Až příliš zaujaté vyvracení "černé legendy"

Author(s): Marek Šmíd / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2016

Guiducci, Pierluigi. Oltre la leggenda nera: Il Vaticano e la fuga dei criminali nazisti. Milan: Mursia, 2015, 430 pp., ISBN 978-8842555483.The book under review, by an Italian historian and lawyer, is about the attractive topic of the role of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly the Vatican, in helping Nazi war criminals to avoid justice after the Second World War and to escape to countries of Western Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. This dense work, which skilfully places the Vatican into international events after the Second World War, is based on the author’s many years of research in the archives not only of the Vatican, but also of other countries in Europe and America. The result is a well-supported argument against the surviving ideological clichés used by some historians and against the black-and-white way of looking at things used by journalists. The author absolutely rejects the idea that senior members of the Vatican consciously helped Nazi officials. This might make his approach seem too much like apologetics, but the final judgement, according to the reviewer, can only be made after the relevant records of the Vatican Secret Archives have been made public.

Politické ozvěny Buchenwaldu

Author(s): Jakub Šlouf / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2019

Moulis, Miloslav: Z mých vzpomínek. Prepared for publication by Lenka Kločková, Maria Chaloupková and Roman Štér. Prague: Národní archiv, 2016, 279 pp., ISBN 978-80-7469-052-5. The book "From my Memories" of the Czech historian, journalist, and publicist Miloslav Moulis (1921–2010) are a sequel of his previous book of memoirs, "Vlaky do neznáma" (Trains Heading for the Unknown) (Třebíč, Akcent 2011), which depicts the era of the first Czechoslovak Republic and the Nazi occupation during which the author, a member of the resistance movement, was imprisoned. The loose sequel starts with his return from the Buchenwald concentration camp and describes his life in post-war Czechoslovakia. As a Communist activist, he first held various administrative jobs and started studying history in the 1960s. In the reviewer’s opinion, Moulis’s memoirs may be beneficial for three aspects of historical studies: the evolution of political attitudes of low- and middle-level Communist officials in the 1950s and 1960s, the creation of post-war networks of personal relations within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in which alliances established during the Nazi internment were playing an important role, and the mutual union of reformist politicians and historiographers in the 1960s.

Ze vzpomínek Josefa Martínka, účastníka tří odbojů

Author(s): Martin Nekola / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2020

A native of Poděbrady, poet, editor of the socialist press, pedagogue and federal official, Josef “Joe”Martínek (23 March 1889 — 20 March 1980) lived in the United States from a young age and joinedall three resistance movements. He took part in Masaryk’s foreign action during the First WorldWar; as an official of the Czechoslovak National Council of America (ČSNRA), he was instrumental in fundraising for Edvard Beneš in the spring of 1939, thanks to which the former president wasable to initiate the struggle for the liberation of the republic following the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia; and, finally, he also aided exiles who fled Czechoslovakia after February 1948and found a new home overseas. This text is an as yet unpublished transcript of Martínek’s memoirs recorded by Zdeněk Hruban, founder of the Archive of Czechs and Slovaks Abroad at the University of ChicagoA native of Poděbrady, poet, editor of the socialist press, pedagogue and federal official, Josef “Joe” Martínek (23 March 1889 — 20 March 1980) lived in the United States from a young age and joined all three resistance movements. He took part in Masaryk’s foreign action during the First World War; as an official of the Czechoslovak National Council of America (ČSNRA), he was instrumental in fundraising for Edvard Beneš in the spring of 1939, thanks to which the former president was able to initiate the struggle for the liberation of the republic following the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia; and, finally, he also aided exiles who fled Czechoslovakia after February 1948 and found a new home overseas. This text is an as yet unpublished transcript of Martínek’s memoirs recorded by Zdeněk Hruban, founder of the Archive of Czechs and Slovaks Abroad at the University of Chicago

Promišljanja o kompoziciji kao topografiji memorije: Anahronijski diskurs Heinera Goebbelsa i Gertrude Stein u Songs of Wars I have seen

Author(s): Amila Ramović / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 1/2020

The paper examines the formative principles employed in Songs of Wars I have seen, a staged concert by the German composer Heiner Goebbels, grounded in the book Wars I Have Seen by the American writer Gertrude Stein. Goebbels’ work appropriates elements of Steins’s text on several levels, such as thematic and textual, as well as structural and formal. It also engages them at the level of global aesthetics and the formal principles that reflect Stein’s overall artistic ideology. Therefore, Songs of Wars I have seen can be interpreted as a platform for a multi-layered anachronic dialogue between the two artists.

Prominentní, povolení, nežádoucí, zakázaní...

