Minutes of Village Heads' Conferences as a Source for Research on the Role and Significance of Rural Commune Offices in the German Extermination Policy in the Lublin District (1939–1944) – A Microhistorical Approach

The aim of this article is to present the source value of the minutes of the village heads' conferences as a source for research into the role and significance of the offices of rural communes (gminas) in the German Holocaust (extermination) policy in the Lublin District, as well as for research into Polish-Jewish relations in the General Government (GG). The paper discusses the content of minutes from seven communes in the Kreishauptmannschaft Lublin-Land, which, considering the state of preservation of this record legacy on the scale of the whole GG, constitute the best-preserved compact group of this type of files on the scale of this quasi-state organism. The work presents the issue of the communes' participation in the German extermination policy, both directly and indirectly, as well as analyzing their activities aimed at building and sealing a village security system, which was also targeted, albeit not directly, at Jewish ghetto escapees. The article has a microhistorical character, although it reveals in great detail, from the perspective of the lowest level of the German administration, the mechanisms by which the communes, and thus a certain group of Poles, were implicated in the Holocaust of the Jews. The study provides a springboard for further comparative studies on the minutes, which are an important but underestimated source in research on the Second World War.