Zdenko Roter, Pravi obraz. Neizbrisna znamenja resničnosti
Review of: Zdenko Roter, Pravi obraz. Neizbrisna znamenja resničnosti, Sever & Sever, Ljubljana 2017
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Review of: Zdenko Roter, Pravi obraz. Neizbrisna znamenja resničnosti, Sever & Sever, Ljubljana 2017
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The article presents a depiction and comparison of the development of revolutionary violence, or, more specifically, a timeline of the number of victims during the Second World War in the areas of the Gorenjska region, the city of Ljubljana, and the Notranjska region.
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The article focuses on the victims of the Partisan movement in the northern part of the Primorska region during the Second World War. The areas in question are what is today known as the municipalities of Bovec, Cerkno, Idrija, Kobarid, and Tolmin. Based on archival sources, it was found that such violence claimed 338 lives in this area. The data is still inconclusive.
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Byłem przekonany, że idziemy do powstania przegranego. To było bardzo rzadkie. Ale po pierwsze, miałem od małego takie nastawienie [...], żeby krytycznie myśleć. Po drugie, mój przyjaciel był w ekipie przygotowującej broń w magazynach przed wydaniem jej w godzinie „W”. I wiedziałem na kilka dni przed powstaniem, wiedziałem dokładnie, z czym pójdziemy do powstania. Byłem pewny, że przegramy w ciągu jednego, dwóch dni, że to się skończy po prostu rzezią. No, ale nie ma rady, przecież nie zostawię kolegów, żeby ich wyrżnęli, a sam się nie będę nigdzie chować. Jednak było to bardzo nieprzyjemne.
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In April 1941, Italian forces occupied the Lož Valley (Loška dolina); their violent authority continued until the Italian capitulation in September 1943. Considering wartime and post-war fatalities in the area in question, the Italian invaders caused the highest number of deaths, namely forty percent of all fatalities, most of them civilian. The most extreme violence took place during the Italian offensive in July and August 1942, when there were mass shootings, the population was exiled to internment, and property was burned and looted.
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At the end of the Second World War and in its immediate aftermath, Joseph V. Stalin discussed the issue of Slovenian intellectuals with Edvard Kardelj (1944) and Boris Kidrič (1946); he saw them as a homogeneous social group as the intelligentsia in Russia had been before the formation of the Soviet regime and believed them to be problematic as well as useful to communists, particularly while fighting for patriotic aims. It seems that he detected this as a problem mostly due to the situation in Italy, with which Yugoslavia was in dispute over a border issue. In spite of criticising J. V. Stalin, Kardelj later thought that the problem highlighted by the Soviet leader indeed existed.
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The Court of Slovenian National Honour was established in early June 1945. Until the end of August 1945, it tried those who had (allegedly) collaborated with the occupying forces during the war in any way. Senates consisting of five members held sessions in Ljubljana, Kranj, Novo Mesto, Celje, Maribor, Ptuj and Murska Sobota. In Novo Mesto, the first trial took place on 10 July, but the court ceased to operate as early as 14 July due to the dissatisfaction of the district committee of the Communist Party with the work of the jurist judges. The court treated the acts allegedly perpetrated by the accused very leniently and imposed fairly mild penalties. In nine trials, it sentenced 34 persons to the loss of national honour, 22 persons to light forced labour and six persons to a partial confiscation of property. After the court was abolished and a pardon was declared, the convicted were fully excused of forced labour. The legal implications of the penalty of the loss of national honour were limited to losing political and civil rights, including the right to vote. The penalty of property confiscation remained in effect.
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Francisco Franco (1892-1975) was general and leader of the Nationalist forces that overthrew the Spanish democratic republic in a bloody civil war (1936-39); thereafter until his death he was the head of government of Spain. He ruled his country as dictator – called El Caudillo (the Leader) – for 36 years. In his essay, Ignác Romsics deals with the military carrier of the would-be dictator, the Civil War as an arena of social change where different political ideas and programs were forged, and finally the main characteristics and functioning of the Francoist authoritarian regime. The most difficult period of Franco’s regime began in the aftermath of World War II, when his government was ostracized by the newly formed United Nations. This period of ostracism came to an end with the worsening of relations between the Soviet world and the West at the height of the Cold War. His international rehabilitation was advanced further in 1953, when Spain signed a military pact with the United States. Later his domestic policies became somewhat more liberal, as well. Due to all these and the economic development during the 1960s, Franco’s image gradually changed from that of the rigorous generalissimo to a more benign civilian elder statesman. In spite of that, his legacy deeply divides the Spanish society even today. The essay is based on the available literature written in English, French and Hungarian.
