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The aim of this text is to describe the determinants of communication activities of the Municipal Board and municipal organisations in Olsztyn. The administrative structure and examples of communication in the organisation are analysed. It is assumed that one of the determinants of communication was the multi-layered system of power relations and the fluid boundary between the private and public spheres. This was reflected in the management of tangible goods and in the construction of administrative structures, norms and rules. These activities were carried out during population exchanges and the creation of new cultural codes. The low state of security, the destruction of infrastructure, the uncertainty of property ownership and the course of the national border were all important factors. There was a strong influence of the Red Army and unformed public opinion. The text uses a qualitative content analysis of official documents from the collection of the Museum of Warmia and Masuria and selected resources from the State Archive in Olsztyn, and the local press.
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Latvian prose writer Ēvalds Vilks (1923–1976) was a member of the Communist Party since 1949 and an injured veteran of WWII, highly respected by writers of his generation and senior and junior colleagues. In his literary works and journalism, he addressed manifestations of the regime that did not match his ideals and system of values. He received official awards and was appreciated by the authorities, though the loss of communist ideals and the limitations of publishing negatively influenced his creativity and personality. Analysing memorial publications, memoirs, and archival documents, the article deals with the first phase of the writer’s memorial discourse, namely, the activities undertaken by the institutions and journalism dedicated to Vilks after his death, from 1976 to 1978: obituaries, dedications, and memories of his contemporaries. The article reveals the rules and principles for publishing the literary heritage and amendments to texts under the influence of censorship. Publications show both similarities and significant differences in the assessment of the writer’s personality and literary work. Vilks’ contemporaries highlight qualities related to the perpetuation of the commemorations of Soviet heroes, such as ‘honesty’ and ‘veracity’, placing him in a superior position, compared with other writers. It is essential that these qualities, in the context of the period of Stagnation, are consistent with his colleagues’ testimonies, memoirs, and archival documents, thus creating a simplified but unbiased Vilks’ memorial discourse. For understanding the writer’s personality, censored publications, as well as commemorative events planned by the official institutions and the publishing house, are significant.
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Baltic Germans played a prominent role in the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church until the beginning of the Second World War. At that time, Hitler invited all Baltic Germans from each Baltic country to resettle in the Third Reich. Still, not all could or wanted to move from Estonia. There remained a small Baltic German community of a few hundred persons, most of them in Tallinn. They struggled through the Soviet occupation of 1940–1941. Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the German army arrived in Tallinn in August 1941. It was once again possible to ring the church bells and go to church. Among the troops that entered Tallinn, there were a few military chaplains who were former pastors of Estonian parishes. They began to hold regular services for the Baltic German community and organised other pastoral activities as well. Bishop Theodor Heckel of the Foreign Office of the German Evangelical Church was kept up to date concerning the situation in Tallinn. The Baltic Germans organised under the name Trinitatis-Gemeinde with the Consistory of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church.
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In his article entitled „Slavs, Goths and Iranians: The Theory of the Nordic Herrenschicht and Croat Racial Origins in the NDH”, published in the Zbornik Janković, Vol. IV, No. 4, Daruvar, 2019.), annotation on page 276, Nevenko Bartulin claims that myself and another author (Stjepan Razum), „have even claimed that the NDH did not actually have race laws but only racial law decrees that had no real legitimacy” and that „this baseless argument was recently demolished by the Croat historian Vladimir Geiger in his short article, ‘Dokon pop i jariće krsti’ ili jesu li postojali rasni zakoni u NDH?’ (translation: „‘A Bored Priest Baptizes Goats’ or Were There Race Laws in the Independent State of Croatia”), Portal hrvatske historiografije (translation: The Portal of Croatian Historiography), 5 March 2016”
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The reconstruction of British diplomatic missions in Poland began after the approval of the Provisional Government of National Unity (Polish: Tymczasowy Rząd Jedności Narodowej – TRJN) by London. Consular exchange resumed and a number of officials were appointed, who became not only liaison between the Foreign Office and local institutions, but also propagators of “Western ideology” in Poland. The aim of the article is to present the process of rebuilding British institutions in Poland, placing it in the context of Polish-British relations until 1956.
