A prisoner recruited to watch fellow inmates and report to SB investigation units.
According to the glossary of the IPN Archival Inventory, reports from TWCs went to the SB's investigation and operational units. TWCs were run by investigation units; they were not registered in the records of the “C” division, and their files were as a rule destroyed once their sentence ended, which makes research difficult today.1
The category had a predecessor in 1944–1956: the so-called cell agent network (agentura celna, AC). According to Jacek Wołoszyn's article in the IPN journal Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość (Memory and Justice), an instruction of February 1945 defined the AC as a secret collaborator recruited in a place of detention; separate instructions on the cell agent network were issued on, among other dates, 20 August 1953 (no. 2/53) and 24 October 1955 (no. 0113/55). In the terminology of the time, the network was divided into informers, agents and residents.2
Sources
- Institute of National Remembrance, IPN archival inventory – Glossary, letter T (in Polish)
- Jacek Wołoszyn, ‘A sharp weapon’ – cell agents. Secret collaborators in prisons and detention centres in 1944–1956, ‘Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość’ 9/2 (16), 2010, pp. 295–337 (in Polish)
Checked: 4 November 2026