Author(s): Kateřina Piorecká / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2021

With this research into the cultural policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the author demonstrates the importance of official lists, records and files of Czech writers in the process of creating a comprehensive system of regulation of Czech literature and culture in 1939–1945. She describes the administrative changes in the management of Czech culture at the time, which gradually became concentrated in the Ministry of Public Enlightenment under the leadership of Emanuel Moravec (1893–1945) and in the Office of the Reich Protector. The lists and records created within these institutions became the main instrument of this centralized management. This was accompanied by efforts to promote a new value orientation of Czech literature and culture through official propaganda and art critique. Despite the criteria for literature not being clearly formulated, the lists and records were meant to serve as a means to achieve the desired changes and to give preference to certain authors and works, or more precisely, to side line or exclude others from cultural activities. This led to the adoption of a number of measures aimed at direct regulation of activities in literature. The lists of authors determined which authors would be included in school reading lists, who would be allowed to appear publicly, who would escape forced labour in the Third Reich and who would be allowed to publish at all. In this context, the author points in more detail to the vast files “Record of Writers and Poets” (Evidence spisovatelů a básníků), which are stored as part of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment Collection in the National Archives in Prague, and the potential of which as a source of further research, not only in the field of literary history, but also into the Protectorate’s culture, cultural policy and everyday affairs, has not yet been exploited. In these lists, as well as in other related lists, the functionaries of the mentioned ministry collected standardized biographical data as well as data on the works of individual figures in the field of Czech literature (not only fiction writers and poets or dramatists, but also critics, publishers, journalists, translators and authors of professional works). The files also contain invaluable economic information (number of printed copies, publishing houses’ profits, and an overview of authors’ royalties) which not only influenced the authors, but also the regulation and planning of all activities in the field of literature. However, using some examples, the author also shows how the self-defence strategy of Czech culture was reflected in biographical portraits of authors prepared by anonymous ministerial functionaries, in which, for example, the former leftist orientation of prominent literary figures was downplayed and their indifference to politics and the significance of their work for the nation were highlighted. The annex to the article is an extract from the vast list of authors, printings of their works and their royalties, which was put together on the basis of the systematized data in the previously mentioned “Record of Writers and Poets”.

PROBLEMI NACIZMA U ISTORIOGRAFIJI NJEMAČKE DEMOKRATSKE REPUBLIKE

Author(s): Nusret Šehić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 7/1971

An attempt was made in the work to describe some of the most important results of the historical science in the German Democratic Republic in the area of more recent German history, more precisely, the history of the period between the two wars in Germany, including the Nazi dictatorship and the events leading up to it. The author particularly wished to point out those scholarly works which are not yet available to Yugoslav scholarship, being still unpublished doctoral dissertations. On the basis of the books, studies, and articles on the problem of Nazism published so far in the German Democratic Republic, the author came to the conclusion that the scholarly interest of the historians of the German Democratic Republic was directed toward the investigation of all those components that had contributed to the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany. In a number of works there is present a criticism of German bourgeois historiography, especially of those works concerning the role of the militaristic Prussia in the realization of the unification of Germany in 1871 and the role and general significance of militaristic circles of the German society in the German politics at the turn of the century. The historians of the German Democratic Republic concentrated their attention on investigating the roots of German imperialism and militarism as well as on exposing the illusions of the invincibility of German arms, which was especially true during the First and Second World Wars. The author tried in his work to systematize according to certain problem s the more important scholarly achievements of the historiography of the German Democratic Republic in the investigation of the Nazi movement. In the first place he pointed out those works dealing with the analysis of the main components of the Nazi ideology — race theory which in the political reality of Nazism assumed the forms of anti-semitism , pseudo-socialist demagogy, role and function of the so-called Fiihre-Prinzip, and some other questions —, also the works dealing with various aspects of the history of the Weimar Republic, in which time Nazism constituted itself ideologically and organizationally as a movement; further, those works dealing with foreign and internal policies of the Weimar Republic, especially in the realm of economics and development of economic relations. The author analyzed fairly exhaustively the works dealing with the history of the workers' movement before and after the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, In this respect and in this time an especially significant and interesting question represents the relationship between the communist and the social-democratic movements in Germany. The author also pointed out some weaknesses in the historiography of the German Democratic Republic in dealing with that question, weaknesses reflected in the uncritical acceptance of former appraisals by the participants in the German communist movement which were often used by historians as a starting¬ -point in their analyses and conclusions. Stating that in the German Democratic Republic there did not yet exist a synthetical work on the Nazi movement, and especially on the Nazi regime, the author in the conclusion of his article says that the monographs, studies, and articles published so far, in which certain aspects of the 'Nazi regime are dealt with rether exhaustively, at any event represent the best foundation for the final composition of a complete work on the most recent history in which the period of Nazi dictatorship would certainly have a prominent place.

