Więzienie karne w Fordonie w polskim i niemieckim systemie penitencjarnym w latach 1920-1956

Abstrakt

The article describes the history of the prison in Fordon in the Polish and German penitentiary systems in the years 1920 - 1956. From its establishment in the mid-19th century to the 1970’s, this penitentiary was a prison for women only. It was an important element in the Polish and German penitentiary systems in the analysed historical periods. The article presents an analysis of functioning of the prison in Fordon in the inter-war 20-year period in the Second Republic of Poland, and during World War Two, when Fordon was functioning as a maximum security prison (Zuchthaus) for women in the German penitentiary system. The article presents also this prison in the Stalinist period, i.e. 1945-1956. The author tried to reconstruct the conditions, in which women prisoners served the custodial sentence in Fordon, describing the condition of buildings, sanitary conditions, medical care, and food. He analysed the behaviour of the prison personnel towards women prisoners. Over so many years, the sentence serving conditions were changing, from very bad in the early 1920’s to quite good in the middle of the 1930’s. Especially the period of War World Two and Stalinism had an influence on their dramatic worsening. They were improved only after 1956. Due to incomplete documentation, the institution’s administrative activity was described only fragmentarily. The majority of personal files of the prison staff are missing. The author analysed selectively also personal files of women prisoners in Fordon. Some of the files of political women prisoners, who served the sentence in the Fordon prison have been preserved in the AAN New Files Archive in Warsaw. However, it is necessary to analyse the preserved files of women prisoners from the period of World War Two. The Stalinist period is also poorly researched, since files of neither criminal or political women prisoners from the years 1945-1956 haven’t been found. Many facts from the prison’s history in the Stalinist period are known only thanks to memories of political women prisoners. In the analysed period, about 4,000 women served the sentence in the Fordon prison. It is necessary to do further research on the history of the Fordon prison, which for 150 years has been an element of the landscape of once a separate town, and now a district of Bydgoszcz