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If the measure of success in politics is the acquisition and retention of power, leaving aside all moral considerations, Stalin undoubtedly was one of the most successful politicians of the last century. Neither his social background, education and intellectual preparation, nor even his early revolutionary activities predestined him to become the creator and leader of a superpower, one of the most ill-famed historical figures of the 20th century. By the end of the 1930s, not holding any official governmental position, Stalin managed to establish strict control over the party apparatus and state security organs and he built up unrestricted dictatorship that allowed him not only to defeat his rivals, but also to make his own allies and creatures obey him unconditionally. Stalin’s exercise of power was a unique combination of modern and archaic elements. Among his “teachers” we find, alongside Marx and Lenin, Niccolo Machiavelli, the author of the modern political manual of the exercise of power, and Gustave Le Bon, an expert in the psychology of the masses.
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World War II was an extremely difficult time for Polish society. This is because it involved a great deal of material damage, as well as leading to a number of situations of damaged health or loss of life for many people. This extermination of the Polish nation undertaken by the Germans and the Soviets also affected the clergy. This article describes its course in relation to priests belonging to the Sandomierz diocese. As a result of warfare, 26 priests of this diocese were killed. The circumstances of these tragic situations were different: direct warfare, the effects of concentration camps, or the terror of the occupiers. This became the basis for dividing the article into three parts. The sources used for describing the extermination of the clergy of the Sandomierz diocese during World War II are the available academic studies. In this way, the article is mainly ordering the current state of research on this topic.
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The group of Auschwitz survivors is numerous and rapidly shrinking. However, the accounts (could use: biographies, memoirs, recollections, stories, etc.) of those who experienced it are remarkable and still worthy of study. Moreover, testimonies from the time of the Annihilation (or Holocaust) – a message with a great weight of emotion and a particular feature of the great history, make the material collected in this way can serve as an invaluable contribution to expanding knowledge and analysis for future generations. Naturally, the educational issue is also important, although the focus will be on the cognitive role. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the fate of the life of an outstanding physician, a Polish Jew from Lodz, Leon Weintraub, who “started” his life anew three times – at the time of his birth in 1926, his liberation from the Nazi camps, and his expulsion from the country as part of the anti-Semitic campaign of March 1968. It seems that the study of the fate of an individual’s life under totalitarian systems, using the oral history method and confronting other sources, makes it possible to create a biographical sketch that is not just a collection of dry facts but enriched with elements of personal emotions, sensitivities, and feelings.
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Przewóz (Transit) is a novel dominated by the Bug river – we flow down its stream as the story flows onward. The narrative interweaves many strands, the motif of the ferryman – the boatman named Lubko, and his customers from 1941 is complemented by the memories of the narrator, who is an autobiographic creation here. The novel’s wartime events (June of 1941) are located by the author in his native Polesie, where he spent his childhood holidays at his grandparents’ house. On the one side are Russians, on the other – Germans, who are running away, crossing the Bug by a pontoon bridge, while the swamp by the river swarms with Home Army soldiers, refugees, Jewish siblings… Chaos, darkness, tense waiting for an invitation to the boat. Any moment now the Bug will become the Styx, and Lubko will be transformed into Charon.
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The article presents a biography and excerpts from selected poetic works by Nina Gitler, a former Bergen-Belsen prisoner. Gitler, along with her family, lived through the beginning of the war in Warsaw. In 1940 or 1941 she found herself in the ghetto, where she stayed until the end of April 1943. She left it, together with her parents and grandmother, thanks to an unusual coincidence. Subsequently, the family received so-called “Palestinian certificates” through the Hotel Polski and, together with other Jews, were transported to Bergen-Belsen. She spent almost two years in the camp, but did not see its liberation, as almost at the last minute some of the prisoners were sent to another camp. However, the train did not reach its destination. The prisoners regained their freedom. A few months later, Gitler died in tragic circumstances, at the age of just 19. Despite her death at a young age, she left a substantial literary output, not only poems, also texts written in prose. Working on this article, a query was made at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem in 2019 and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw in 2020.
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Combat operations of 1945 in the Ostrava region ranked among the largest and most important military encounters of World War II in the Czech Lands. Immediately after the war, the first sites of memory appeared spontaneously. During the 1950s and 1960s, ‘institutionalisation of memory’ can be witnessed, based on the narrative of ‘liberation’ and ‘Slavic brotherhood’ of the Czech and Soviet population. The discussion of historians and writers about wartime controversies, which started in the era of ‘destalinisation’, had no important impact on the commemorative practise. After the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies in 1968, authorities attempted to use the narrative of ‘liberation’ t the o improve the public opinion of the Soviet Union. Museums were expected to play a leading role in this process. After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, attempts to reconsider the narrative of ‘liberation’ appeared. A strong counter-narrative developed amongst the population of the Hlučín region, whose ancestors served in German armed forces. Nevertheless, the traditional post-communist narrative of ‘liberation’ remains quite strong in the region.
