"Kretanje" nepokretne imovine beogradskih Jevreja kao posledica Holokausta

Author(s): Haris Dajc,Maja Vasiljevic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 2/2014

The focus of this research is the process of arianization of the immovable Jewish property in Belgrade and its fate in the post war years. The introduction is focused on the life of Belgrade Jews in the prewar years, first Antisemitic laws and discrimination of Belgrade Jews. In a course of the few months and years once equal citizens lost their jobs and positions. The worst happened after the German occupation in April 1941. the new authorities made lists of all Belgrade Jews and all of their property. After the Holocaust there were less than 15% of Belgrade Jews left with just scratches of their prewar ossessions. The new Yugoslavia did not help much economical situation of its Jewish citizens, the mechanics of keeping as state property the immovable property that was taken as the result of the Holocaust, remained strong and constant in the decades following 1945. The 4 different case studies describe different cases of nationalization of the Jewish property by the Yugoslav state. Outcome in all of the 4 cases was the same and although the old owners were accepted as the Nazi victims their property was still the property of the old Belgrade bourgeoisie. That is the reason why the Holocaust in Belgrade and its consequences were so devastating and one of the answers why once big and prosperous Jewish community of Belgrade could not escape hard post war years.

"Rabovačky" v závere prvej svetovej vojny a ich ohlas na medzivojnovom Slovensku

Author(s): Miloslav Szabó / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 2/2015

In the last days of the First World War soldiers returning home, along with civilians, attacked representatives of the Hungarian state and wealthy individuals, especially Jews. They expelled them from their homes and looted them, or they simply destroyed their property. In some places regular Hungarian troops executed the leaders of these rioters. This study seeks to offer an alternative to the prevailing interpretation of the looting, which emphasize the social or ethnic motivations of the economically and nationally oppressed Slovak rioters. Instead, it examines the reversal of the perpetrators and victims that was carried out not only immediately after the looting had occurred, but repeatedly throughout the whole interwar period. This is to be seen as an expression of the growing anti-Semitism, because the Jews were ultimately accused of the murder of allegedly innocent Slovaks.

1848-49 a magyar zsidóság életében

Author(s): / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 1998

The outstanding Hungarian humanist, Jenő Zsoldos has worked as the director of the Jewish Secondary School for Girls in Budapest. Three years after the Holocaust he has edited the publication “1848-49 in the Life of the Hungarian Jews” on the occasion of the Centenary of the Hungarian revolution 1948-1949. This revised edition is published on the occasion of the 150years anniversary of the revolution

1952–1953 metų antisemitinė kampanija Sovietų Socialistinių Respublikų Sąjungoje

Author(s): Kastytis Antanaitis / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 65/2016

The anti-Semitism of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin became, at the beginning of the Cold War, an anti-Semitic paranoia and took on the most radical form during the campaign against Western influence on Soviet society. Soon after the destruction of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, the Doctors’ Plot campaign was launched at the end of 1952; it soon became a perfect basis for blaming all Jews as disloyal to the Soviet regime. In the republics of the USSR the local Communist leaders supported the anti-Semitic campaign in Moscow with allegations about Jewish medical crimes at the local level.Despite much circumstantial evidence and many testimonies there still is no strong basis for the conclusion that the anti-Semitic campaign of 1952-1953 would soon turn into a large-scale repression campaign or wholesale genocide of the Jewish population in the USSR, but the clear anti-Jewish policy and the Soviet practice of the mass repression of nations leaves little doubt that the Soviet society was mentally prepared for the deportation of Jews to Siberia. The Soviet regime practiced constant archive purge campaigns, and documents about politically sensitive issues or regime crime were destroyed on a regular basis. Despite all regime efforts, some traces of anti-Semitic campaign preparation, control, and coordination may be found not in the central state institutions of the USSR but in the Communist Party archives of the republics. At the republican level Communist party Central Committees some top secret documents of the anti-Semitic campaign of 1953 were preserved in specific archive units, the so-called Osobaja Papka.In the USSR the reports of local party leaders to Moscow always described never-existing enthusiastic popular support for Soviet policies; thus the true scale of anti-Semitism in society can’t be determined on the basis of such sources. But they demonstrate that local Soviet institutions supported the spread of anti-Semitism during the infamous Doctors’ Plot campaign of 1953. They also permit the conclusion that any anti-Semitic campaign would not be limited to negative propaganda and at least part of Soviet society was ready to accept some repression of Jews.Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 put an early end to the anti-Semitic campaign. Soon Stalin’s political heirs quashed charges against the doctors and even punished a few distinguished instigators of the campaign, but there was no official and public condemnation of that anti-Semitic campaign. Thereupon anti-Semitism became less aggressive but still remained very strong in the USSR.

