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The review of: Angelika Benz, Handlanger der SS. Die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust, Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2015, 309 s.
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The review of: Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014 (seria „New Studies in European History Series”), 297 s.
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Review of: Anna Malinowska and Brunatna Kołysanka, "Historie Uprowadzonych Dzieci" Wydawnictwo Agora, Warszawa 2017, Ss. 358 by: Alicja Bartnicka
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This study explores one of the most important writer Anna Seghers’ work called The Dead Stay Young. It is considered important as it reflects Hitler’s impact on German society socially and psychologically. The novel was analysed in the context of narcissism and otherness and these themes were scrutinized through the novel characters.
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František Bartík. Vzpomínky chovance Jaroslava Vojtěcha a historie táborů nucené práce. Prague: Academia, 2014, 254 pp., ISBN 978-80-200-2328-5; Staša Fleischmannová. Vrstvami. Prague: Torst, 2014, 220 pp., ISBN 970-80-7215-471-5; Martin Flosman. Padre a Rebe: Vojenští duchovní československé zahraniční armády u Tobruku a Dunkerque. (Traumata války, vol. 4.) Prague: Epocha, 2015, 290 pp., ISBN 978-80-7425-260-0; Jiří Kocian, Vít Smetana and others. Květnové volby 1946 – volby osudové? Československo před bouří. (Prostopravdy, vol. 4.) Prague: Euroslavica, 2014, 244 pp., ISBN 978-80-87825-09-9; Gerhard Scholten. Mezi všemi tábory: Život v době, která zešílela. Prague: Argo and Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, 2015, 265 pp., ISBN 978-80257-1708-0 and 978-50-87912-40-9
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U Bosni i Hercegovini period Drugog svjetskog rata obilježavaju drugarice, ilegalke, komunistkinje, borkinje, partizanske ljekarke i narodne heroine. Žene počinju da se uključuju u politiku postajući članice Komunističke partije Jugoslavije i javlja se sve veća želja da javno djeluju. Prvi put se javlja ideja o ravnopravnosti spolova te se dovode u pitanje stereotipi i tradicionalne vrijednosti, što rezultira stvaranjem organizacije Antifašističkog fronta žena.
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The author illustrates how Croatian Presidents Franjo Tuđman and Stjepan Mesić have interpreted the anti-fascist struggle during the Second World War. Especially interesting are the author’s comments on the use of particular historical events in the political context. Additionally, the author reviews different perspectives about antifascism in Croatia in the post-Yugoslav era.
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The purpose of the article is to present the fate of the so-called “indomitable” soldiers [żołnierze wyklęci] and their myth, cultivated from 1989 onwards. In 1945, these soldiers, refusing to accept new orders in a country led by communists supported by the USSR, decided to continue the fight. At the end of the war there were 120,000-180,000 of them out of which 13,000-17,000 fought in partisan units. Two years later, there were only about 2,000 of them left. They represented different social groups and attitudes. Among them there were former soldiers of the Home Army [Armia Krajowa], but also people who were associated with the extremely nationalistic organization, the National Armed Forces [Narodowe Siły Zbrojne]. In the time of the Polish People’s Republic, they were all considered as bandits and fascists. After 1989, when interest in the anti-communist armed underground was revived, the myth of unrelenting soldiers, soldiers who had been cursed, doomed, was born. The “Indomitable” Soldiers National Remembrance Day [Narodowy Dzień Pamięci Żołnierzy Wyklętych] was established in 2011. However, the assessment of “indomitable” is far from unambiguous. There were patriots, righteous people among them whose fate was often tragic. But there were also those who were ready to cooperate with the Germans or who were responsible for the deaths of innocent people.
