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Fritz Bauer and his Late Recognition in the Federal Republic of Germany
Germany is an example of a country which has been implementing transitional justice for decades and is still active in this field. What is more, contemporary Germans have recently come to terms with their not-so-distant past and their negligence in this area by showing the falsehood, backwardness, and injustice as negative foundations of the young Federal Republic. This article evokes the person of Fritz Bauer, the prosecutor in the state of Hessen. His struggle for human dignity and the memory of his achievements after his death exemplify an accomplished case of transitional justice and the memory of it. During his lifetime he contributed to bringing to trial numerous Nazi criminals, even at the cost of habitual threats and disregard. Forgotten for a few decades, Bauer and his legacy have been recently rediscovered and studied. Eventually, Bauer became a movie character and was finally brought back to the collective memory of Germans. The belated, but a well-deserved wave of popularity of Fritz Bauer in the German culture memory proves that reflections on the transitional justice are still topical and important.
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On 27 July 1944, in a well-known pastry shop lodged in the Buda foothills, plainclothesmen of the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie attempted to arrest Endre Sagvari, leader of the Young Communists. Before he was killed, Sagvari managed to wound three of the agents with his revolver. An intellectual with a doctoral degree in law, he was thirty-one years of age and belonged to a well-to-do Jewish family. Far from making him a rarity, Sagvliri's origins and education typified the membership of the country's minuscule underground Communist party (400 members in 1936 and around 20 at liberty in 1942). Not even his courage was extraordinary, for within Hungary's anti-Nazi movement, the Communists (and some small Zionist groups) were known to be the bravest and the most likely to fight it out with the Germans and the Hungarian authorities. [...]
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In the 36,525 days of the twentieth century, between 100 and 160 million civilians lost their lives at hand of mass-murder, slaughter and massacres – that is an average of more than 3.000 innocent deaths per day. The pace has not slackened in the new millennium: statistically speaking, September 11 was an ordinary day. In his lecture, Zygmunt Bauman outlines and analyses the efforts made to solve the mystery that more perhaps than any other keeps ethical philosophers awake at night: the mystery of unde malum (Whence the Evil?) and, more specifically and yet more urgently, of “How do good people turn evil?” The latter is, succinctly put, the secret of the mysterious transmogrification of caring family people and friendly and benevolent neighbours into monsters.
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The chief aim of the foreign minority policies of nazi Germany was to secure the acknowledgement of „völkisch” German minorities as an officially organised ethnic group (Volksgruppe) with autonomy rights. But during World War II the integrative ethnic policy with regard to the Germans was gradually pushed to the background by an exclusion policy which the nazi regime applied to the „inferior” peoples and races, and took the form of prosecution and extermination on the basis of ethnicity and religion. Despite the discriminative „Jewish Laws” (1938, 1939), the Hungarian Jewry lived relatively undisturbed under the regime of governor Miklós Horthy. Dramatic change came in this regard with the German occupation of the country (19 March 1944). Then started the stigmatization, ghettoization and deportation of the Jews – predominantly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The exact number of martyrs is still hotly debated. According to the most authoritative scholarly opinions, the number of deported Jewish victims can be put to between 440 and 550 thousand. Yet in political parlance and public history the round and symbolic figure of 600 thousand has become rooted. Another debated issue is whether the prosecution by the nazis of the Sintis and Roma was done on racial grounds, or they were treated as so-called anti-social elements. The number of Gypsies deported to extermination camps from Hungary can be put to a couple of thousand. From the late 1930s the claim of instrumentalizing the German minorities in the service of the aggressive foreign political aims of the Third Reich became increasingly evident. In Hungary this role was assumed by the so-called Volksbund (People’s Association of Germans in Hungary). From the start of World War II, a new element in the policies of nazi Germany towards the foreign Germans appeared, which can be termed as the idea of „return” to the Empire („Heim ins Reich”). In order to accomplish the re-settlement plans, the Germans concluded interstate treaties with almost all countries in Europe where German minorities lived. (The agreement with Hungary was signed on 29 May 1940, but it was never put into effect.) In the eastern regions occupied during the war an overt and brutal Germanizing policy was implemented, based on the Generalplan Ost, which had been elaborated in offices of the SS specially assigned to this task. In the foreign policies of the Federal Republic of Germany, especially under the aegis of the Brandtian Ostpolitik, considerable emphasis was put on relations with the states belonging to the former German settlement area, such as Hungary, and on strengthening the bridge-function of those German minorities which had remained there after refuge and deportation in the war.
