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The recruitment and military service of Carpathian Germans in the Waffen-SS during the Second World War is one of the still little researched questions in the history of this community in 20th century Slovakia. More than 8,200 men enlisted in the armed units of the SS in three phases: illegally, quasi voluntarily and finally as obligatory military service. Not all of them enlisted on the basis of their actual personal convictions. Some men found themselves against their will in places where crimes against humanity were committed. The study is devoted to the recruitment mechanism and analyses the motivation of the men of the German minority to join the Waffen-SS. It also focuses on their service in some Waffen-SS units and in concentration camps. The last part does not avoid the question of criminal responsibility after 1945.
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The article concerns the motif and theme of Soviet prisoners of war in Russian literature. It presents the most important historical facts, which are the sources of literary approaches, concerning the complicated fate of Soviet POWs during the German-Soviet war (1941‒1945) and after its end. It also shows the political and ideological determinants of the literary image of a prisoner (as a traitor and coward, a resistance fighter in camps and a partisan, victim). The subjects of the analysis are both fictive works and memoirs, among others Mikhail Sholokhov’s The Fate of a Man (Судьба человека), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (Один день Ивана Денисовича), Vasily Grossman’s Life and fate (Жизнь и судьба), Andrey Pogozhev’s Escape from Auschwitz (Смерть стояла у нас за спиной).
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The aim of the article was to examine the diplomatic activity of the Polish diplomat Kazimierz Papée (1889-1979) in the Free City of Danzig in the years 1933-1934. The author focused on Papée’s relations with Hermann Rauschning, the President of the Free City of Danzig Senate, taking into account the accompanying circumstances. The historical sources utilised and analysed in this study are, in large part, unknown reports prepared by Papée, which he sent to Warsaw.Papée was the General Commissioner of the Republic of Poland in the Free City of Danzig from 1932 to 1936. He sought to preserve the Polish rights in Danzig. His term in office coincided also with the presidency of Rauschning, who was the first politician associated with the Nazi Party at the post of President of the Danzig Senate. Both Papée and Rauschning fulfilled their duties in circumstances of subordination of the Polish-Danzig relations to relations between Warsaw and Berlin. Each of them had his own vision of how relations between Poland and the Free City should be shaped. Rauschning was remembered as a politician who sought to reach a settlement with Poland. That being so, the question arises how Papée managed to cope, given the then current conditions, and what particular courses of action were taken by him in contacts with the President of the Danzig Senate. Another issue related to the research is an assessment of the consequences of these contacts. Such an appraisal had to be made in the light of the paramount principle of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs which was the maintenance of good Polish-German relations.
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The recruitment and military service of Carpathian Germans in the Waffen-SS during the Second World War is one of the still little researched questions in the history of this community in 20th century Slovakia. More than 8,200 men enlisted in the armed units of the SS in three phases: illegally, quasi voluntarily and finally as obligatory military service. Not all of them enlisted on the basis of their actual personal convictions. Some men found themselves against their will in places where crimes against humanity were committed. The study is devoted to the recruitment mechanism and analyses the motivation of the men of the German minority to join the Waffen-SS. It also focuses on their service in some Waffen-SS units and in concentration camps. The last part does not avoid the question of criminal responsibility after 1945.
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The study analyses the staffing of the Gestapo headquarters in Prague, which was the largest office of the Nazi secret police in Hitler’s Germany, by both the number of allocated positions and the actual number of employees. To understand the over- all context, the general personnel policy applied to the Gestapo is presented, includ- ing a description of the individual career paths. The differences between official and non-official staff are explained, as well as the categories of official (executive and ad- ministrative service) and non-official (clerical and criminal) staff. The development of the number of employees during the Second World War, the lack of qualified personnel and the reasons for the negligible number of Czech Germans in important positions in the Prague Gestapo are analysed. The study also tries to find an answer to the question of how effectively the Prague headquarters was able to combat the domestic resist- ance movement with the assigned number of employees.
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The main representative of the Polish resistance against the Nazis in 1942–1943 was the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK), built on the foundations of the Service for Poland’s Victory (Służba Zwycięstwu Polski, SZP), the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ) and other non-communist resistance organisations.
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Czechoslovakia doesn’t have many heroes whose actions have literally shaken the world. However, that is a fitting description of the paratroopers who carried out the 1942 assassination of the “third man in the Third Reich” Reinhard Heydrich. One of them was named Josef Gabčík and his life from the cradle to a hero’s death is mapped by Jaroslav Čvančara.
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Pető Andrea (2019) Láthatatlan elkövetők. Nők a magyarországi nyilasmozgalomban. Budapest: Jaffa kiadó
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This article presents one of the concrete outcomes of the project “Database of Victims of the National Socialist Persecution of ‘Gypsies’” conducted by the Terezín Initiative Institute in Prague. The case study explored here shows the potential of this detailed, systematic, and local research of individual victims, which documents the genocide of the Roma and Sinti population on the territory of today’s Czech Republic. The Dycha family lived in the agricultural village of Hrušky in South Moravia, where they had a small house, work, and conflict-free relationships with the majority population. After 1939, the ‘anti-Gypsy’ politics of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia struck them. The entire family, including all eight children, were finally transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in early May 1943. The only survivor was Damián Danihel, the illegitimate son of Estera Dychová. According to documents and testimonies, he was rescued thanks to his Slovak citizenship and the intervention of two local men – the former village mayor and his successor.