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The paper deals with early 20th-century phenomenon of European conservatism and fascism as vague and frequently overlapping categories with very strong cultural and local colouring. Aiming at clarification of vague and hardly distinguishable concepts and ideas resulting from so-called nazi-fascist Zeitgeist, the author assumes radically pluralist perspective where fascism and conservatism are viewed as elastic and mutually overlapping categories depending on local "tradition-modernity" relation. It is presumed that deeper contextualization can lead to radically pluralist rather than essentialist understanding of both concepts. The paper assumes perspective of so-called limited comparison and identifies Iberian and French cases as closely related because of their common element of conservatism and traditionalism. Whereas Franquist and Salazarist regimes are conceived as essentially conservative (former using hybrid rhetoric of "catholic fascism", latter eliminating philo-fascist right compeletely and maintaining conservative rhetorics), the French one constitutes unique case of coexistence of both rights. The pluralistic perspective is further sharpened when the author refers to the three recent and very different concepts of fascism (Sternhell, Taguieff, Griffin). Whereas Sternhell's concept of "illuminisme – anti-illuminisme" does not allow any clear differentiation between fascism and conservatism, Taguieff's interpretation views both as an extension of older 19th-century counter-revolutionary right and its fight against ubiquitous "decadence" and Griffin interprets fascism as a further expression of artistic modernism and its vision of "end of times".
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Antonio Gramsci, having an important place in Marxist thought tradition, made theoretically original and important contributions to the fascism analysis. In this context, Gramsci analyzed the conjuncture, ensuring the development of fascism as a movement and then its accession to power, in Italian political life after the First World War in political and class contexts and also pointed out the crucial role of petit bourgeoisie during that period. Moreover, he made some predicts about the fascist up period in Italy in line with his analyses. According to the dialectical method he used, while he was analyzing the development of fascism in Italy, he competently presented the dichotomies imposed to the society by the Italian capitalism, being in a crisis, dichotomies emerged from the different tendencies in the fascist movement and also the dichotomies arising from the difference of opinion between the communists in their struggle against fascism. The fascism analyses of Gramsci, whose thoughts on fascism maintain their importance even today, are examined in this study.
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The article “The Consequences of the WWII in the Memory Culture of Lithuania: Contexts, Evaluations, and Tangles” seeks to disclose tendencies and problems in a political, academic, and popular discourses related to the immortalization and evaluation of the WWII and its consequences in the memory culture of Lithuania and Central and Central East Europe (CCEE). These historical and methodological problems – first of all linked to the perception of totalitarianism and Stalinism – in this paper are named as an entangled memory. In order to mark the sharpest angles of an entangled memory, this paper proposes some reflections from different academic and institutional perspectives in Lithuania. First of all, what methodological tensions originated in the academic discourse after the Prague declaration (2008) and the various subsequent charters of the EU Parliament when the communist (Stalinist) crimes were compared to the Nazi crimes by politicians and academics from the CCEE region? Why this conception was ignored by the prominent Western (leftist and liberal) scholars, and what different roles the narrative of the Holocaust plays in Western and CCEE memory cultures? Secondly, why an attempt “from bellow” to immortalize the cultural memory about the Soviet crimes in Lithuania and the CCEE is perceived as a manifestation of the ultra-nationalism but not as anti-Communism, and vice versa, how the Communist experience, the resistance movements, and the cultural memory of the Soviet victims became the object of political manipulation within the CCEE countries (both in the Left and the Right wings)? I argue that an attempt to create the homogeneous “great historical narrative” about the Communist past has failed, but this is not seen as a disadvantage. Moreover, it is a consequence of the natural heterogeneity of the collective memories when different social agents (victims, collectives, nations, etc.) are competing due to the management of the various memory places (memorials, museums, commemorations, etc.) which could be perceived as a “dissonant heritage” (Tunbridge and Ashworth). The homogeneity of the post-war Europe’s memory culture (Nazism and Holocaust vs. Communism and Stalinist repressions) is an unattainable goal, but a convergence towards the more intimate knowledge in the scientific discourse about these asymmetric totalitarian regimes is possible. The final chapter suggests that the critically re-evaluated concept of the totalitarianism paradigm is the most appropriate methodological instrument in order to understand the experience and history of Nazism and Communism in the 20th century
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After Mussolini has become the leader of Italy, Romanità increasingly starts to invade fascist propaganda. Romanità helped the promotion of imperial policies of the regime and in fact meant that the „spirit of the ancient Romans” was reborn in modern Italians. The Mostra Archeologica of 1911 played an important role in the promotion of ancient Rome and it’s values among the modern Italians. The Fascists used even further the concept of Romanità. By reshaping Rome and promotion through exhibitions of Augustus they tried to connect themselves with the founder of the Roman Empire. The glorious traditions of imperial Rome were reused to give legitimacy to a dictator who, increasingly, considered himself the incarnation of Augustus, but ultimately failed.
