Supreme National Tribunal

Its aims and purpose were defined by the State National Council in decrees of 22 January and 17 October 1946 and 11 April 1947.

[4] The Polish Underground State had its own Special Courts in occupied Poland, which tried and passed sentences on some German war criminals.

Communist Polish authorities (of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, PKWN) who did not recognize the Underground State (and in some cases actively persecuted people connected with it) established its own alternative structure, which with the victory of the communist authorities over the Underground State became dominant in post-war Poland.

On 22 January 1946, the single-instance Supreme National Tribunal was formed, with a mission to try the main perpetrators of crimes committed by the Third Reich in the occupied Polish territories.

The law applied was a decree of 31 August 1944 "concerning the punishment of fascist-Hitlerite criminals guilty of murder and ill-treatment of civilian population and of prisoners of war, and the punishment of traitors to the Polish Nation.