ODJEK USTANKA AUSTRIJSKIH RADNIKA U SOCIJALISTIČKOJ I KOMUNISTIČKOJ ŠTAMPI JUGOSLAVIJE

Author(s): Ahmed Hadžirović,Ibrahim Karabegović / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 10/2/1974

Ustanak austrijskih radnika protiv neustavne fašističke vlade u februaru 1934. godine predstavlja, kako kaže jedan austrijski istoričar, slavnu stranicu u istoriji austrijskog i internacionalnog radničkog pokreta. Ni u jednoj drugoj zemlji srednje Evrope u to vrijeme nije se dogodio ni sličan primjer otpora nastupajućoj fašističkoj opasnosti.

Śladami nieznanych przedwojennych żydowskich kolekcjonerów i właścicieli dzieł sztuki

Author(s): Nawojka Cieślińska-Lobkowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 17/2021

In pre-war Poland there was a large group of Jewish collectors and owners of works of art, paintings in particular. The names of some of them appeared in the catalogs of prestigious exhibitions organized in Warsaw, Cracow or Lviv, while many others did not make their collections publicly available or have done so incognito. Almost all of them perished in the Holocaust, and their works of Polish (including Polish-Jewish) and foreign artists and their entire assets were lost as a result of Nazi confiscation or misappropriation by non-Jewish population. After the war, the existence of this deserving group for culture and art was completely erased from collective memory. It was only recently that the first publications devoted to certain representatives and communities of Polish Jewish collectors were published, combined with attempts to reconstruct their collections. These are isolated cases because they require difficult and often not fruitful archival research. One example of such an extensive and largely unresearched archive material of war loss questionnaires kept in many national archives. However, their usefulness in examining individual collections and their fate, as well as the fate of their Jewish owners, is limited. In this context, the greater is value of compensation files based on the the German Federal Restitution Law (BRüG) adopted in 1957, held in the Berlin Landesarchiv, since significant part of the holdings are applications of Polish Jews regarding their movable property appropriated by the Third Reich. This archive material, which has not yet been explored by Polish researchers, is a highly wealthy source of knowledge in many respects. There are files of tens of unknown (or completely forgotten) Polish Jewish art owners, including undeniable collectors.

Александар Животић. Московски гамбит. Југославија, СССР и продор Трећег рајха на Балкан (1938–1941). Београд: Clio, 2020, 709.

Author(s): Ljubodrag D. Dimić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2022

Historija i sjećanje: Novopazarski Jevreji

Author(s): Safet Bandžović / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 89-90/2022

Historija je višeznačan proces vraćanja na ljude i događaje iz prohujalih razdoblja. Definira se i kao "nauka o ljudima u vremenu". Ono što se uslovno rečeno naziva "lokalnom" historijom, mimo velikih narativa, ukazuje, potvrđuju raznolika iskustva, na višedimenzionalnost prošlosti, njene odlike i specifičnosti na određenom prostoru. Naselja su sazdana od zgrada, ali gradove čine i ljudi. Mala jevrejska sefardska zajednica u Novom Pazaru je, imajući u vidu njegov veliki ekonomski značaj, prema nekim navodima, postojala još od XVI stoljeća. Oni su u ovaj tadašnji osmanski privredni centar pristigli većinom iz Soluna i Sarajeva. Mahom su se bavili trgovačkim i zanatskim poslovima, dajući svoj doprinos privrednom i društvenom razvitku grada, preživljavajući i njegove razne krize i iskušenja tokom narednih stoljeća, sve do Drugog svjetskog rata. U Novom Pazaru je, pred rat 1941., živjela 61 jevrejska porodica s 247 članova. U martu 1942. ova zajednica je, svojim najvećim dijelom, mahom doživjela istu sudbinu poput one brojnih Jevreja u Srbiji pod nacističkom okupacijom. Nakon hapšenja i odvođenja na beogradsko Sajmište, bila je skoro uništena. Poslije rata neki od malobrojnih, preživjelih novopazarskih Jevreja otišli su u Izrael, ili su se preselili u Beograd. Od 1972. u Novom Pazaru nema Jevreja. Njihov historija je sastavni dio prošlosti ovog grada u kojem su živjeli više stoljeća.