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Familiarizing with the landscape of Western and Northern Territories is a topic widely discussed in the Polish historiography, and this article is introducing to those studies a perspective of another type of historical sources, i.e., city guidebooks. This research is applying interdisciplinary methodology linking the standard historical approach with the history of architecture and art. The paper focuses on presenting the persuasive measures that St[anislaw] Sevatt was using in his Wroclaw city guidebook from 1948, one of the first publications of this type after World War II and the consecutive border shifts. The authors propose a threefold categorization of the landscape familiarizing: 1) stressing the similarities between the architecture of Wroclaw and other Polish cities; 2) searching for any trails of activity or presence of Poles in the city to prove its immemorially Polish character; 3) critique of the alterations in the old city’s architectural structure made by Germans in the 19th and 20th century. Each postulated category is exemplified with quotes from Sevatt’s guidebook. The article also rectifies the inaccuracies and misinterpretations committed by the author of the city guidebook. The authors elucidate the issues encountered by the Poles arriving in Wrocław after 1945, primarily the appearance of the city very much different from the typically Polish urban landscape. It is an important factor to understand thoroughly the efforts of Sevatt to Polonize the city, its history and architecture (in this case – gothic churches play an essential role). Moreover, this perspective allows for placing Sevatt’s city guidebook in the wider context of the postwar narrative aiming to familiarize the Poles with the Western and Northern Territories.
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Establishing the Polish-German border in 1919 contributed to the loss of many communication routes in the western part of Greater Poland by Germany. The situation was serious especially in the Warta River Valley – with nearly 23 km between the newly created border and the nearest road bridge in Skwierzyn. One of the solutions aimed at improving the condition of the local transportation and trade was a planned new bridge in Krobielewko. The cost estimate drawn up in 1926 proposed expenditures that were deemed too high. Interest in building a new crossing was renewed in 1936 and in the years 1936–1938 a mainly wooden bridge was constructed, with Howe truss a the load-bearing system. Being 317.5 m long, the bridge was the longest of its kind in the Third Reich. Such length was forced by specific topographical condition of the wide Warta River Valley. The bridge survived the invasion of Poland in 1939 untouched but in January 1945 was partially blown up by the retreating German troops. After the war, it was provisionally repaired to allow for motor traffic, but eventually it was demolished. Instead of a bridge, a ferry and boat service was established (now defunct).
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Father Franz Scholz is to be remembered by posterity mainly because of his remarks about establishing the Apostolic Administration in Wrocław and about cardinal Hlond. The events of 1945–1946, when Father Scholz was the parish priest of the parish of St. Boniface in Zgorzelec, were described in his memoirs. A query of church sources in the Archive of Episcopal Curia in Legnica and in the Archive of Parish of St. Boniface in Zgorzelec revealed previously unknown materials, which shed new light (in comparison to the memoirs), on this period of Father Scholz’s life. The case of this German clergyman suggests formulating more nuanced opinions on the attitudes and decisions of German clerics in the first postwar years. The lecture of church documents given an impression that initially the relations between Father Scholz and Polish Church authorities (and at least part of secular authorities) were almost model. Father Scholz enjoyed enormous confidence from Father Milik; otherwise, he would not be entrusted with the position of dean of then-vast deanery of Lubań or tasked with initiating negotiations with the diocese of Meißen about merging four parishes located on the Polish side of the border into the Apostolic Administration. Also, the issue of application for Polish citizenship in presented differently in Scholz’s memoir and in the documents.
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The article presents the history of Jewish school established in Dzierżoniów after World War II as a consequence of the Jewish population’s mass influx into Lower Silesia. Several stages of the development of this institution were described: from its initial foundation, inclusion into the Central Committee of Polish Jews (with their curriculum based on the prewar model of secular Jewish school framed by CISZO “Centrale Jidisze Szul-Organizacje”, meaning “Central Yiddish School Organization”) to the nationalization of the school. The author captures the tensions accompanying the postwar education of Jewish children along with everyday struggles, including deficiency of space and teaching aids. Particular emphasis was put on the rising influence of the communist authorities, who were exerting a growing pressure not only on the Jewish circles but also on the whole educational system in Poland. In the case of this particular school, children who came from Soviet Union made up the majority of students. Most of them spoke neither Yiddish, Hebrew nor Polish. Large amount of teachers also survived the war in the Soviet Union, which did not dishearten them from committing themselves to Zionist-oriented activities. Political issues could not be avoided at the Jewish school in Dzierżoniów, but it remained primarily an educational institution until the end of its days.