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One of the characteristic traits of Romanian fascism is rooted in the fact that it came to power after the majority of its political élite had been ordered to be killed, without even lipservice to legal formalities, by king Charles II. Having forced the removal of the king, general Antonescu needed mass support, and consequently ceded part of the power to the Iron Guard, alias the Legion of Saint Michael the Archangel. As this measure led to political chaos, the general suppressed the Legion and persecuted its members with all possible means. During the five months of legionary domination, the young literate elite faced the task of defining what exactly the legionary revolution meant. The philosopher Constantin Noica mainly legalized vengeance with his pseudo-theological articles. Cioran, the anti-philosopher, adopted a peculiar tactics by glorifying on the one hand Codreanu, the assassinated leader of the Iron Guard, thereby relativising the greatness of his successor Horia Sima, and writing about Transylvania as Romania’s Prussia on the other hand, thereby strengthening the legitimacy of Sima, himself a Transylvanian. While the legionarism of the historian Petre P. Panaitescu is generally explained by his ambitions, he was in fact guided in his production of stereotyped fascist journalism by his conviction that the contemporary state of Romania’s development was best matched by fascist modernization. Traian Herseni, a great promise of Romanian sociology, began to promulgate primitive racial theory. Paradoxically, all four intellectuals were capable of drawing a more positive program in the 1930s, when the Iron Guard was still excluded from power, than in the period of its political dominance. Yet through their cult of vengeance, leadership and race, all four paved the way before the communists and their cult of class struggle, of the Party and its leader and of the working classes in general. Cioran was alone in reneging on his fascist record, the other three intellectuals gradually found their place in the anti-intellectual intellectual framework of the national communist system.
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Vladimir Solonari, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2019, 328 pp.
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Európa és Magyarország a 20. században
“The Train of History” by Mária Ormos invites the reader to two different „journeys”. Reception of both, history and historiography. It is a comprehensive study with author’s vision on Europe, focusing on the Hungarian history and Hungarian identity.
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The independence of the Republic of Estonia was proclaimed exactly today 92 years ago. Today is Independence Day in Estonia. Estonia lost its independence in 1940 according to the secret protocol of the non-aggression agreement between the Communist Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and did not regain it after the end of the WWII. Th e occupation and annexation of the Baltic States was never recognised by the United States of America and other Western countries. Estonian diplomatic representations were active in the United States and the United Kingdom for the duration of the Cold War. Estonian passports issued by these representations were accepted as valid travel documents in many Western countries.
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The Institute was founded based on Act No. 181/2007 Coll. passed by the Parliament of the Czech Republic. It assumed work on 1 February, 2008. Its mission includes the study and evaluation of the period of Nazi occupation and communist rule in former Czechoslovakia, the anti-democratic and criminal activities of the state, especially its security services, and of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia; the analysis and documentation of the reasons for the liquidation of the democratic regime, and of the active support for and resistance against the dictatorships, as well as the documentation of Nazi and communist crimes. Through and together with its subordinate entity, the Security Services Archive which administers over 18 km of files, the Institute acquires relevant documents, ensures their digitisation and makes them accessible to the public. The Institute’s further mission is to raise awareness, disseminate information and educate the public, in cooperation with like-minded institutions and persons at home and abroad.
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The distinction between kinds of guilt has not lost its power to illuminate matters, and it remains a great tool to study the consequences of forgetting guilt of any kind. Karl Jaspers made the distinction between kinds of guilt mainly to ease the Germans coping with guilt, as all of them were blamed for the evil that happened under Adolf Hitler. Jaspers believed that in using this distinction the German nation could have come back to its origins, and thus purified, take its part in the possible future unity of the world and of all mankind. But soon after World War II ended, a confluence of political, social, psychological and philosophical factors contributed to a situation in which a large number of culprits were not brought to account: criminals were rarely rightly punished. In addition, many Germans believing in the ideology of National Socialism felt no guilt in terms of morality; they downplayed the political guilt; they negated the very existence of the metaphysical guilt. The process of forgetting guilt occurred.
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The principal research question pursued by this work is as follows: How do the Republic of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine present one another in their history curricula and textbooks? How do the history textbooks of each of these three countries present the relationship between majorities and minorities?This book is thus focused on two main objectives: first, to generate improved understanding of the state of the discipline of history in these countries via discussion of reforms to and debates around history curricula in each country, and second, to shed light on the ways in which history textbooks in each of the three countries represent the other two and their peoples.Curriculum development and textbook production in all three countries still remain centralised. Textbooks are produced by state and private publishing houses. Most textbooks are curriculum-based and developed according to the guidelines issued by the Ministries of Education. Through their textbook publishing policy, these ministries control the content and quality of textbooks. History curricula and textbooks in all three countries have progressed, but we still encounter many problems. Among them are the following:• the content of curricula and history textbooks continues to place too much emphasis on national aspects to the detriment of the world, regional, and local dimensions of history;• it reflects the history of wars and violence instead of giving more space to periods of peaceful coexistence, cooperation and cultural communication, or of mutual enrichment between various social groups as well as between nations;• it neglects regional history and cultural and historical links with neighbouring countries;• as it stands, it causes problems in history education and the development of ethnic identity, as well as the relationship between “Us” and “Others”;• it leads to or accepts poor textbook design.The relationship between national and European history remains a closely debated topic in all three societies. Their shared reality, as evidenced by this study, is that all three countries are currently not presenting one another in any meaningful way in their history textbooks at all educational levels. In all three countries, history education and textbooks are dominated by political history and narratives of victimisation. National histories do not pay attention to their neighbours.History textbooks play an important part in the process of collective identity formation, building a relationship with the past and creating an image of the “other”. The content of textbooks determines, in many cases, students' attitudes to their neighbours. Therefore, in order to improve the situation in history education and to develop a tolerant approach to “others” in history textbooks, there is a great need for joint efforts by politicians, professionals and members of civil society in Moldova, Romania and Ukraine.
