POWOJENNE SKŁADNICE PRZEMIESZCZANYCH DÓBR KULTURY W POLSCE. PRZYCZYNEK DO SZERSZEGO OPRACOWANIA1

The article deals with the so-called “conservators” and “museum” repositories set up in Poland within its current borders, after WWII, in the 1940s and 1950s, in order to assemble the movable monuments obtained during the transportation and requisition campaign. It indicates and summarises the information on the geopolitical factors and law provisions which influenced the creation of repositories, although it does not analyse them. It deals with the general description of how the repositories functioned, without detailing the histories of each one. It mentions the duties of the Ministry of Culture and Art’s representatives responsible for protecting cultural property, i.e. delegates for actions related to collecting pieces; it presents the procedures applied by the repositories and the mechanisms for fulfilling the Ministry’s obligation to supervise them. It also describes the activities connected with destroying selected items in the presence of a committee, as well as transferring them free of charge to the state-owned enterprise DESA and to central institutions, churches and collections of Polish museums. The information is based solely on the archival material gathered by the author. The text also describes the later activity of repositories until the present day. It is also a prelude to a broader elaboration of the topic.