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The article is devoted to the fate of the orthodox church in Poland in the period when the country was under foreign occupation. There are presented the changes that took place in the life of the church and the policy of occupation authority towards clergy and the faithful. The church organisation in war curcumstances is showed. The author also discusses the acticity of Polish government in exile in the defence of Polish orthodox church.
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Review of: Wojciech Wichert - Ostpreußens Kriegsbeute. Der Regierungsbezirk Zichenau 1939–1945. Hrsg. von Christhardt Henschel. (Einzelveröffentlichungen des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Warschau, Bd. 42.) 416 S., 22 Ill., Kt. ISBN 978-3-944870-75-5. (€ 58,–.)
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Review of: Frauke Wetzel - Christian Kuchler: Lernort Auschwitz. Geschichte und Rezeption schulischer Gedenkstättenfahrten 1980–2019. Wallstein. Göttingen 2021. 275 S. ISBN 978-3-8353-3897-5. (€ 26,–.)
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The author considers a set of military propaganda measures taken by Soviet troops to seize the territories of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Regular units of the USSR Armed Forces which were united in a specially created Southern Front, whose troops were concentrated on the border with Romania, were used to achieve this goal.On June 28, 1940, Soviet troops crossed the Dniester and entered Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Romanian units were ordered to withdraw in an organized manner. The Red Army exceeded the agreed rate of evacuation of Romanian troops, violated the line of demarcation, which led to local incidents. There were cases of disarmament of Romanian soldiers. There were armed clashes, a result of which were loses of both sides, including killed. In turn, the Red Army also felt hostility, encountering minefields, anti-tank barriers, trenches, mined or dismantled railways and bridges. Both Soviet and Romanian military units took certain military-administrative measures against the civilian population, which had different motives and forms of manifestation. The low level of morale of the retreating Romanian army led to the disintegration of entire military units, whose soldiers dropped their weapons and fled home. At the same time, there were serious violations of military discipline among the Red Army, for which the soldiers were punished, including the death penalty.Immediately after the Red Army entered Bessarabia and the Northern part of Bukovina, a huge Soviet propaganda machine began to operate. A large number of newspapers and special literature were distributed among the population and soldiers; and posters and slogans were hung in the streets and houses. Politicians of the Red Army organized rallies and demonstrations to awaken in the souls of the Bessarabians and Bukovinians “love for the liberators and a sense of confidence in the Soviet authority”. The annexation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina by the Soviet Union in June – July, 1940 can be considered a well-thought-out and carefully prepared political-diplomatic and military-propaganda campaign. These territories were occupied by the Red Army according to all the rules of military art (all components of the military operation were used: military force, local military pressure, military intelligence, propaganda and propaganda service), thanks to which the USSR achieved its goal.
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This article focuses on the compensation claims submitted in the summer of 1970 by survivors from Argeș County, Romania. Three categories of claims are analyzed, filed respectively by Roma, Jews, and “political prisoners”. The main question the article asks is to what extent and under which conditions this collection of compensation claims can be used to understand the Holocaust in Romania. As the primary purpose of the claims was to get West German compensation, not to provide historical information (which was presented and filtered accordingly, both by the claimants and by the Romanian authorities), the conclusion is that the collection can only prove useful if seen in this specific context and approached with caution.
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In 1922, in Romania, fascist youth organizations began to undertake actions of intimidation and annihilation of Jews and of those accused of supporting them, through the use of physical and verbal violence, manifestations that continued and radicalized year after year. Sports and sports venues were among the spaces where Romanian antisemitism seemed tobe allowed to manifest itself unhindered. The systemic spread of the antisemitic ideology led to an increase of such occurrences. As of the 1930s, the foundations of the anti-Jewish legislation continued by the Antonescu regime were laid, and the war of the far-right groups against Jews and Judaism was total and concerned all aspects of life, including sports. Step by step, athletes and officials of Jewish origin were excluded from this field, meaning that the Maccabi association, as well as other Jewish sport teams, were banned from all official competitions of the Romanian State. this situation lasted four years, until the end of the Antonescu regime. Jewish associations were categorized by the police and military authorities as a cover for communist activity. In Romania, just like in other countries, persecution and discrimination of Jews continued after the end of World War II, given that stadiums in Bucharest and in the province witnessed reprehensible deeds against Jewish soccer players and sports clubs, done by the other athletes and especially by the audiences. In this article, I will present several such cases in detail, in order to show a lesser known side of Romanian antisemitism before and after the Second World War.
