Wildstein List
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The Wildstein List is a list which contains the name of some 240,000 individuals who allegedly worked for the communist era Polish intelligence service. Named for the reporter who secretly copied the list from the national archives, Bronislaw Wildstein, the list eventually found its way to the Internet where it quickly became the most searched after item in Poland. At least one Polish official has confirmed the list does contain the names of at least some current agents working abroad.
The list contains 200 000 names from archives of former (communistic) Polish political police, military intelligence and other secret agencies. This list should contain former workers of those agencies and their secret agents (confidants), but also there are names of people that SB wanted to make confidants but never succeeded in this. It is not clear how this list leaked from the IPN (Institute for National Memory), but it is commonly assumed that it was Bronislaw Wildstein who copied that list to his pendrive and then made it available for journalists.
Obviously this list generates much heated debates. Gazeta Wyborcza the most influential Polish newspaper is very strongly against publishing the communistic archives without a thorough historical analysis, because the documents can contain many false information generated by slacking SB officers who needed cover plans. But of course the huge quantity of the information in the archives means that it would never be available for public. It is interesting how Gazeta Wyborcza whose many journalists were active members of the [Solidarity] movement, a true peoples movement, maintains now such a paternalistic position.
The situation now with the list available but no access to the actual documents is the worst for all the innocents on the list. People should have access to all of the documents to defend themselves. It is unrealistic to think that a centralized institute will solve all the problems with those archives.
