O. Teodor Sąsała SVD (1888–1940) - sługa słowa Bożego. W setną rocznicę święceń kapłańskich

Author(s): Tymoteusz Morela / Language(s): Polish Issue: _/2014

This year (2014) will see the 100th anniversary of the ordination to priesthood of Father Teodor Sąsała. He was born on November 7, 1888 in Sczepanowitz in Opole, as the son of Andrzej and Joanna, born Gabriel. On April 21, 1903, he entered the Society of the Divine Word, and began his studies at the Catholic secondary school in Neisse. He spent his years of study in St. Gabriel in Mödling in Austria. His Order vows he laid on September 3, 1914. at the mission of the Holy Cross in Neisse, where he received his ordination also on 8 September of the same year. In 1927 he was transferred to the mission house of St. Joseph in Gorna Grupa where he worked as a lecturer in French language from 1929 and acted as the confessor of the friars, dedicated himself to household items and was the assistant of the Provincial. On October 28, 1939, Father Teodor Sąsała was intervened together with other members of the Society of the Divine Word in Gorna Grupa and on February 5, 1940 he was promoted to the concentration camp at Stutthof, later to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After only five days in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp he fainted during the exercises. Sustained by his friends, he died on 16 April 1940 on the way to the infirmary of the concentration camp

A holokauszt a világ emlékezetének gyújtópontjában

Author(s): Aleida Assmann / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2015

Der Prager Film in der Zeit der Okkupation 1939 -1945

Author(s): Peter Demetz / Language(s): German Issue: 30/2005

Die Historiker sind sich seit langem darüber einig, dass der Nationalsozialismus antiquarische Ideen wie die Rassentheorie des 19. Jahrhunderts effizient mit modernster Technologie - Filmindustrie, Flugzeugbau, Autobahnen - zu verbinden imstande war. Die Rollen waren allerdings ungleich verteilt, vor allem im: Film. Während Hitler, zumindest bis 1939, ein begeisterter Kinofan war (er liebte Hollywoods Viva Villa! aber auch Weiss-Ferdls Die beiden Seehunde, beide aus dem Jahr 1934), hatte Goebbels erkannt, welche politische Bedeutung dem Film als Instrument der Manipulation zukam. Bereits am 26. April 1933 kündigte er gegenüber den Berliner UF A-Teams die Gleichschaltung des deutschen Films an, die bald darauf durch das Reichskulturkammergesetz vom 29. September 1933 institutionalisiert wurde. Goebbels war der Überzeugung, dass Deutschland den Ersten Weltkrieg verloren hatte, weil dem verdrossenen, hungrigen Volk in den Jahren 1917-1918 der Wille zum Widerstand fehlte, und er war entschlossen, alles zu tun, damit sich dies nicht wiederholte ( 48 % aller Nazifilme waren Komödien, nur 14 % reine Propaganda, ganz zu schweigen von Goebbels relativ laxer Einstellung zum Jazz).

World War II in Baltic and Nordic social media

Author(s): Kari ALENIUS / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

The paper focuses on the Wikipedia web pages of seven countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The aim is to analyze what kinds of similarities and differences there are in the image of World War II, and why. This qualitative analysis uses key elements of historical source criticism; in addition, comparative method and quantitative analysis are used. In comparing the Wikipedia web pages of these seven countries, no single narrative of the war can be found. National emphases are clearly apparent and they distinguish all the examined web pages from each other. Through text, images and maps, the webpage of each country highlights aspects related to the situation of the country during the war, emphasizing their importance to the war as a whole. The text of each country also shows an understanding towards the choices made by the country and accordingly, the perspectives of those that were on the other side of the war are ignored. In this sense, these Wikipedia pages could be considered as constructs of a nationalistically tinged identity and positive self-image. On the other hand, it should be noted that in spite of clear national emphases, these linguistically different web pages also have a lot in common, and there are no extreme national interpretations or sharp judgements that take a strong position on a right-wrong axis.

Med zgodovinopisjem in državljansko zavestjo

Author(s): Carlo Spartaco Capogreco / Language(s): Slovenian Issue: 2/2014

After the end of World War II the story of concentration camps, set up by the Kingdom of Italy and Italian Social Republic between 1940 and 1945, almost disappeared from the collective memory of the Italian nation. The author shows in the article difficult path to the historiographic reconstruction of the fascist »concentration system« took place, the topography of the camps was established, and they were recognised by the national community. Also for this reason — in light of the institutional suppression and disregard by the official historiography — the first research projects and rediscovery of the camps ’geographic locations were mostly carried out by researchers who focused on this issue due to their favourable personal emotional inclination towards this problem. The purpose of the article is especially to discern the reasons for the long silence and outline the main historiographic and civil turning points, through which the story about the camps gradually became a part of the general sentiment of the Italians in the middle of the 1980s and in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, and was finally recognised by the academic and institutional circles as well.