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In this paper, the author gives an overview of the political situation in Banija and the regions of the Banovina Savska and Primorska and since August 1939 the Banovina of Croatia, areas where the Serbian and Croatian populations were mixed. Residents, mostly Serbs and Yugoslav loyalists of Glina and the wider area were deeply concerned about the deteriorating trends in interethnic relations, which are characterized by open threats, pressure and aggression aimed at political victory and secession of Croatia from Yugoslavia. The situation worsened after 1936 due to the strengthening of the Croatian Peasant and Civil Guard. The establishment of the Banovina of Croatia, intended to calm tensions, contributed instead to the radicalization of the situation. The Serb and Yugoslav affiliated population followed the situation with understandable concern, which only worsened as the Axis Powers have accomplished their goals in Europe. The reports of the civilian authorities, the gendarmerie and the army are full of the facts and testimonies about the situation and gloomy predictions if nothing would be done. Military and defense activities were sabotaged not only by the Frankists but also by the very top of the CPP (HSS). The creators of the Agreement (1939) on the Serbian side were deeply disappointed and felt betrayed. Newspapers and brochures are spread and read, retold too. That could only fueled mistrust and concerns, even fears. The loyal attitude of the SDS in the coalition with the HSS, as well as the calls for solidarity and cooperation from the part of local representatives of the ruling JRZ, did not reverse the increasingly radical attitudes of the HSS and the illegal Frankists. The events in April and May 1941 showed that the fears were justified.
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The injuries suffered by medical student Jan Opletal in a shooting at the demonstration on 28 October 1939 initially did not look complicated. It was only several days later that his condition deteriorated considerably. If antibiotics had been available he would have probably survived.
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„Cítím se naprosto bez pocitu viny. […] Kdybych mohla, pěšky, bosa, bez bot bych šla zpět. Bylo to tam tak čarovně krásné.“ Tak vzpomínala na svůj pobyt v Panenských Břežanech u Prahy vdova po Reinhardu Heydrichovi, zastupujícím říšském protektorovi v Čechách a na Moravě a jednom z hlavních tvůrců nacistických represí. Jak na totéž „velkolepé“ období vzpomínali vězni, kteří vykonávali nucené práce na hospodářství této prominentní nacistické rodiny? A jaké poznatky o celé situaci přinášejí dobové písemné prameny?
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Bribery, fraud, blackmail and theft were the most frequent crimes committed by the staff of the Secret State Police in the Protectorate. There was no shortage of moral offences either, and an especially extensive category was that of offences on duty, such as negligence, desertion, alcohol abuse or violation of subordination.
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While repression against people on the margins of society was part of interwar Czechoslovakia’s social policy, during the Protectorate the so-called anti-social element was first excluded from society and later physically eliminated.
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More than one hundred prisoners escaped from the so-called gypsy camp in Lety, near Písek, during the one year it existed, from August 1942 to August 1943. Perhaps the most famous escape took place on 15 September 1942. We know how it happened from the memories of one of the refugees, the legendary “Black Partisan” Josef Serinek. The newly discovered photographs of the Protectorate’s criminal police, published for the first time here, are a unique visual accompaniment to Serinek’s story. They portray, amongst others, the key plotter of the escape, Karel Serinek, aka the “mysterious” Jarek, whose appearance had previously been unknown.
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Today, some family members of the victims of Nazism still do not know the full story of the persecution of their relatives, and sometimes don’t even have the slightest idea that the place where their relatives are buried can be found.
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German theories and policies regarding the relationship between food and Jewish citizens of eastern Europe served as an important foundation of the Nazis’ Judenpolitik during the Holocaust (1933-45). The mass starvation of Jews in German-dominated Europe was the result of a carefully calculated policy to make the Jews pay for a long list of misfortunes they had allegedly inflicted on the Germans. This policy evolved from a highly restrictive and discriminatory approach toward German Jews, which unfolded against a backdrop of harsh food policies applied to the local non-Jewish population.
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The article examines a range of questions tied to Nazi Germany’s socio-economic policies in occupied Ukraine during World War II. In line with implementing the General Plan “Ost,” the top leadership of the Third Reich intended to cleanse the “eastern territories” of its “superfluous” population for German colonization. As contained in the “Principles of Economic Policy in the East,” these directives provided for the physical extermination of tens of millions of people in various ways, as well as the deportation of part of the indigenous population to remote areas. Ukraine’s economic exploitation was built in such a way that it doomed the local urban and rural societies to a miserable, half-starved existence. The systematic seizure of food for the needs of the Wehrmacht, the Reich, and its allies made the death of the inhabitants of the occupied lands only a matter of time. The instrumentalization of terror by famine was manifested, on the one hand, by the creation of special structures that requisitioned food resources, and on the other by establishing norms of food supplies that were below the minimal needs for existence. As well, the strict regulation of trade set limits to the sources of food products that could be brought to the cities. This caused mass starvation. The deaths and the diseases that followed created hundreds of thousands of victims among Ukrainians.
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