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The study analyses the reactions of members of the Slovak army stationed on the Eastern Front to the emerging genocide against the Jewish population in the conditions of Nazi occupation during the first weeks of the war. On the basis of the avail¬able sources, the author states that under the influence of the propaganda, which accused the Jews of supporting the Bolshevik regime, intense anti-Semitic feelings also resounded among the Slovak soldiers at the front. Many soldiers, including the highest representatives of the army, openly approved of violence against the Jews as an act of just revenge, even when it acquired the character of genocide. In some cases, there was voluntary participation by soldiers in anti-Jewish pogroms carried out by the local population. The author also analyses the official attitude of the leadership of the army to violence against Jews, and describes it as ambivalent. The author also considers the reaction of the Ľudák representatives in Slovakia, who increased their anti-Jewish rhetoric and radicalized their anti-Jewish measures including preparations to deport the Jews to the Nazi extermination camps, in spite of the fact that they knew that genocide was beginning.
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The subject matter of land reform and the related issue of ensuring that land was owned by ethnic Slovaks, had already appeared in Slovakia in the time of autonomy after 6 October 1938. Reflections about the change of land ownership from the beginning referred not only to Jews, but also to the land of foreigners, the land allotted within the 1st land reform, as well as to the land of Slovaks. The prepared land reform was supposed to compensate for the iniquities caused by the 1st land reform and return the land back “to the hands of those who truly work on it”. Unlike the owners of shops and enterprises, Jewish landowners did not represent a very large class of people, but even in spite of this fact, the following Aryanization of this Jewish land property was subject to corruption. The local and state authorities as well as common people participated in the process of transferring Jewish land into the hands of “Aryans”. However the Slovak government failed in its effort to create a strong middle class of peasants who would support Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party.
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This article aims at presenting the way in which a doctor, who is at the same time a prisoner in Dachau and Auschwitz camps, manages to resist during three years of physical and mental torture in these camps and in the end to survive. From his experience in the camp, he discovered the way to escape from the horrors of everyday life, that is by psychically detaching from everything that was connected to pain. Being a specialist in psychiatry, the author analysed the behaviour of his colleagues and discovered that only by cultivating forms of art and by developing one’s sense of humor, one could cope with the injustice and cruel treatment from the camp. In the end, these tools of psychical detachment proved to be the only ways in which the prisoner could hope of survival. Therefore, there are many examples in which one can learn from the prisoners in the camp that by laughing or by trying to see the best in every circumstance, even in the worst ones, one can overcome any hardships.
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In my essay I investigated the case of some Hungarian Jewish women writers from Romania, whose work was forgotten, or never reached any wider audience. While belonging to a triple minority (Hungarian, Jewish, woman), one can hardly identify them as part of the (Hungarian) holocaust literature, or literature at all. The essay demonstrates a few cases and processes of how such works disappear from memory, parallel to the holocaust-memory. Due to the conflict of the authors with political regime and emigration, their work became completely invisible today.
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The study is devoted to the participation of the notable Slovak writer Ľudovít Mistrík-Ondrejov in the Aryanization of Jewish property in Slovakia in the period 1939–1945. The fact that Ľudovít Mistrík-Ondrejov profited from the Aryanization of Jewish firms is relatively well-known and was already publicized in connection with the bookshop owning Steiner family, whose business Mistrík-Ondrejov Aryanized. The present study is a comprehensive study of the Aryanizing activities of Ľ. Mistrík-Ondrejov, covering not only the Aryanization of the Steiner bookshop, but also of the Känzler Brothers firm in Bratislava from which Ľ. Mistrík-Ondrejov personally profited. The study provides hitherto unknown fact about both Ľ. Mistrík-Ondrejov’s Aryanizations.
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It was in 1975 that Tomas Venclova, writing in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, first trenchantly raised the hitherto largely avoided topic of relations between Lithuanians and Jews with special emphasis on issues of personal and national Lithuanian responsibility, guilt, and shame for Holocaust-related crimes. His essay evoked responses in both the Lithuanian underground and the Western diaspora press. A bit earlier similar questions of guilt and shame in various contexts were raised by the German-born U. S. philosopher Walter Kaufmann. This paper presents some of Kaufmann‘s views; juxtaposes them with some of Venclova‘s; and puts the issue of responsibility, guilt, shame, and punishment for major crimes in a theistic Christian framework which Kaufmann abjures, Venclova echoes, and this author largely accepts.