Pogledi zahodnih zaveznikov na nasilje v Jugoslaviji med drugo svetovno vojno

Author(s): Gorazd Bajc / Language(s): Slovenian Issue: 1/2013

The article focuses on the individual attitudes of the British and Americans towards certain forms of violence in Yugoslavia during World War II, caused by the occupiers and »local« opponents. On the basis of the analysis of primary sources from the British and American archives it explores how their intelligence services managed to follow the developments and why the Western Allies were interested in the violence and all its perpetrators. The author hypothesises that the British and Americans were interested in registering as many violent incidents as possible, while they focused mostly on the cases directly involving their soldiers or mission members.

Avstrijski in britanski varnostni organi in njihov odnos do koroških Slovencev v prvih letih po drugi svetovni vojni

Author(s): Avguštin Malle / Language(s): Slovenian Issue: 1/2013

Immediately after the liberation Carinthian Slovenians – especially those in favour of the annexation of the Carinthian territory inhabited by Slovenians or with mixed population to the homeland – faced various forms of repression carried out by the British military government and Austrian security bodies, subordinate to the British. They mostly suffered due to the general ban on public meetings, prohibition of their own press, and systematic protraction of the restoration of pre-war political, cultural and economic organisations and societies. The authorities delayed the restoration of the Union of Carinthian Cooperatives until as late as February 1949, causing extensive material damage to the Carinthian Slovenians. The number of cooperative members fell to 10% of pre-war membership. Due to activities in the interest of the Slovenian nation, the officials and activists of the Provincial Committee of the Liberation Front for Slovenian Carinthia, its subcommittees and other organisations established during anti-fascist resistance were tried at military courts. A large number of youth activists received many months of prison sentences, the gatherings were subject to physical attacks, and even individual Slovenian priests were not safe from repression. The authorities refused to issue passports to certain individuals, thus preventing Slovenian officials from stating their demands at international conferences. Security bodies often sought Slovenian periodicals and literature and searched intensively for the collection of texts entitled Koroški zbornik, published in Ljubljana in 1946. All criticism of the measures taken by the occupying forces was forbidden. Of the British officers only Gerald Sharp exhibited a more positive attitude towards Carinthian Slovenians, while many of them have bad memories of the military judge lieutenant colonel Cohen. After the decision reached in Paris on 20 June 1949 that the Austrian-Yugoslav border is to remain unchanged, the repression gradually subsided.

Im Schatten der Macht. Zu den Memoiren eines SS-Generals.

Author(s): Alfred Kellner / Language(s): German Issue: 133/1959

review of: ------------------ Walter Schellenberg, Memoiren, Köln 1959, (London 1956)

Bei Hitler zu Tisch

Author(s): Hannah Arendt / Language(s): German Issue: 037/1951

Contribution by Hannah Arendt to the debate concerning the publication in post-war-West-Germany of: Henry Picker, „Hitlers Tischgespräche“. Geordnet, eingeleitet und veröffentlicht von Gerhard Ritter, Athenäum- Verlag, Bonn

DIPLOMATIE AUF SCHIEFER BAHN: 3. Der Fall Polen

Author(s): Joachim G. Leithäuser / Language(s): German Issue: 051/1952

With this presentation of the fourth critical phase in the foreign policy of the Hitler empire, Joachim G. Leithäuser's essay on the diplomatic pre-history of the Second World War comes to an end. Beginning with the Austrian crisis (issue 48), it shows the inner automatism, which must necessarily lead to the tragedy of 1949 through Munich (Issue 49) and Prague (Issue 50). In spite of careful study of the sources available, especially the "Files on German Foreign Policy," the author was not so much interested in the elucidation of individual diplomatic processes, but rather in the visualization of the essential, the spirit, or the perverted spirit, which delivered an entire continent to the catastrophe.