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The presented article constitutes an illustration of explanatory possibilities resulting from referring to the idea of “thick description”. In contains an analysis of a source document – a letter from a woman from Besko [a village in Krosno powiat (county)] to Polish president Bolesław Bierut, written in relation to the resettlement action with the code name “Vistula” (the main river of Poland). The theoretical assumption accompanying the analysis are: on the one side, questioning of the validity of the ethnohistorical perspective for a heuristic description of the phenomenon of multilayer violence; and on the other side, the problem of projecting the meanings extracted from the source on words in search of generalization (universalizing). In consequence, a question has to be put forward: what purpose does the history serve; whether it is a field of knowledge or merely a pretext to accomplish political goals. The analyzed document is presented in its entirety because of its modest length. Several issues can be singled out within its contents, pointing out at the type of cultural matrix used by the author – Maria Kuńska. Key elements of this matrix were the following notions: existence, fear, hierarchy, violence. Persuasion employed in the letter is not based on the Poles–Ukrainians opposition, but on juxtaposing life/existence with politics.
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Based on sources from several countries, this paper presents a microhistory of the camp in Johannsdorf (Upper Silesia) and also advances knowledge of the two systems of forced labor camps for Jews in Silesia and adjoining areas. From October 1940 to the summer of 1942, Johannsdorf was among the 25 Reichsautobahnlager run by the Reichsautobahn office in Breslau. For a year afterwards, it was one of approx. 170 camps administrated by Organisation Schmelt. Aspects discussed include transports, work, access to food, helpers, medical care, camp hierarchies, female inmates, and mortality.
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In the article, in addition to the already quite well-known episode of the issue of lifetime visas by the Japanese vice-consul in Lithuania Chiune Sugihara in Kaunas in the summer of 1940, Lithuania’s position on the issue of refugees is presented, as well as the efforts of Lithuanian diplomats in negotiating with the governments of Britain and the USSR about the possibilities of emigration of willing refugees – Polish Jews. The contribution of Jan Zwartendijk, Honorary Consul of the Netherlands in Lithuania, to the history of salvation is also remembered. The paths of emigration are discussed, showing their entire spectrum, and not just the usual ones with the Trans-Siberian route linked by Sugihara visas. The changing policy of the Japanese government on the issue of transit visas is reviewed.
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The article explores a little-known episode of the joint anti-fascist struggle of Russian emigrants and Soviet citizens on the French Island of Oléron during the Second World War. In the fall of 1943, the Germans began to transfer Eastern Wehrmacht troops, formed from Soviet citizens, to France. In the spring of 1944, one of the companies of these Eastern Wehrmacht troops arrived on the island of Oléron to guard the Atlantic coast. At that time, a group of Russian emigrants headed by V.B.Sosinskiy and V.L.Andreev lived on the island, and they decided to get to know the Soviet soldiers who had arrived there. Freed from German captivity, Sosinskiy decided to form a partisan group from these soldiers, which, after the first sabotage operation, officially became part of the French Resistance. Sosinskiy’s group, initially collecting only intelligence data, soon began active sabotage actions, which seriously reduced the combat capability of the local German garrison and allowed the Allies to quickly liberate the island during its assault at the end of the war. The soldiers were convicted after they returned home, but after returning to civilian life, they were rehabilitated with the help of immigrants.