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Book-Review: Salmen Gradowski, Die Zertrennung. Aufzeichnungen eines Mitglieds des Sonderkommandos. Hrsg. von Aurélia Kalisky unter Mitarbeit von Andreas Kilian. Aus dem Jiddischen von Almut Seiffert und Miriam Trinh. Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag. 2. Aufl. Berlin 2020. 354 S., Ill. ISBN 978-3-633-54280-2. (€ 24,–.) ‒ . Stephan Lehnstaedt
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Book-Review: Marta Ansilewska-Lehnstaedt, Pole jüdischer Herkunft. Selbstdeutung polnischer Kinderüberlebender des Holocaust. (Studien zu Holocaust und Gewaltgeschichte, Bd. 2.) Metropol Verlag. Berlin 2019. 389 S. ISBN 978-3-86331-479-8. (€ 24,–.) ‒ Ursula Reuter
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Review: Irene Hauser: Dziennik z Getta Łódzkiego / Das Tagebuch aus dem Lodzer Getto. Hrsg. von Ewa Wiatr und Krystyna Radziszewska. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego. Łódź 2019. 142 S., Ill. ISBN 978-83-8142-453-0. (Nicole Silvia Widera)
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Why to go back to 1985 to discuss present-day key concerns of international relations fromthe perspective of World War II history during the Cold War? The May 5, 1985 Bitburg cemetery celebrations, when US president altogether with German chancellor (Helmut Kohl) paid tribute to WWII veterans (of both sides of the conflict) was an example of the Ronald Reagan administration’s public relations fiasco: the “Great Communicator” failed to refer to WWII history in a manner that would save him from harsh criticism. Importantly, the 1985 debate concerning the Bitburg ceremony and the moral aspects of a homage to German (Axis) WWII soldiers gave an incentive to “Historikerstreit” in Germany, a dispute regarding WWII history in a manner comparable to Holocaust responsibility as a collective burden carried by Germans. The Bitburg cemetery, since the 1930s a monument (Kolmeshöhe Ehrenfriedhof) to WWI German military victims, and then to their younger colleagues during WWII (Wehrmacht and, controversially, Waffen-SS) remained a broadly commented upon focal point of Cold War disputes, allowing such questions that might bring about a possibilityof ground-breaking change in present-day political rivalries caused by failed (or successful) Cold War propaganda related to WWII choices. The Bitburg case as a particularly illustrative one and could also shed more light on the post-Soviet Russian effort to increase its influence by relying on the myths of the “Great Patriotic War”.
More...Status moralny ofiary i wykonawcy w eksperymencie Stanleya Milgrama dotyczącym posłuszeństwa w perspektywie etyki normatywnej
The author of the article undertakes the task of presenting an alternative, ethical view of Stanley Milgram's famous experiment launched in 1961 and crowned with the work Obedience to Authority. For ethics broadly understood as a rational and systematic reflection on morality, this experiment has a special value. For self-evident reasons, Milgram’s research into destructive obedience first and foremost enhances knowledge within descriptive ethics that establishes moral facts. Without neglecting this contribution, the author poses the question: how does the research on destructive obedience present itself when we look at it from the perspective of normative ethics? Thus, he shifts attention to those elements of Milgram's reports and conclusions that point to assumptions about obligations and moral assessments, as opposed to observable facts. Milgram declares that he does not intend to offer a moral evaluation on the participants, but a closer analysis of his work leads to the conclusion that the American psychologist did not escape said assessment.
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Artykuł omawia problemy genezy powieści Leopolda Buczkowskiego pt. Czarny potok. Rekonstruując skomplikowane dzieje powstania utworu, autor sięga po zachowane dokumenty genezy (publikowane i niepublikowane) zgromadzone w archiwach pisarza. Ich analiza pozwala rozwikłać niektóre problemy genezy dzieła, a także złożonej warstwy kompozycyjnej i fabularnej Czarnego potoku.
