Comment: "Witchcraft trials", "witch-hunt" - these are names of a wave of trials against people accused of witchcraft, contacts with devil, fortune telling, doing magic etc., which spread over whole Europe (and sometimes further). It has been estimated that 90% of the accused were women. In the course of trails sophisticated and cruel tortures were being applied. In result an accused person usually admitted to everything he had been accused of. It also happened that they were giving names of other people supposedly involved in the dealings. Most of the trails ended with sentences of death by burning on a pile, beheading - that is if an accused had not died earlier during investigation. Thousands of people fell victim of witch-hunt. The trials became more frequent in the 16th and the 17th centuries, after a papal bull against sorcery was issued by Innocent VIII in 1484 and a book Hammer for witches by two Dominicans - Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger - published in 1486/1487.

Files of witchcraft trails are a result of over nine years of work of a special SS cell, called H-Sonderkommando ("H" for German word "Hexe" - a witch). It was a part of VII Department of General Office of Security of the Reich. The department dealt with archive and historical research aimed at proving superiority of a German race and preserving its purity and independence through reconstruction of an Old-German culture and removing foreign influence. Enemies of the race and the Reich were divided into three groups: enemies of the race (for example Jews), enemies of the nation (for example Poles) and political-ideological (for example the Church, freemasonry, comunists).

H-Sonderkommando's research had therefore three aims:

1. Studies on witchcraft trails and collecting all proofs of its existance. Those materials were to be used by SS commander Heinrich Himmler in encounter with the Church, accused of prosecuting witches who - in Himmler's opinion - had been cultivating Old-German rituals and ceremonies.
2. Search for ancient culture and beliefs in survived files of the trials.
3. Studies on proceedings of investigation, instruments and methods of torture, which could be useful in future activity of SS.

H-Sonderkommando was working in Berlin, on 102 Wilhelmstrasse, since September 1935 to January 1944. A cell was directed by dr Rudolf Levin who was leading a team of eight researches. Their main task was to collect information on persons suspected of witchcraft, on basis of available literature and sources. For each person an index card in size A-4 was prepared. The form was very comprehensive, with 57 fields to fill, but rarely they were all filled. There are questions concerning personal data, a family situation, a kind of crime, a position of the Church authorities, course of a trial and a sentence, a bibliography and archive sources concerning a trial. Completed personal index cards were put into order according to places, During a time of the cell's activity the files consisted of 33846 cards (in 3670 folders, 3622 of which have survived) which contained information on trials since the 9th century to 1940. Most of the folders (3053) concerns Germany but range of H-Sonderkommando's work covered the whole world. In the files there is information on trials in: England, Belgium, Bohemia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Romania, Slovakia, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, even India, Mexico, Transylvania, the United States and Turkey.

Apart from files of witchcraft trials H-Sonderkommando was also collecting extracts from archive materials (120 folders of extracts from German archives), photocopies of materials concerning trials, journals and cuttings from newspapers, illustrations [link do skanu nr 3876] (9 folders of photographic reproductions of different publications, showing witches, instruments and scenes of torture), microfilms, and original archive materials (given also by Himmler or purchased).

During the Second World War a cell was evacuated (together with files of General Office of Security of Reich). The collection was found in 1946 in Slawa Slaska and it was then that the files found their way to Archive in Poznan. (Maciej Zdunek)

External description: Documents 1-3: original, in German, paper, A4; document 4: copy, in German, photocopy size 258 x 186 mm.