Papierowa korona zła

Author(s): Zbigniew Mikołejko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 793/2021

Splývání německé policie a SS na příkladu tajné státní policie v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava

Author(s): Jan Zumr / Language(s): Czech Issue: 40/2022

The merging of the police and the SS on the example of the secret state police in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia The study analyses the process of the merging of the SS and the police using the example of the Gestapo serving in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the aim of which was to create a “state protection force” fully committed to the Nazi regime. In order to understand the overall context, the most important decrees and orders that regulated the process of recruiting officials and employees of the secret state police into the ranks of the SS and straightening their ranks are presented. Their application in practice is then traced through the Gestapo’s Prague and Brno control offices. The study not only seeks to answer the question of the extent to which the Gestapo and the SS were merged in the Protectorate and how many SS officers served in the two offices mentioned, but also whether either office went further in the process of merging than the other.

Between nationalist propaganda and recognition of minority victims - The Russian interpretation of the Second World War

Author(s): Kristina Smolijaninovaitė / Language(s): English Issue: 01-02 (50)/2022

A conversation with Sergey Lukashevsky, director of the SakharovCenter in Moscow. Interviewer: Kristina Smolijaninovaitė

Everyday Lives in Occupied Poland. Some Ideas for a (Slightly) Different View

Author(s): Jerzy Kochanowski / Language(s): English Issue: 125/2022

This article (or rather this essay) demonstrates several possibilities for a slightly different perspective on not so much everyday life during the occupation but on everyday lives. Only within the framework of the German occupation, which from the summer of 1941 covered almost the entire pre-war territory of Poland, the range of differences, both between administrative units (e.g., the General Government, the Wartheland or the Eastern Borderlands) as well as within them, between city and countryside, between individual social, professional, ethnic and age groups, was vast. The occupation was not a static and homogeneous phenomenon but a diverse and dynamic one, full of complex interactions. This text, based variously on the subject literature, published and archival sources (Polish and German), clandestine and official press, focuses on the following phenomena: the situation of Polish officials working for the occupation administration, mobility (both spatial and social – horizontal and vertical), relations between the city and the countryside, the breakdown of social norms, the wartime economy (with a greater than usually considered subjectivity of Polish actors) or the process of ‘taming’ the occupation (including terror), both materially and psychologically. The text may be treated as encouragement and invitation to interdisciplinary, methodologically innovative, cross-sectional research on Polish society during the Second World War.

Rumours in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: 100 Days from the Life of an Occupied Country

Author(s): Piotr M. Majewski / Language(s): English Issue: 125/2022

The article discusses rumours recorded by the German Security Service [Sicherheitsdienst, SD] in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia between 1 January and 10 April 1943. The author pursues quantitative and qualitative analysis and discusses rumours shared by Czech and German inhabitants of the country. The analysis results indicate that early 1943 saw a real crisis of confidence in the state and the Nazi regime among Germans living in the Protectorate. The Czech public opinion had likely reached a turning point, still highly afraid of German repressions, but also with a growing hope for the defeat of the Reich and a swift end to the war.

Occupation as Social Practice and Ambiguous Space: The Lives of Ludwik Hirszfeld and Jan Czochralski in Warsaw, 1939–44

Author(s): Katrin Steffen / Language(s): English Issue: 125/2022

This article evaluates the situation of two renowned scientists in Poland, namely the microbiologist and serologist Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884–1954), and the metallurgist Jan Czochralski (1885–1953), during the time of the German occupation from 1939–45. Both scientists strove to continue their scientific work even under the conditions of occupation but faced substantially different treatment by the occupiers: Hirszfeld was forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto, while Czochralski was allowed to stay in his home and work at the former Technical University of Warsaw. The article takes a comparative approach and will analyse the life situation of both scientists. This means looking at the limits of action for both scientists on one side, and on the other, at the room for manoeuvre, which, under the conditions of a brutal occupation, either emerged for the two of them or they actively created.

The ‘Righteous’ as an Element of Transnational Memory Politics: The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust and the Memory of the Rescue of Jews during the Second World War

Author(s): Zofia Wóycicka / Language(s): English Issue: 125/2022

In the last two decades, the topic of help given to Jews during the Second World War has experienced an extraordinary boom in Europe and beyond. Transnational and intergovernmental organisations such as the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) have played an essential role in promoting this subject. This paper shows that the first big event to introduce the category of the Righteous into transnational memory politics was the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust (2000). Researchers have described the conference as a significant step toward the ‘institutionalisation of a European memory’ and promoting a self-critical, victim-centred, future-oriented and highly personalised Holocaust remembrance. I argue that it was precisely the universalisation of the Holocaust and the notion of a wide-ranging implication of European societies in the genocide, which paved the way for the rescue narratives. However, as this paper demonstrates, the participants in the conference defined the Righteous differently and invoked them for divergent purposes.