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This article examines the life story of Felicia Carmelly, a Holocaust survivor from southern Bukovina, and follows her geographic and demographic journey from Dorna to the deadly camps of Transnistria, to postwar Romania and Israel, and finally to contemporary Canada. By close reading of her two oral interviews and her later memoirs, it reconstructs a particular biography shaped by the violent uprooting of Felicia and her family from the places she called home and discusses multiple shifts in her identity and a changing sense of belonging. Her life offers us a window into the broader questions about Jewish survivors and migrants after World War II, the inherent contradictions surrounding the evolution of modern Jewish identities, and the (non)negotiable boundaries of individuals in various circumstances.
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The article offers an analysis of Svetlana Alexievich’s Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II as a history of war from a child’s perspective. Giving the voice to those whose childhood fell on wartime and occupation is a step towards discovering children’s wartime experience as well as a gesture against its ideologisation and politicisation. The protagonists’ memories assembled in the reportage allow us to recreate the children’s point of view about the aforementioned events, which usually remains omitted from the official historical discourse shaped in the USSR.
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Reviews of: 1. Francis Fukuyama, Sfârșitul istoriei și ultimul om, traducere de Mihaela Eftimiu, Editura Paideia, București, 1994. 2. Ștefan Bellu, Pădurea răzvrătită - Mărturii ale rezistenței anticomuniste, Editura Gutinul, Baia Mare, 1993. 3. Alexandr Zinoviev, Homo Sovieticus, traducere de Andi Ștefănescu, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1991. 4. Alain Besançon, Anatomia unui spectru. Economia politică a socialismului real, traducere de Mona Antohi și Sorin Antohi , Editura Humanitas, București, 1992 . 5. Ghiță lonescu, Investigarea comparativă a politicii comuniste, traducere de Radu Paraschivescu, Editura Humanitas, București, 1992. 6. Ghiță lonescu și Isabel de Madariaga, Opoziția. Trecutul și prezentul unei instituții politice, traducere de Valeriu Mihăilă, Editura Humanitas, București, 1992. 7. Alain Besançon, Originile intelectuale ale leninismului, traducere de Lucreția Văcar, Editura Humanitas, București, 1993. 8. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Marele eșec. Nașterea și moartea comunismului în secolul douăzeci, traducere de Marius Jucan, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1993. 9. Friedrich Hayek, Drumul către servitute, traducere de Eugen B. Marian, Editura Humanitas, București, 1993. 10. Karl Raimund Popper, Societatea deschisă și dușmanii ei. vol. I Vraja lui Platon, vol. II Epoca marilor profeții: Hegel și Marx, traducere de Dragan Stoianovici, Editura Humanitas, București, 1993. 11. Françoise Thom, Limba de lemn, traducere de Mona Antohi, Editura Humanitas, București, 1993. 12. Hannah Arendt, Originile totalitarismului, traducere de Ion Dur și Mircea Ivănescu, Editura Humanitas, București, 1994. 13. François Châtelet și Éveline Pisier, Concepțiile politice ale secolului XX, traducere de Mircea Boari și Cristian Preda, Editura Humanitas, București, 1994. 14. Virgil Ierunca, Fenomenul Pitești, Editura Humanitas, București, 1991. 15. Ion Ioanid, închisoarea noastră cea de toate zilele, vol. l, 1949, 1952-1954, Editura Albatros, București, 1991. 16. Nicolae Mărgineanul, Amfiteatre și închisori (Mărturii asupra unui veac zbuciumat), Ediție îngrijită și studiu introductiv de Voicu Lăscuș, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1991. 17. Oana Orlea, ia-ți boarfele și mișcă, Interviu realizat de Mariana Marin, în Franța - iulie 1990, Editura Cartea Românească, București, 1991. 18. Marcel Petrișor, Memorii, I, Fortul 13. Convorbiri din detenție, Editura Meridiane, București, 1991. 19. N. Steinhardt, Jurnalul fericirii, Notă asupra ediției și Postfață de Virgil Ciomoș, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1991. 20. Andrei Șerbulescu. The Dialectic Law Monarchy. The Second Version of Zither's Memoirs, Humanitas, București, 1991. 21. închisoarea din Sighet acuză, Omagiu de Prof. dr. Valeriu Achim, Editura Gutinul, Baia Mare, 1991. 22. Constantin Cesianu, Salvat din infern, traducere din limba franceză de Maria Alexe, Editura Humanitas, București, 1992. 23. Nistor Chioreanu, Morminte vii, Ediție îngrijită, Prefață și Note de Marius Cristian, Institutul European lași, lași,1992. 24. Andrei Ciurunga, Memorii optimiste. Evocări și versuri din închisori, editura Fundației Culturale Române, București, 1992. 25. Lena Constante, Evadarea tăcută. 3000 de zile singură în închisorile din România, în versiunea românească a autoarei, Editura Humanitas, București, 1992.
