“The Punishing Arm of Justice” – Prosecutors of the So-called Summary Courts of the Bialystok Judicial District

Abstract

From February to the end of June 1946, the so-called summary courts operated in the Bialystok voivodeship. They ruled under the auspices of the Summary Cases Division of the District Court in Bialystok. During the period in question, they tried 191 people in 104 cases and handed down 100 death sentences. Five military officers formally seconded to common courts acted as public prosecutors in these cases. These were: Major Czesław Łapiński, Captain Alfons Lisewski, Major Antoni Mamroth, 2nd Lieutenant Jerzy Kopyciński and Captain Jan Gutkowski. Although most of them (four) had pre-war legal training, none had the prosecutorial experience. However, before becoming prosecutors in the Bialystok summary department, they had already served in the military prosecutor’s office as assistant prosecutors after the war. After the end of the assignment, all of them, except Lisewski, remained in the structures of the military justice system. Kopyciński, who was the only one who did not have any legal education and did not complete it, he was only an investigating officer until the end of his work in the military prosecutor’s office (until 1952).