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In 2016 The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum was visited by over 2 million people, of whom over 400 thousand were Polish speakers. The others, over 1.5 million people, heard about the history of the camp from guides speaking their native languages. The largest group consisted of tourists from Great Britain, the United States, Italy, Spain, Israel and Germany. Due to the constantly increasing number of foreign tourists, the ABMM had to face the problem of shortage of guides speaking particular languages. Thus, a more and more popular solution is hiring interpreters who, along with Polish-speaking guides, provide the history of the camp to foreign language tourists. The time of sightseeing the ABMM with a guide is limited, therefore quick decision making regarding the interpretation is of the crucial importance. Basing on surveys carried out among interpreters I would like to present the interpretation at the Auschwitz Museum as an example of intercultural dialogue. Problems which interpreters are faced with and the way these problems are approached have a tremendous impact on the reception of the heard history.
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The paper proposes a new perspective on researching the already well-documented phenomenon of musical life in Nazi concentration camps. Acknowledging the awkwardness and even unsuitability of musical performances in such places, the author argues that, under camp circumstances, music-making should be defined as a specific type of enforced labour. Hence such concepts as ‘enforced labour’, ‘Beruf ’ (job) or ‘space of work’ are introduced while discussing musicianship in concentration camps. Although the paper draws on several examples, it particularly focuses on Auschwitz, understood as a complex system of camps. Seemingly prosaic aspects of musical life present there (prolonged hours of rehearsals, uniforms worn during concerts, etc.) are highlighted in order to rationalise the classification of music-making in concentration camps as yet another example of enforced labour.
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The text can be divided into two parts: in the first part, we focus on the principles of protection of minority rights after the First World War which were addressed by the Paris Peace Conference (1919), and in the second part, we deal with the Jewish minority in Slovakia within the Czechoslovak Republic. According to the original proposals, the protection of racial, national, and religious minorities was to be incorporated in the statute of the League of Nations, but this concept was not accepted. Subsequently, the protection of minorities was included in peace treaties with defeated and newly formed states. The Czechoslovak Republic was committed to provide protection of life and liberty to all citizens, regardless of their origin, citizenship, language, race or religion. The Republic agreed that regulations concerning persons belonging to racial, religious or linguistic minorities were of international coverage and guarantees of the League of Nations. With its constitution and laws, the CSR created a framework within which individual minorities built both their relationship with the republic and their own identity in the new state. Further in the text there is a focus on the Jewish minority in Slovakia within the First Czechoslovak Republic. The Republic was among the first in the world to allow declaring Jewish nationality. This section focuses on the various layers of Jewish identity: religion, nation, language, relationship to Zionism, and political organization. The Republic enabled the Jews to live a full religious, social, political and cultural life.
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The “Museum – Memorial site KL Plaszow” has been the subject of dispute between the authorities of Krakow and residents of the district since 2013. The conflict concerns the management of land on which the former concentration camp once stretched. Parties to the dispute have different concepts on how to commemorate the site. Differences in their views relate to: a/ forms and scope of area fencing, b/ nature protection, c/ permitted activities and specification of functions of individual parts of the former camp, d/ the positioning of the participants of the conflict, e/ creation of historical narration, f/ economic dimension of the Museum – Memorial site KL Plaszow. The article focuses on analyzing narration among individual parties and presenting the dispute in terms of R. Dahrendorf and L. A. Coser’s social conflict.
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The article focuses on how exile is presented in three novels by the Portuguese author Ilse Losa (1913-2006): The World I Lived in (1949), River without a Bridge (1952), and Under Strange Skies (1962). Through the application of the transdisciplinary method while examining the subject matter of migration and exile, the article, on the one hand, utilizes some theoretical contributions to postcolonial studies and finds its place within the present-day discussion about the ethical and multicultural challenges that modern society faces, and on the other examines the way Ilse Losa’s novelistic narratives construct the image of exile and how the exiles understand their own identity.
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