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Theoretically grounded in memory studies, this article reconstructs how the official Soviet-Russian myth of the Great Patriotic War has been politically instrumentalized and abused to promote and legitimize the Kremlin’s power intentions. It examines the forms, mechanisms and actors of this systematically applied politics of history and memory. First in the context of the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the justification of the subsequent Soviet Army’s stay in the country, then in the context of the propaganda activities of (pro-)Russian activists in the Czech Republic and the current Russian aggression against Ukraine. By the myth of the Great Patriotic War, the author understands the purposefully created, maintained and idealized image of the victorious campaign of the Red Army between 1941 and 1945, the selfless and unprecedented Soviet heroism that saved European nations from German fascism. This sacralized narrative, which suppresses other historical narratives, is monopolized in contemporary Russian state policy as an important tool to shape the historical memory of Russian society and to unite it against new and presumably hostile threats. The author demonstrates the strategy in which during the normalization of the 1970s and 1980s the soldiers of the Soviet Army, who allegedly provided “fraternal assistance” in the suppression of the counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia in August 1968, were presented as the successors and “sons” of the heroic liberators of 1945 and shows how they themselves used and participated in this cult in their “comradeship” with Czech society. After the collapse of the communist regime, this official narrative lost its weight, but the “Russian world” (russkii mir) as a conglomerate of ideas linking segments of Russian culture, Orthodoxy, nationalism and shared historical memory has penetrated the Czech Republic, serving as a “marketing brand” to spread Russia’s geopolitical influence during Putin’s rule. Through the Russian-language press, web platforms and social media, the author maps the actors and forms of the “Russian world” in the Czech Republic, whose background consists of part of the local Russian minority and local pro-Russian associations or initiatives. She pays particular attention to the nationalist motorcycle club Night Wolves (Nochnye volki) and the originally civic, but gradually becoming a state movement Immortal Regiment (Bessmertnyi polk), which revive and promote the myth of the Great Patriotic War in line with the Kremlin’s intentions and which establish their branches beyond the borders of Russia, including the Czech Republic.
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Bartłomiej Szyprowski took part in the polemic around the monograph: Oscar Szerkus, Die Sondergerichtsbarkeit des Polnischen Untergrundstaates (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2019.)
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BÁRTA, Milan (ed.): Člověk v soukolí StB. Praha,Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů 2020, 318 s., ISBN 978-80-88292-72-2; BRASÓ, Broggi Carles: Los médicos errantes: De las Brigadas Internacionales y la revolución china a la guerra fría. Barcelona, Editorial Crítica 2022, 419 s., ISBN 978-84-9199-375-9; TEIGE, Karel: Deníky 1912–1925. Eds. Jan Wiendl a Tereza Sudzinová. Praha, Filip Tomáš – Akropolis – Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy – Památník národního písemnictví 2022, 792 s., ISBN 978-80-7470-416-1, 978-80-7671-037-5 a 978-80-87376-84-3; VYHLÍDAL, Milan: Vojenští zpravodajci proti nacistické okupaci: Odbojová skupina Tři konšelé. Praha, Academia 2022, 332 s., ISBN 978-80-200-3274-4; ZUDOVÁ-LEŠKOVÁ, Zlatica a kol.: Židia v Slovenskom národnom povstaní / Židé v Slovenském národním povstání. Banská Bystrica – Praha, Múzeum SNP – Historický ústav AV ČR, v. v. i., 2021, 368 s., ISBN 978-80-89514-97-7 a 978-80-7286-384-6.