ЊЕМАЧКА ПРОЦЈЕНА ВОЈНОПОЛИТИЧКЕ СИТУАЦИЈЕ У ЈУГОСЛАВИЈИ И РЕАГОВАЊЕ ОКУПАТОРА И ДОМАЋИХ КОНТРАРЕВОЛУЦИОНАРНИХ СНАГА НA ОДЛУКЕ ДРУГОГ ЗАСЈЕДАЊА АВНОЈ-а

Author(s): Rafael Brčić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 20/1984

The German assessment of the military and political situation in Yugoslavia in the fall of 1943 proceeded from the situation at the world fronts and the Yugoslav war theatre which had become very important for the Nazis. This territory should have been under their full control, mostly because of two basic reasons. Firstly, because of the danger of the Western Allies possible landing »somewhere at the Balkans«, and, secondly, because resources on the East, from where the Nazi armies had been pushed back, dried out.

DVA ZNANSTVENO KORISNA SKUPA

Author(s): Katica Tadić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 21/1985

U Opatiji 22, a u Rijeci 23. aprila održano je savjetovanje u povodu 40. obljetnice oslobođenja i pobjede nad fašizmom, pod nazivom PRILOZI ZA POVIJEST RIJEKE I OPATIJSKOG PODRUČJA. Savjetovanje su organizirali Društvo arhivskih radnika Zajednice općina Rijeka-Pazin i Povijesno društvo Rijeka u suradnji sa Centrom za historiju radničkog pokreta i NOR-a Istre, Hrvatskog primorja i Gorskog kotara (Rijeka), Historijskim arhivom (Pazin), Historijskim arhivom (Rijeka), Izdavačkim centrom (Rijeka), Muzejom narodne revolucije (Rijeka), Savezom društava arhivskih radnika Hrvatske (Zagreb) i Zavodom za povijesne i društvene znanosti IC JAZU (Rijeka).

THE UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT DURING THE TERMS OF KURT WALDHEIM

Author(s): Gabriel Zvîncă / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The United Nations Secretary-General is one of the most important figures on the international scene, as he is the main administrator of the biggest organization whose purpose is to preserve international peace and security. Given the importance of the United Nations, the Secretary-General holds an important role in offering a direction of the organization, a direction which can differ from one Secretary to another. The Secretary’s view over the UN has an influence over the Secretariat as well, the body being shaped in accordance with the administrator’s view.During the Cold War, especially, this position was very challenging as the Secretary had to both follow his prerogatives as they were stated in the UN Charter and given by the UN bodies but to also juggle the interests of the two superpowers. In this context, he needed to have a smart approach to the international crises and make the UN relevant in the challenges of international order.The present paper’s purpose is to analyse the Secretariat of the UN and the role of the Secretary-General in handling the international crises of the Cold War, with a case study on the term of Kurt Waldheim, who was the head of the UN from 1972 to 1981. The focus will be placed on the way the UN body is working, how each Secretary until Waldheim had an influence over the shape of the Secretariat, what was the life of Kurt Waldheim, how he was named the head of the UN, and what were the main actions taken by him during his terms.

MARIETTA SADOVA: FASCIST IDENTITIES AND POLITICAL COMPROMISE IN COMMUNIST ROMANIA

Author(s): Andrei Dălălău / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

After a brief period of liberalization in 1956, cultural politics in communist Romania went through an ideological radicalization between 1958 and the early 1960s, which led to intimidation campaigns, arrests, trials, and condemnations of several groups of interwar intellectuals. Director and actress Marietta Sadova was convicted in the 'Noica-Pillat' trial in March 1960. This paper aims to unravel the complex interaction between culture and politics through a qualitative analysis of Marietta Sadova's case study. The focus will be on the Securitate's surveillance, coercion methods, and narrative construction on one hand and the artist's surviving fascist identity, compromises made to survive, and the validity of cultural niches of existence on the other. The theoretical and methodological apparatus is built on new historiographical approaches to communist repression, including the ability of the secret police to construct and politically instrumentalize guilt narratives. The results suggest that the interaction between the interwar intellectuals and the communist authorities was neither unidirectional nor unitary but multi-layered and mutually depended on negotiations and concessions, as well as on the secret police agents' newly acquired methods of creating and repressing 'hostile' social networks.

Wpływ panteizmu na politykę

Author(s): Jacek Breczko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 33/2022

In this article I present – in a very general way – the influence of various types of pantheism on the broadly understood sphere of politics. I distinguish between – and sketch the historical background of – three types of pantheism: harmonious, dynamic, and emanative. I argue that after the defeat of dynamic pantheism (the political effects of which were Nazism and Communism), we are now dealing with a qualitative upheaval in Western civilization and culture, which – from the philosophical point of view – is driven by a new type of harmonious pantheism. It binds (as their common and integrating part) three powerful cultural streams within the so-called “high culture”: radical ecological philosophy and environmental ethics, new spirituality, and post-humanism. This wave strikes with a particular force the main components of the modern Platonic-Christian-Enlightenment paradigm (I distinguish five) and – related to the latter – liberalism in politics. I express a concern that by fighting the flaws of the old paradigm and replacing it with a new one – harmonious pantheism (prompting us to think utopian and anti-individualistic) – “we throw the baby out with the bathwater” and “we jump out of the frying-pan into the fire.”

