back...Circumstances of the acquittal of Eugenia Pol

On 14 January 1949, there was a trial before the regional court in Łódź acquitting the Pohl family (Jan, his wife, Janina, and their children, Mieczysław and Eugenia, the ill-famed guard at the camp at Przemysłowa Street in Łódź, the German concentration camp for Polish children), accused of signing the Volksliste during World War II. The legal basis for the proceedings was the decree of 28 June 1946, On the criminal liability for renouncing nationality during the 1939–1945 war, which was the last of the principal legislative acts by which the communist authorities tried to regulate this issue.

The trial was a routine procedure, and only the witnesses designated by the family were allowed to testify. Their testimony decided in the favour of the Pohl family because they provided plenty of evidence of the family’s allegedly pro-Polish attitude (intercession on behalf of Poles with the German authorities, hiding people and safeguarding their belongings, etc.). During the testimonies, it was also said that the family had signed the Volksliste for fear of intimidation and repression (the father of the family, Jan Pohl, was Silesian and, for this reason, was regarded by the administration of the occupant as a Polonised German), but these statements were mostly made by the accused, who went so far as to mention the threat of physical elimination. It should be noted that the witnesses focused mainly on Jan Pohl (which was reflected in the attitude of the prosecutor, who motioned to convict the remaining victims of the family, leaving it for the court to determine the guilt of Jan), and at least some of them were personally related to the family (Bronisława Gromek was even a relative of Janina – a fact both of them kept secret).

During the proceedings, it did not come to light that Eugenia Pohl, who concealed this fact, had worked at the camp at Przemysłowa Street as a guard. However, it is telling that she was unable to provide specific arguments to prove her decent behaviour during the occupation. Her explanations and the content of the rehabilitation request she had submitted earlier were fairly laconic. The latter document, however, contained a statement that sounded downright grotesque in the context of her behaviour at the camp: “I am Polish, and I have not betrayed the Polish nation in thought or act”. The testimonies in favour of the family as a whole, however, were sufficient for her acquittal.

Interestingly, the name of Eugenia Pohl (usually referred to as Genowefa Pohl) also came up in the files of an investigation concerning the camp at Przemysłowa Street that was conducted at the same time by examining judge Sabina Krzyżanowska. However, she was unable to determine the place of stay of Pohl, and no action was taken against her at that time.

Also, the records of the labour camp in Sikawa and the prisons in Łęczyca and at Kopernika Street in Łódź of that time include information about prisoners with the name Eugenia Pohl who were imprisoned there because they had signed the Volksliste. However, their personal details indicate that the coincidence was purely accidental.

The issue of the rehabilitation trial was brought up again during the trial that went on in the 1970s concerning the activities of Eugenia Pohl (who was using that version of her name at that time) at the camp, both in the explanations given by her and in the testimonies of two witnesses who had already made statements during the proceedings in the 1940s. The explanations of the former guard indicate that the main reasons why the family signed the Volksliste included the fear of losing their property, even though this topic had never come up during the rehabilitation trial. The witnesses essentially repeated their story from many years earlier, swearing they knew nothing about Eugenia’s work at the camp at that time except having a vague notion of her working “with children”.