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This article explores an important archival source, the personal files of deportees, the original form of the document compiled by the NKVD characterizing the identity of a person who is on special settlement. These are massive official documents of a personal nature, applied to all adults deported during World War II from different regions and republics of the former USSR. The author reveals previously classified personal files and documents on the legal status of special settlers. The introduction of new documents into circulation made it possible to shed light on many aspects of the life of deportees related to their social and legal adaptation in new places of settlements. A personal file clearly demonstrates both the conditions of detention at the special settlement, and changes in the regulatory framework governing the life of this category within the framework of the special settlement system in the USSR. In accordance with the ongoing changes, a special commandant introduced each special settler to the new standards, who were given receipts. The file contains four receipts that allow one to divide the period from 1944 to 1957 into four stages. The article emphasizes that for post-deportation generations, the presence of personal files containing personal data was a good opportunity in restoring not only history, but also genealogy. It has both important scholarly, socio-legal, and political significance for the study of destinies, both of individuals and of entire nations. As examples, some documents are contained in the personal files of the evicts.
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This article examines anti-Semitic propaganda of German authorities in the occupied Soviet territory in the General District of Belarus. The author identifies the main directions of anti-Semitic propaganda, analyzes its content, determines the effectiveness of the ideological influence of the German occupation authorities on the Belarusian population, and proves that the occupiers tried to appeal to national feelings of Belarusians using anti-Semitism. The author concludes that the odious, false, anti-Semitic propaganda did not find a response among the Belarusian population of the district. Belarusians practically did not participate in the organization of the “new order”; in contrast to Ukraine and the Baltic States, it was difficult to create police battalions and a national administration. Mass actions of extermination of Belarusian Jews could not arouse any feelings among the witnesses, except horror and fear for their own lives. Together with the SS punitive expeditions against partisans and civilians, the genocide of the Jews leveled all the efforts of German propagandists and reduced the effectiveness of enemy propaganda to zero. A major role in exposing the content of Nazi propaganda and the true plans of the occupiers was played by partisan counter-propaganda and the very existence of a mass partisan movement. The occupiers’ calculations to incite hatred of Belarusians against Jews did not justify themselves: Belarusian and Jewish partisans fought shoulder to shoulder for the freedom of their common homeland — Soviet Belarus.
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As a consequence of the fall of the Third Reich, German population of Silesia was forced to relocate. A similar fate befell the evangelical deaconesses, who worked in Ząbkowice Śląskie until 1946. The last months of war and then the period from May 1945 till the displacement in August 1946 were for the deaconesses and people under their carea time of uncertainty and sacrifices. The necessity to leave the buildings of the Evangelical Diaconal House, food shortages, illnesses, and finally the order to leave all property acquired over several decades caused worry and concern among them, which is reflected in the chronicles kept in Wertheim, where the deaconesses moved their institution in 1946.
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The article presents three documents from the file collection of Olsztyn City Management from 1945–1950, kept in the archival collection of State Archive in Olsztyn. They are copies of reports of City Management prepared for Presidium Office of the State National Council (Krajowa Rada Narodowa – KRN) covering October, November and December 1945. According to the recommendations of the Office, the descriptive-statistical reports contained information about the most important elements of the process of reconstruction and about the living conditions of the population: financial situation of the city, distribution of provisions among the population, social welfare, housing situation, work of city institutions and public utility companies, public transport, work of state and self-government offices, sanitary situation, trade and industry, public safety, settlement action, and lacks and achievements occurring. The compiled data constitutes valuable material for research on the history of building the foundations of Polish administration and creating living conditions for the population in one of the most important Polish urban centers on the so-called Regained Territories after World War II.
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The article presents a workout of the account of Klemens Nussbaum, colonel of Polish People’s Army (ludowe Wojsko Polskie), who fled from Poland to Israel in 1969. Among the leading threads covered during an interview carried out in Tel Aviv in the 1970s are, among other issues, the relations among officers in Polish People’s Army, the presence of anti-Semitism, relations within the communist party, as well as more personal matters – such as a subjective account on being expelled from the army in 1953. In his narration, several threads could be a complement to Nussbaum’s doctoral thesis A "History of Illusions" ("Historia złudzeń"), published in Polish in 2016. The aforementioned thesis is also an interesting historical source for researchers of the modern history of Jewish population in Poland – the more so because both Klemens and his wife Stanisława, an activis tof Women’s League (Liga Kobiet), had close ties with party elites.
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