This series contains records created by the Department of Justice in order to carry out its responsibilities regarding war crimes. It also contains the files created by the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals (1985), also known as the Deschênes Commission.
Volumes 3724 -- 3845 contain historical documents (referred to by the prefixes A, C, E and S). Early in the course of its operations, the DOJ War Crimes unit would assign letters to geographic areas, but this practice was not applied consistently and was discontinued. The individual letters assigned to files in these volumes thus have no operational meaning. The Sesame database is necessary to make sense of these files. Historical documents were gathered from archives and were used in case development and litigation. These historical documents are often accompanied by affidavits to confirm their authenticity.
Volumes 3846 -- 3847 contain Polish Corps documents (also referred to as "P" documents) that had been processed through the Public Records Office in England.
Volumes 3848 -- 3917 contain witness statements (also referred to as "W" documents). Witness statements were found in foreign archives or collected directly from individuals such as the victims or witnesses of a crime. These witness statements were often re-transcribed and sometimes translated. Many of them were recorded in diverse audiovisual formats, including audio cassette, CD, VHS or DVD. Some of these recordings were not transcribed in textual format. Nevertheless, they remain a unique documentary source to augment our understanding of certain aspects of conflict.
Volumes 3918 -- 3940 contain witness statements (also referred to as "W" documents). See above.
Volumes 3941 -- 3973 contain "D" documents. These documents comprise investigative material collected from other countries that were also holding parallel war crimes trials. They are organized thematically.
Volumes 3974 -- 3977 contain Witness Statements and Historical Documents (also referred to as "K" documents) related to a particular suspect. When the DOJ attempted to migrate the data related to this particular case-file series to its Sesame database, an error occurred, so a parallel paper-based finding aid was created just for this suspect.
Volumes 3978 -- 4110 contain original documents and original affidavits and certified true copies of documents with accompanying pockets containing affidavits.
Volume 4101 contains miscellaneous witness statements.
Volumes 4111 -- 4203 and 4255 -- 4258, 4270, 4980 contain documents relating to the Deschênes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada. They include transcripts of hearings, exhibits, operational files, case files on suspected war criminals and published reports.
Volumes 4255-4258, 4270 contain subject indexes to the Commission files; these indexes are to function as Finding Aids for the records in Volumes 4111 -- 4203.