A „tépelődő gentleman”

Darányi Kálmán (1886–1939)

Author(s): Róbert Kerepeszki / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 2014

When people come to speak of Kálmán Darányi, even those familiar with the era could only recall the Győr Program, the preparation of the First Anti-Jewish Law or his negotiations with the Arrow Cross Party. How could one of the greyest politicians of the era with a talent for executive role be the Prime Minister of Hungary? How and in what direction could such a wishy-washy personality influence the political life of the country? How could he, the Prime Minister, get from his attempt to liquidate Gömbös’s radical right-wing policy to his agreement with the National Socialists even more radical than his predecessor? What factors formed his political disposition which resulted in his controversial decisions sometimes tragically influencing the fate of the country? The young author’s scholarly yet readable book contains a lot of new information and answers these and many other interesting questions.

A befejezetlen küldetés

Jan Skarskiról

Author(s): András Pályi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2017

A document of Securitate about the Iaşi (Jassy) Anti-Jews Pogrom (26-29 June 1941)

Author(s): Corvin Lupu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

The author brings in attention a declaration given after the Second World War by Traian Borcescu, one of the most important heads of the Romanian Secret Service (S.S.I.) about the circumstances of the murder of thousands of Jews in Iași, on 26-29-th of June 1941. Traian Borcescu is an important memorialist in this case because he was one of those chiefs of the Secret Service who knew and encouraged the complot against the Chief of State, Ion Antonescu. So he is not one of those memorialists who tried to exculpate marshal Antonescu. The document shows a memorialist who tried to tell the truth, after many years after the Second World War, after many years of detension, in a perioad of his life in which he had nothing to win or to lose telling the truth. Explaining the whole context of the event, Traian Borcescu brings important arguments that the murder of the Jews in Iași was planned by the German SS officers and brings their ”arguments” to do these crimes.

A gyűlölet tana. Antiszemita olvasókönyvek a német iskolákban

Author(s): Ákos Béresi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2016

A holokauszt mint narratíva

Author(s): János Kobányai / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 0

A körgyógynapszámos

Author(s): Pál Kádár / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 0

A magyar arkangyal azt üzente

Author(s): János Kobányai / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2014

A magyar zsidóság és a fasizmus a marcia su Romától 1938-ig

Author(s): Gábor Andreides / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 0

A Sakterpolkától az Egészséges Fejbőrig: a tiszaeszlári vérvád zenei szubkultúrái

Author(s): Dániel Véri / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2016

A Slánský-per anticionista jellege és annak következményei

Author(s): Péter Hevo / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 0

A Vichy-kormány szerepe a francia és menekült zsidók elpusztításában (1940-1944)

Author(s): Julien Papp / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2008

Jews in France, data about the deportation of the Jewish population, the historiography about Vichy and the Jews and the modern atisemitism. The organisation of the deportation of the Jewish population under the Vichy government.

An Immovable Property Restitution Legislation Database

ESLI'S Initiative to Bring Present and Future Meaning to the Terezin Declaration Commitments

Author(s): Kristen Nelson,Rajika L. Shah / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2015

The 2009 Terezin Declaration reflects the will of 47 nations to continue to enhance their efforts to right the wrongs committed against groups persecuted during World War II. These commitments are not only important with respect to bringing justice to those affected by persecution during the Holocaust, but also are important from the standpoint of transitional justice as now understood, including as a way of reducing the likelihood of future genocides or mass atrocities. The European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI) was established to monitor progress and advocate for the principles enshrined in the Terezin Declaration, in particular that of immovable (real) property restitution. ESLI’s latest project – the immovable property database initiative – will provide a much needed and long overdue dynamic tool for claimants, heirs, scholars, governments, NGOs – any stakeholder – to help navigate current property restitution issues by confronting the path through the past which brought us to current state of affairs.. When completed, the online database will be a user-friendly, public-access comparative repository of legislation and international and domestic case law (both past and present) from every country that has endorsed the Terezin Declaration. Using the online database to examine the often thorny and emotionally charged issue of heirless property, in particular, is emblematic of how the content can be used to drive the conversation for solutions forward and possibly give rise to intertwined policy-related questions.