More...Česká katolická publicistika v letech 1945‒1948 mezi marxismem a liberalismem
The article presents the approach of Catholic journalism towards cultural, social and political issues as can be found in Catholic periodicals from the years 1945‒1948. One of the main characteristics of this approach is its focus on personal human dignity and its connection to the fact of the creation and redemption of the human person. Personal dignity forms an opposition towards the reductive approach of modern ideologies, which are understood as an instrumental construction of humanity leading to the limitation of the uniqueness and richness of human life. The critique of ideology is not anchored in an unambiguous left‑ or right‑wing political orientation. Catholic authors are also critical for the liberal and Marxist vision of social and political life. The way out of ideologized thinking is therefore found in the richness and depth of the religious, Christian tradition.
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The paper reconstructs the actions of the Serbian Government of National Salvation in the field of the organization of the propaganda in the occupied Serbia during WWII. The occupation authorities intended to achieve the tightly controlled management of the national authorities’ propaganda through the Serbian Propaganda Department of the Ministerial Council Presidency. The Government of National Salvation made a great effort in the field of supervising publications, film screenings and radiophonic shows. The main points of activity of national authorities in the field of radio propaganda were subordinated to German interests. The concept of radio propaganda was analyzed, as well as the German organization of the propaganda censorship apparatus and its influence on the work of the Serbian Propaganda Department in the field of radio propaganda. The content of the radio program and the activities of Radio Belgrade under German occupation were analyzed together with the example of the activities of the collaborationist authorities in the field of radio propaganda.
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The study of the Yugoslav‐Belgian relations during the Second World War aims to present the position of two de‐estated emigrant apparatuses under the auspices of the British diplomacy through a comparative analysis, starting from short‐term war operations and the evacuation of two structures abroad, the issue of gold reserves and the royal issue, to the political, military and material aspect of the given relations in the later war period. The parallel consideration of the Yugoslav and Belgian experience in dealing with the interests of the United Kingdom tends to demystify the stereotypes already established regarding the international position of the Yugoslav Government in exile.
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The paper publishes archival material – verdicts of the Military Court of the People’s Liberation Army, which operated in the area of southeastern Srem in 1944. The verdicts were handed down in criminal proceedings against eighteen Serbs, natives of Srem, who were accused of collaborating with the „Chetnik movement of Draža Mihailović”. The documents are stored in the Historical Archive of Belgrade. They have not been originally published until now, and therefore, their content brings new light to contemporary historiography, which dispels the prevailing opinion that eastern Srem was strongly partisan. At the same time, the content of the original archival material opens up a dilemma in the field of legal science: were the decisions of the Military Court justifed and fair? The objective of the paper is to deepen knowledge from the history of the development of military justice, as well as knowledge regarding specific events during 1944 in the part of the occupied Kingdom of Yugoslavia – southeastern Srem.
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In the last days of the Second World War, in the moments when the final operations for the liberation of Yugoslavia were coming to an end, and the outlines of the future Cold War and post‐war alliances were becoming clearer, the need to establish a peacetime armed force was imposed in front of the Yugoslav General Staff. An important segment in the establishment of the future armed forces was the organization and work methods of the military intelligence service. Previous war experiences, mostly based on the legacy of guerrilla military operations conducted by the partisan movement during the liberation and civil wars, could only be partially used in the process of peacetime formation of the military intelligence service. That is why it was necessary to create a new model that involved relying on national experiences, primarily the intelligence services of the Army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Second World War and the experience of the allied armies, especially the Soviet Red Army in the war conflict that was coming to an end. The study on the organization of the postwar military intelligence service with emphasis on the organization, scope of work and personnel of the Intelligence Department of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army was prepared by Colonel Frane Biočić. Colonel Biočić’s report contained the burden of the ideological and geopolitical environment in which it was written. Written near the end of the war in the conditions of the absolute triumph of the partisan movement under the leadership of the communists over the occupying, Quisling and rival anti‐fascist forces in the liberation and civil war, it contained the undisguised glorification of the partisan war heritage, as well as the negation of the value of the experiences of the pre‐war Yugoslav intelligence service, whose professional value was not only denied, but was already declared absolutely unusable due to open accusations against the professionalism and patriotism of its officers and associates. On the other hand, absolutely in accordance with the policy of close wartime alliance with the Red Army and projected post‐war cooperation, harmonization with the Soviet intelligence model was forced, reliance on the Soviet war experiences, the Soviet assistance in training and education of intelligence personnel was requested, and close cooperation along military intelligence lines was planned between the Yugoslav and Soviet General Staff.
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