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Unique collection of accounts, diaries, memoirs, letters, reports, leaflets, press and literary works created in the Warsaw Ghetto. The material comes from an archive that Jews gathered during the war to document the life of Jewish community inside the Ghetto.
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The paper deals with the archival processing of the material from the Second World War period (200 running metres, 650 group records and collections), which was produced by various bodies, organisations and military units of the National Liberation Movement and is now deposited in the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia. The material has been classified according to origin and, within individual group records, according to classification schemes. The received material is regularly kept separately from the issued. This basic method of document depositing was used in wartime conditions until Autumn 1944. Towards the end of the war, the situation on the liberated territory allowed a more ordered correspondence and, especially, an exercise of control over the deposited archives. This enabled the Executive Committee of the National Liberation Front, the Slovenian National Liberation Council and other organisations to begin subject classification of the received and issued documents.
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Cas, v katerem je nastajalo arhivsko gradivo, o katerem bom govoril, ni bil naklonjen niti njegovemu nastajanju niti njegovemu varstvu. Ob nenehnem okupatorjevem zasledovanju vseh pojavov upornosti strogo ilegalni način političnega delovanja, v katerem so vsaj v prvem obdobju prevladovali članek, letak in ustna beseda, prav gotovo ni bil primeren za nastajanje kakšnih večjih količin pismenega gradiva. In še to, kar je nastalo, ni bilo varno pred uničenjem, saj vojni požar in pustošenje ne prizanašata niti človeku samemu niti njegovim stvaritvam. Ne moremo torej pričakovati, da bi v vojnem času nastalo toliko arhivskega gradiva kot v mirnem in da bi se od nastalega gradiva ohranilo v. vojnih letih toliko kot v mirnih. Sodim, da nimamo v arhivih niti tretjine tistega gradiva, ki je nastalo v letih vojne na našem ozemlju. [...]
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It is the intention of this article to objectively present the motifs and the out standing socio-cultural climate during the first years of the World War II, which determined the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, Aristides Sousa Mendes, a Righteous Among the Nations, to disobey the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs regulations by issuing thousands of visas, free of charge, to mainly Jewish war refugees in order to facilitate their flight from Nazi occupied Europe, using Lisbon as their departure harbor.
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This article examines changes in the Holocaust/Shoah presentation in literature throughout the several past decades. According to Alvin H. Rosenfeld, the Holocaust is not percieved as an authentic historical event these days and slowly becomes a shared symbol of evil or entertainment. Rosenfeld warns about the possible “end of the Holocaust” in public consciousness. Short stories and novels by Arnošt Lustig are good examples of these changes. Later books by the author accentuate the harsher side of life in the camps (violence, brutality, hetero- and homosexual prostitution, lack of unity among the prisoners etc.). He often records stories of young Jewish girls and women. Their beauty and youth form a moving contrast to the horrors of the Shoah. In the novelette Colette, for instance, many conventional images are used in the narrative. Credibility of presented figures disappears very often, they are “omnipresent” and “omniscient” almost like the famous Forrest Gump. By using various information and statements reproduced by these characters, the author constructs a kind of Auschwitz-Birkenau encyclopedia. The result of this is the loss of authenticity. At the same time, though, a lot of data of this “encyclopedia” is inaccurate. Lustig uses elements of thriller and romance. In works by other well-known authors who write about the Holocaust, various elements can be found: elements of thriller (Jonathan Littell), fantasy, comics, horror as well as porn films (Igor Ostachowicz). Literary texts by both Littel and Ostachowicz are full of violence, brutality and sexual scenes. Like Lustig, Jonathan Littell has created an encyclopedia of Nazi crimes during the WWII with implausible characters and situations in his novel The Kindly Ones. In contrast to Lustig and Littell, Night of the Living Jews by Ostachowicz is more original and impressive. It also brings actual questions concerning the past and relations between Poles and Jews.
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