Anielski naród

Author(s): Miklós Szabó / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2014

Some might say that there seems to be a rising tendency toward historical revisionism in Hungary. The term “revisionism” is used here to describe a negative process, a reinvention, a reinterpretation of historical events in a way that constitutes the denial of historical crimes. This would be an arguably objective statement, but on its own would also create a false certitude that we are facing a simple case of misinterpretation – something that can be addressed and solved by historians, the bearers of objective knowledge, a simple lie that shatters in the light of truth. If existence, as Heidegger claimed, “finds it’s meaning in temporality”, then we can assume that the present is in fact the history of itself, and all social phenomena are questions about the present, and therefore something that is naturally immune to the charms of historical facts. In this case, it can only be fully understood through an anthropological analysis, since historical facts are nonexistent, or at least irrelevant, from this perspective. If we also assume that we all live in “imagined communities”, and can analyze the “cultural stuff” that forms the basis of one’s national, ethnic, or any other group-related identity, then we can discard any observable social events, for it would be easier to label them simply as the product of mere stupidity or a misinterpretation of facts.This ternary can be understood through an analysis of recent Hungarian events, like the scandal concerning a statue presently under construction on Freedom Square (Budapest) that commemorates the Nazi invasion of 1944 and the rehabilitation of Miklós Horthy, the war-time leader of Hungary. The statue portrays Hungary as a victim of the Nazis, while more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944, with the active help of Hungarian officials. Nostalgia toward the 1930s goes hand-in-hand with increasing xenophobia and racism. These resent events can be, and are, criticized from a number of perspectives, without any effect, proving again that one should first understand an issue before addressing it.

Anti-Jewish Violence in Prague, 1744, through Contemporary Eyes:

The Testimony of Joseph Kirschner Shohet

Author(s): Iveta Cermanová / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

The study focuses on the period of theWar of the Austrian Succession at the beginning of the reign of Maria Theresa, when Prague, the capital of Bohemia, was conquered and occupied twice. It summarizes the present state of knowledge in the specialist literature on the fate of Prague Jews at this time and on their alleged collaboration with the enemy, which became a pretext for two pogroms in 1744 and for the expulsion of the Jews from the Bohemian lands. It explores in detail the contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish sources on these events and presents a previously unknown narrative-biographical source in the form of an eye-witness account (family megillah) by Joseph Kirschner Shohet (1717–1766), which describes the author’s fate and the tragic experience of the second pogrom in Prague on 26–27 November 1744. The study contains a full transcription of Kirschner’s scroll from the Hebrew original and a translation of most of its text.

Antisemitismul românesc la sfârşitul secolului al XIX-lea – scurtă privire critică

Author(s): Liviu Neagoe / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: XVIII/2015

This paper analyses the evolution and the features of Romanian anti-Semitism from the point of political and institutional modernization of a country who aspires to an European role. The political and institutional modernization of Romania can not avoid the captious problem of the „Jewish issue” as it was recorded in the constitutional debates and public discourse of the second half of the 19th century. International recognition of Romanian independence, stipulated during the Congress of Berlin from 1878, was conditioned by the political emancipation of the Jewish population. The huge international pressure was perceived by the intellectual and political Romanian elites as an intrusion into the internal affairs of a sovereign state. The revision of the article 7 of the Constitution from 1866 related to naturalization has generated a strong dispute. Finally, a politically solution was found: Jews could gain political emancipation only on individual basis. But until the end of the 19th century only a small part of the Jewish population achieved to obtain Romanian citizenship. The Romanian model of citizenship as it was implemented during the nineteenth century was influenced by the romantic ethno-cultural conception about nation. The juridical Romanian tradition has consecrated the jus sanguinis principle, of the “community of descendants”, in granting the citizenship instead of the humanistic and generous principle of jus soli. This particularity in defining of citizenship was decisive in understanding the intricate relationship between Romanians and Jews and the Anti-Semitic factor of the Romanian internal policy. The „Jewish issue” was finally a question of political choice. It was the choice of Romanian political and intellectual elites to „solve” the „Jewish issue” in the Antisemitism formula and to integrate the Jews according to the principle jus sanguinis of „community od descendants”. The bureaucratic Antisemitism from the late Nineteenth century was clearly different but inspirational for the radical Antisemitism from the interwar period. There is a fact that the Anti-Semitic discourse from the second half of the 19th century was not the main discourse of the political and intellectual Romanian elites. But is also a fact that the modern Romanian history can not be properly understood outside of the delicate „Jewish issue”.

Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje 1939–1940 metais – Valstybės saugumo departamento pranešimai

Author(s): Linas Venclauskas / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 67/2017

This is a publication of documents consisting of reports of the Lithuanian State Security Department concerning Anti-Semitism from 1939 to 1940 (up to the month of July). The situation during the first few months of Soviet occupation is also reflected in the reports of the Kaunas City Police. The content of the documents varies from short messages about anti-Semitic activities to lengthy and detailed reports. If a report contains information about anti-Semitic proclamations, usually but not always the supporting documents are included, too. These documents are in the form of typescript, manuscript, poster, or proclamation. The documents are not gathered in one file, except in one case (f. 378, ap. 10, b. 158) where the file is devoted just to Anti-Semitism; that file only has 104 pages. In all other cases, information is given in the flow of general information about events occurring in that period.