“There Will Be No Free Bohemia without Free Poland, No Free Poland without Free Bohemia”. Masaryk’s Vision of Independent States

Author(s): Tomáš W. Pavlíček / Language(s): English Issue: 125/2022

The aim of the paper is to examine, using the comparative perspective, how politicians and historians perceived the ideas applied in the process of formation of the states of Poland and Czechoslovakia. The situation in the period of 1918–20 seemed to be open to various opportunities for constituting and cooperation of independent countries, but not all these opportunities were acceptable at that time. Although some of them had a stabilising potential, the official narrative became the foundation for national historiography.The traditional master narrative (roles of Masaryk, Dmowski, Piłsudski), interrupted by the caesura of the 1945/54–89 period, understandably affects the current understanding of a state and celebration of its anniversaries, which raises a need to find a paradigm of interpretation that deviates from the nation state. The author disputes the approach of historiography which considered military violence a defining element of the process of formation of a state. He regards choosing a perspective which explains the transfer of the traits of the founders to the states as social institutions (quasi-figures) to be beneficial. Using archival documents, he shows how Masaryk’s ideas of forming a New Europe were received in Poland and what image of the situation in Poland was presented to Masaryk. Criticism of the neighbouring state in the speeches of the members of the Sejm was instrumentalised with regard to the tensions in the home politics. That is why the author puts the dispute about the Seven-day War and the Polish-Ukrainian conflict into a broader perspective.

PROFESOR ĐORĐE TASIĆ KAO ANTIFAŠISTA

Author(s): Uroš V. Šuvaković / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3-4/2022

The founder of the Society for Sociology and Social Sciences – the predecessor of the Serbian Sociological Association – and the journal Sociological Review — Professor Đorđe Tasić (Vranje, 1892 — Belgrade, 1943) is known to have been a leftist by his convictions and a member of the left-wing faction of the Agrarian Party. It is also known that he was executed by shooting in Belgrade, in 1943. The paper, based on the documents from the Historical Archives of the City of Belgrade, the State Archives of Serbia, the Archives of Yugoslavia and the Military Archives of Serbia, shows that, from the very beginning of World War Two (WW2) in Yugoslavia, he was constantly followed by the Special Police and Gestapo, as well as that he was arrested twice. He was accused both by Gestapo and by German and Serbian informants of being a mason, a participant in the events of 27 March 1941 a communist, an anti-fascist and an anti-Nazi, whereas the last two accusations were absolutely true. The first time he was arrested in November 1941, when he was taken hostage with a large group of intellectuals. He was taken to the Banjica concentration camp, but was released 23 days later. Afterwards he was also interrogated by the collaborationist Special Police, which is proved by the records kept. Since there is various information in the literature regarding the date and the place of Tasić's execution, and there are no related documents in the archives or those documents are rather scarce, according to the reconstruction and the comparison of the data sources, we can quite certainly claim that he was not executed in the Banjica camp in 1944. The most reliable information was submitted in 1953 by his pre-war assistant and subsequently academician Radomir Lukić – that Professor Đorđe Tasić was arrested by Gestapo the second time on 25 August 1943 and executed by shooting the following day. It is highly probable, in the light of historical research regarding this location, to say that the execution occurred in the Sajmište concentration camp, which is also a hypothesis by Lukić published in 1984. The free spirit and the anti-fascist orientation of this great Yugoslav and Serbian intellectual were a sufficient reason to Gestapo to execute him by shooting.

Nazistowskie świętowanie w okupowanym przez Niemców Toruniu na podstawie dziennika Thorner Freiheit (1939–1945)

Author(s): Sylwia Grochowina / Language(s): Polish Issue: 47/2024

The article aims to outline the image of Nazi celebrations in German-occupied Toruń. The source basis for the analysis was materials from the daily Thorner Freiheit, published in the city from September 20, 1939 to January 30, 1945. It is a valuable source of information about the occupation reality because it contains numerous details that create a picture of everyday life which cannot be found in any official documentation. In the analysis of Nazi celebrations in Toruń, only holidays referring to anniversaries/historical events were included: Seizure of Power Day (Tag der Machtergreifung), a.k.a. National Uprising Day (Tag der nationalen Erhebung), celebrated on January 30; the anniversary of the creation of the NSDAP (Parteigründungsfeier) – February 24; Heroes’ Memorial Day (Heldengedenktag); Hitler’s birthday (Führergeburtstag) – April 20; National Labor Day (Tag der nationalen Arbeit) on May 1; Memorial Day for the Martyrs of the (Nazi) Movement (Gedenktag für die Gefallenen der Bewegung), celebrated on November 9