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The author of the present paper focuses on the relationship between the individual and the power in a totalitarian state of absurd, created in Russian prose of Vladimir Nabokov. According to the author of the article, by describing totalitarian reality, the Russian writer deals with the problem of human oppression and asks about the reasons for this state of affairs. He shows areas of growing opposition and builds in the reader strength needed to rebel.
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Article promoting communist ideology about the activity of the Romanian Communist Party for mobilizing the peasant masses in the anti-fascist struggle, 1934-1940.
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András Kun was an emblematic figure among the executed members of the Arrow Cross Party accused of crimes against the civilians of Budapest in 1944-1945. Dozens of articles were published about his actions, arrest and trial before the National Court, not only in the post-war press, but his personality was a topic from time to time in the scientific and historical literature, as well as in belles-lettres. The recognition of the alleged and actual crimes of the former Minorite monk who was involved in various atrocities committed by the Arrow Cross units were known at the time when they actually happened, becoming widely known to the general public after his arrest. As I noted earlier in the papers of Létünk Journal (KURUCZ 2018: 173–193), exploring his activity with all the details today is completely an impossible task. The present study is therefore limited to presenting events that, outside the court proceedings against Andras Kun, can be compared to testimonies in other litigation and memoirs independent of the investigative or judicial proceedings.
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Social mobility is a relatively common phenomenon in society; however, in the period of the Slovak State (1939–1945) it was predominantly caused by the economic and social engineering of the single ruling Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party. Anti-Semitism was made one of the main pillars of the internal state policy. Systematic pauperisation of the Jewish community gradually affected each perspective of everyday life of Jews in Slovakia, including the limitation of Jewish people’s living space. This practice led to involuntary moving out from houses and flats in designated urban zones. Subsequently, this process culminated in the Aryanization of the housing formerly owned by Jews. The main aim of this contribution is to analyse spatial and social consequences of the reshaping of the Jewish housing opportunities with special interest in the entangled social mobilities of both Jews and Gentiles, which will be mainly exemplified through selected cases from the Banská Bystrica district.
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There has been always been a great buzz around Valerián Bystrický. It is not different even today. His study is almost continuously occupied by his friends, colleagues and pupils. They work not only at his household institution – the Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences – but also at other scholarly institutions and universities. They come to him for a friendly chat and to discuss their professional issues expecting his opinion and advice. Authors who participated on this publication represent a small sample of them. The topics included in this book represent a very broad and colorful spectrum and the same can be said about the view and professional erudition of Dr. Bystrický. It would be not very useful to list all the topics he has dealt with. They can be found in the selected bibliography of his writings at the end of this book. It doesn’t matter if he is dealing with European or Slovak history; the 1st and 2nd Czechoslovak republic or the war Slovak republic; politics, personalities or society – all his works are characterized by comprehension, detachment and great knowledge of sources. He doesn’t belong to theoreticians or speculative methodologists of various systems and –isms. He goes to the problem always in medias res. His method is the accurate documentation of historical processes and consistent knowledge about the searched topic and sources. That is how his pertinent works based on arguments had been created. Many of them belong to fundamental and pioneering works of our historiography. We must admire the curiousness and interest of Dr. Bystrický for new problems. We can say that a man with such an erudition and detachment can’t be surprised easily. It is a gift or a privilege that there is always something which he is interested in – he is still able to contemplate and to think intensely about historical and social problems. He is a proponent of the necessity to always take a clear and resolute stand to key questions. He is not shy to let his positive or negative attitude be known. The latter possibility brought numerous stories, occasional good-hearted acrimonies and anecdotes that are still very popular. They originated from the fact that he is a well-known enemy of smallmindedness and petty wars. As he often says: „Something is always going to happen.” For a scholar of his caliber, one must admire the graciousness of Dr. Bystrický which has an extra significance in the scholarly circles. In connection with his natural authority, it has a special value mainly for the middle generation of today’s historians. He has always treated them with human understanding and they have had the opportunity to cooperate with a wise and helpful man.
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