In 1934, Zygmunt Lakocinski came to Lund where he married and began to work as a professor of the Polish language at Lund University. Lakocinski wanted to defend his country when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. However, Polish authorities had other plans for him.

Along with several other Polish professors in Sweden, his duty was to collect as much information as possible about the war and Germany’s crimes in the occupied Poland and Europe. They monitored newspapers and broadcastings, and they contacted persons who had succeeded in escaping the Nazis. German propaganda printed before World War II was also collected. The focal point of the collection was in Lund where a library and archive were established which Zygmunt Lakocinski was in charge of. The information was shared with the Polish exile government and the allies. At critical moments, Lakocinski and his collaborators feared that the material would come into the hand of the Nazis as there were German friendly groups in Lund. On several occasions, he took the collection to his summerhouse in Småland where he thought it would be more secure.