Głosy z „Ostatniego kręgu” – między życiem a śmiercią, przeszłością a uniwersum czasowym

Author(s): Elżbieta M. Kur / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2022

Inspired by the book Voices from the “Last Ring”: Józef Kret and Zofia Hoszowska-Kretowa’s Correspondence from the Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (Katowice 2020), this article contains a reflection on Nazism, education, science and ideology in the Third Reich. The reason for taking up these issues and the main topic of the article is the rich contextuality in this interpretative approach to Voices from the “Last Ring”. The research methodology indicated in the article is primarily the text-oriented and the contextual analysis and interpretation, which takes into account other perspectives (e.g., editorial, bibliological, genological, historical, and cultural). The value of the source publication analyzed here consists in its rich contextuality, which prompts research in such areas as, for example, science and education in totalitarian systems, epistolography, and censorship.

VOJNA INDUSTRIJA U BOSNI I HERCEGOVINI I VOJNO PRIVREDNI INTERESI NACISTIČKE NJEMAČKE

Author(s): Seka Brkljača / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 28/1999

The industrial potentials of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as the potentials of the entire Yugoslavia until 1941, were not mobilised as war potentials of the country. Though, the raw materials basis and the industrial capacity set conditions and possibilities to meet the essential economic demands of the army. Only by the outbreak of World War II, 1939, some measures were taken in planning the military industry development. The state forced also private ventures, but the entire military industry will face the year 1941, military and technically, unprepared. The war industry, in a narrow sense, which existed in B-H prior to war in April 1941, due to the military economic interests and needs of the Third Reich, including the complete potentials in B-H, reached a new quality, namely the war industry. It used to be a part of the “Complementary economic region” in the South East Europe, to contribute the needs in war. The armed anti-fascist movement broke the economic peace, a basic assumption of the Third Reich to put to work the imagined models and organisation in Bosnia - Herzegovina. Instead a system of repression, primarily of the armed forces was introduced.

Rob Riemen, Walczyć z tą epoką. O faszyzmie i humanizmie

Author(s): Konrad Majkowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2022

Review of: Konrad Majkowski - Rob Riemen Walczyć z tą epoką. O faszyzmie i humanizmie, przeł. A. Oczko, Universitas, Kraków 2020, ss. 143.

Bosnians in Subcarpathian Fights, against Czechoslovakian Soldiers and in the "Ragged guards"

Author(s): Zoltán Róbert Bolek / Language(s): English Issue: 7/2022

Before the outbreak of World War II, under the leadership of the German Empire, European countries redrawed the borders of Central European nations in several steps. Within the framework of these great power games, the boundaries of the newly formed Slovakia and its southern neighbor Hungary were marked in 1938 so none of the parties were really happy with the decision. The Hungarian side determined to command paramilitary units in addition to the professional army to the reclaimed territories, including Transcarpathia. Thus, the Ragged Guard, which was dismantled in 1921, was reactivated. The topic of this paper addresses how the Ragged Guard was reorganized from October 1938 onwards, and how roughly 30 to 40 armed men of Bosnian descent joined its contingent that had contained a high number Slav and Balkanic people in the early 1920s. This paper looks at all the preparations that lvan Hejjas has made to get the soldiers who have been disarmed for almost two decades to be reintroduced to the military life. This paper will argue that the Bosnian soldiers thus "enlisted" were essentially unprepared for the mobilization, did not have adequate clothing and armaments, and this may explain why, although they initially had military success, suffered heavy losses when the Hungarian army in the spring of 1939 headed east through the Carpathians against the Soviet Union. This study examines Hungarian archival sources and analytical work in Hungarian, as well as an interview with a Hungarian soldier who was present on the spots where the Bosnian paramilitarists were the most active, in order to prove that the Bosnian soldiers operating in Transcarpathia were the bravest and most determined in Hejjas' unit.

Izvještaj sa Naučne manifestacije „Historijski pogledi 4"

Author(s): Jasmin Jajčević / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 7/2022

Izvještaj sa Naučne manifestacije „Historijski pogledi 4", Centar za istraživanje moderne i savremene historije Tuzla, Tuzla, 19. i 20. novembar 2021. Godine