Ministerstvo spravedlnosti, Praha

The legal basis of the Ministry of Justice was provided by Act No.2/1918 Coll. of 2 November 2018, it became the central office of the state administration for judicial affairs in the Czechoslovak Republic. All the affairs of the courts, prosecutors' offices, guardianship, depositary and criminal offices were subject to its competence. The Ministry supervised the execution of sentences in penitentiary institutions and cooperated in the proclamation of amnesties. It also constituted the highest authority for the exercise of press supervision. The organisation of the Ministry was relatively stable, with a presidium at the head from the beginning and, alongside it, legislative, judicial and penal departments and, for a time, a prison department. The departments were divided into about 20 divisions. During the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the scope of the ministry was severely limited; in addition to the autonomous administration of justice and the judiciary, there was also the Reich German judiciary, which was subordinate to the Reich Ministry of Justice. After the war, the ministry resumed its pre-war practice and organisation. Translated with DeepL.com (free version) The writings arising from the activities of the highest instance of the judicial administration provide much valuable material, especially on political history since 1918. In general, the writings of the Fonds reflect the tensions between different social groups and the activities of political parties. Particularly valuable are collective international conventions, legal documents on the Jewish question between 1939 and 1945, on the implementation of economic and file separation with Slovakia, Germany and Hungary, documents on the post-war removal of Germans or on the search for war criminals.