Bolesław Sposób's secret messages from the Gestapo detention centre. Past and contemporary affects

The article analyses secret letters written in 1942 by Bolesław Sposób, a member of the independence underground during the German occupation of Poland in World War II, from the Gestapo detention centre in Radzyń Podlaski. The author presents them as a historical and affective source, a testimony to the experience of an individual caught up in the realities of occupation terror. The study combines classic factual analysis with the perspective of the history of emotions and contemporary concepts of cultural memory and affective archiving. As illegal correspondence that evaded censorship, the secret letters reveal the intimate dimension of the prisoner's experiences: concern for loved ones, hope, survival strategies, and emotional ways of maintaining family ties despite isolation. At the same time, they constitute affective material that shapes family and local memory, functioning as a "place of memory" in the home archive. The author reveals their multi-layered communicative nature and significance for research on wartime correspondence, home archives and the affective dimensions of heritage. The notes preserved by the family transcend the boundaries of a historical source, becoming artefacts of memory that connect the experience of the individual with the broader narrative of occupation, resistance and cultural practices of remembrance.