History as a carrier of mass memory
The oldest carrier of human memory is the layers of the earth that have preserved the first traces of human activities and creations. According to one of the three basic principles of stratigraphy, i.e. the principle of superposition, which geologists and archaeologists use to date a series of undisturbed earth layers in a geological profile, younger layers rest on older ones. It coincides with the principle of historical chronology that is also evident in studying the past and its traces in written sources. For 21 years, the Institute of National Remembrance has been documenting evidence of 20th-century history, recorded on paper and partially digitised. The New Technology Division established in September 2021 is to integrate its scientific, educational and publishing offer in digital technology, namely to preserve the memory of our history using the latest technologies.
Memory recorded not only in DNA
The memory of the past may be stored in various ways – in protein molecules (engrams) of grey cells of our cerebral cortex, in books, in documentation stored in archival resources, on hard disks (HDD) and solid-state disks (SSD) of computers, in the computing cloud or on portable data carriers (flash drives, DVDs, Blu-ray discs and external SATA discs). If we were to compare the Institute of National Remembrance to computer parts, taking into account the three types of memory storing data, the Archive would perform such functions as hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD) responsible for external memory, and the remaining units of the IPN would be the processor as they process and make its resources available to users.
Human memory can be short-lived
The IPN Archive collects, records, stores, processes, preserves, and makes available in paper and partially digitised form documents of crimes from 1917 to 1990 and documents relating to events and the fate of the Polish Nation in the years 1939-1990. In 2021, the IPN archival resources reached the volume of 92931.31 linear metres, while the recording resources currently include 11061.12 linear metres of files and other recording materials (as of the end of 2021 for the whole country).
The IPN is also a web portal with thematic pages and materials available to start your adventure with the 20th century and recent history. We recommend the Archive Full of Memories because historians engaged in historical research work not only on written sources but also on eyewitness accounts and information obtained from objects kept by people, most frequently as family heirlooms.
The Archive Full of Memories:
https://edukacja.ipn.gov.pl/edu/multimedia-1/portale-edukacyjne/94044,Archiwum-Pelne-Pamieci.html
If you would like to get to know the results of historical research in the form of scientific publications and delve deeper into history, we invite you to familiarise yourself with the project Bibliography of Polish History, carried out by the Institute of National Remembrance in cooperation with the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences and available here: