in which the military operations had ceased. The same refers to individuals who had perished while remaining in the area during military operations if, according to the circumstances, it was likely that this was connected with these operations or under life threatening conditions.”

The system of arrangement of the source repository has been preserved in digital images. Arranged chronologically by years 1946-1956. The inventory to the collection contains the following data: Call No, last name, first name (the title of a file), remarks of various kind, names of the parents of other relatives, the year and place of birth of the person in question, the year and place of death, the last whereabouts of the deceased, occupation, circumstances of the death, personal data of the witnesses.