Chronicles of Terror (Polish: Zapisy Terroru) is a digital internet archive established by the Witold Pilecki Center for Totalitarian Studies [pl] in August 2016.
Initially, it provided access to the depositions of Polish citizens who after World War II were interviewed as witnesses before the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland.
[3][4] On 25 January 2017 the Witold Pilecki Center for Totalitarian Studies signed an agreement with the Hoover Institution, pursuant to which Chronicles of Terror would be supplemented by depositions relating to Communist crimes, taken from the archives of Anders' Army.
[5][6] After World War II, documents containing the accounts of Poles, both soldiers and civilians who left the Soviet Union together with the Polish Army, were deposited with the Hoover Library, for it was feared that they could have been seized by the Communist authorities.
The Chronicles of Terror archive also has in its possession a dozen or so depositions made by former inmates of Pawiak, including those of its female ward, the so-called Serbia.
The website also presents depositions made by Karol Cugowski, Józef Górski and Lucjan Majchrzak, who survived the mass executions carried out in Grójecka Street despite having suffered gunshot wounds.
The murders and rapes committed in the Zieleniak have been referred to, among others, in the account of Kazimierz Sucharzewski, who was forced by the executioners to assist in the burning of the bodies of victims, and that of an officer of the Home Army, Fryderyk Korsak-Bartonezz.
Amongst them is the testimony of Janina Rozińska, who was wounded by a grenade during the mass execution carried out at the Tramcar Depot in Młynarska Street, and of Wiesława Chełmińska, who, despite being shot, survived the series of murders perpetrated in St. Lazarus' Hospital.
In turn, the account of Wanda Lurie (who was eight months pregnant at the time) relates to the execution conducted in the Ursus Factory at Wolska Street 55, during which she lost three children and herself received a number of injuries.
Among others, they portray the mass executions held in the Open-air Kindergarten at Bagatela Street, in the ruins of the pavilion of the General Inspectorate of the Armed Forces and in Anc's Pharmacy, and also the events that took place in the Gestapo building at Szucha Avenue.
They provide graphic descriptions of the brutal interrogation methods used by the NKVD, the conditions existing in Soviet prisons and camps, and the back-breaking labor which the detainees were forced to perform.
Their accounts provide a description of life in the camps, of interrogation techniques, and the methods used by the NKVD to turn prisoners into informers, and also present the tools of Communist propaganda applied against Polish POWs.