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In her monograph "Zpřetrhané životy: Československé ženy v nacistickém koncentračním táboře Ravensbrück v letech 1939–1945" [Broken Lives: Czechoslovak Women in the Nazi Concentration Camp of Ravensbrück, 1939–1945], Pavla Plachá focuses on the fate of women imprisoned in this camp who were citizens of the Czechoslovak Republic before 1 October 1938. This framework allows her to comprehensively and at the same time diversely examine women from diverse ethnic, social, cultural and territorial backgrounds: from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, from the Czech borderlands occupied by the Germans after the Munich dictatorship, from the wartime Slovak Republic, and from the areas rewarded to Hungary after the First Vienna Arbitration. In the first part, Plachá traces the transformations of memorial culture in relation to Ravensbrück in different periods of post-war Czechoslovakia – which was selectively shaped according to the interests of the communist regime – focusing her research on the then overlooked groups of imprisoned women. In the second part, she presents the history of the Ravensbrück camp and various aspects of the status and camp life of the imprisoned women, not avoiding sensitive topics such as sexualized violence, homosexual relations and prostitution, pregnancy and abortion, and the violence and conflicts in the immediate aftermath of liberation. In the central third part, she categorizes and systematically examines Czechoslovak women in Ravensbrück, separately singling out groups of political convicts, the “anti-social and criminal”, Jews, Roma and Sinti, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. She enriches the collective analysis with dense biographies of selected women prisoners. The reviewer evaluates the monograph asa significant “Czechoslovak” contribution to international research on the history of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, cultures of memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust, as well as gender studies.
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The biography of Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria has been repeatedly examined. Often, the focus is placed on his years as Prince and Tsar of Bulgaria. At the same time, the period after 1918, during which he spent a significant portion of his time in Coburg, the ancestral home of his family from Saxony-Coburg and Gotha, has received little attention in research. The present essay delves into these years of exile and explores the development of Ferdinand from the autumn of 1918 until he died in 1948. It presents the former Tsar of Bulgaria as a “private individual”, describing his everyday life away from grand politics and portraying him as a patron, supporter, and scholar. Finally, the essay discusses Ferdinand’s role during National Socialism, contextualizing it against the backdrop of the development of his Coburg homeland and his relationships with Jewish individuals.
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Saul or Shaul Yeroham Mezan is a doctor with specialization in surgery and urology, Doctor of Medicine, officer, public figure, Zionist, anti-fascist, publicist, journalist, poet, historian, and folklorist – researcher of Sephardism, political scientist and current political analyst. He was born in the city of Tatar-Pazardjik (today Pazardjik, Bulgaria) in 1893, and died far from his homeland, as a victim of Nazism, probably around 1943. Nowadays his name is known to a few researchers, as the predominant writings about him and his work are episodic in time and fragmentary in their subject matter. His literary and journalistic works, as well as his socio-political views, remain almost unknown to the general public, including, unfortunately, to the Jewish community in Bulgaria. The objective of the paper is the French-speaking environment in which S. Mezan was formed, and his works in French in various fields of the knowledge, which prevail over the ones in Bulgarian both in quantity and in terms of scientific and social significance. The author also pays special attention to the numerous yet scattered references for the French influence on the language, the way of life and the culture of the Sephardim in Bulgaria in the book by S. Mezan dedicated to them.
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1. Zweigstellen des Konzentrationslagers Gross-Rosen in den Leinenwebereien der Gegend von Trutnov während der Nazi Besetzung 2. The Exhibition “Folk Art in the Collections of the State Jewish Museum“ 3. Das Faksimile des Grabsteines von Avigdor Kara
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