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Review of: Catastrophe and Utopia. Jewish Intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Hrsg. von Ferenc Laczó und Joachim von Puttkamer. (Europas Osten im 20. Jahrhundert, Bd. 7.) De Gruyter. Berlin – Boston 2017. VIII, 355 S. ISBN 978-3-11-055543-1. (€ 49,95.)
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Review of: Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945. Bd. 15: Ungarn 1944–1945. Hrsg. von Regina Fritz. De Gruyter Oldenbourg. Berlin – Boston 2021. 850 S. ISBN 978-3-11-0365002-8. (€ 59,95.)
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Life under Stalinism in the 1930s challenged Jews, particularly the young, with innumerable compromises to their religious and ethnic identity, yielding unexpected responses during World War II and the Holocaust. This article analyzes how Jewish youth raised in 1930s Vitebsk in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic acquired firsthand knowledge of the language and customs of their Slavic neighbors, and how some of this cohort harnessed their experiences and understanding in their attempts to survive during the Holocaust. Bolshevik policies unique to Soviet Belarus affected its Jews in ways distinct from their counterparts elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Nationalities and religious policies as well as the Five-Year Plans and the Great Terror served as the context for this situation, shaping and distorting transmission of Jewish traditions along with changing the dynamics of the family and social relationships. Young Jews in Vitebsk learned Slavic languages and culture from their neighbors, in Soviet schools, and through other means. After the German invasion in 1941, the application of these skills and knowledge are a common thread through the survival narratives of young Holocaust survivors from Soviet Vitebsk.
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This article argues for using personal accounts in reconstructing the inner lives of interethnic communities in Eastern Europe in times of crisis. Focusing on the Eastern Galician town of Buczacz as representative of numerous other such communities, it also suggests that the events of the Holocaust must be seen within the larger context of coexistence and violence since 1914. After briefly examining the relevant historiography, the article turns to a close analysis of the diary of a Polish headmaster, written in 1914–1922; the World War II diary of a Ukrainian gymnasium teacher, and recollections of the Holocaust by a Jewish radio technician, composed in 1947. All three men lived in Buczacz; all three wanted their accounts to be read by others, but they are only now being made available to the public by the author. Each provides a strikingly different perspective: that of a Polish nationalist educator whose sons were fighting to create an independent Poland; that of a Ukrainian activist who resented Polish rule and Jewish influence but felt ambivalent about wartime and genocide profiteering by fellow Ukrainians; and that of a young Jew who meticulously recorded both collaboration and rescue by his gentile neighbors and ended up fighting in a local Polish partisan unit. And yet, seen together, these personal narratives shed light on aspects of mass violence in that region largely missing from more general or nationally oriented histories.
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Focusing on coexistence in towns and villages of the former Šariš Zemplín County during World War II, our article exposes the shifting meanings assigned to belonging in what was a multiethnic borderland region and an economic periphery. Informed by works on community construction and meaning, we understand “locals” as being formed by diverse and at times conflicting social experiences that are nevertheless rooted in the same physical environment. We draw on late witness testimonies by Jewish survivors and Gentile neighbors to investigate the roles of public and private spaces in how a sense of community was revoked. Since the redrawing of boundaries was made into a public concern in the 1930s, the redefining of “locals” along ethnoreligious lines had a deep situational dimension, with local norms and experiences shaping the ousting of the Jews from what was historically a shared space. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and methodological implications of our research for writing integrated histories of the Holocaust, mindful of relationships between people, objects, but also places.
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This article examines the advantages and limits of late non-Jewish witness testimonies in Holocaust research. Grounding my conclusions in more than 150 biographical interviews conducted in small communities of contemporary Western Ukraine (historically Eastern Galicia) in 2017–2019, I dwell on the specificity of such sources and offer guidelines on how to work with them. As I show, late witness testimonies typically consist of multiple layers that can only be understood when analyzed within the wider life story of the interviewee, and when read against a deep knowledge of local history. When following these introduced guidelines, late non-Jewish witness interviews can be an extremely valuable source, especially for rural communities where no Jewish testimonies are available. This source allows us to further examine the complexity of identity and belonging, estrangement and intimacy, in ethnically mixed communities during World War II and immediately after, but also memories of the nonexisting world today
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The literary opus of the Bosnian Franciscans is interesting in many ways from the imagological point of view: both concerning self-perceptions and hetero-perceptions, which were constructed based on the importance of religion as an element of community identity. Analyzing the imagotype potential of religious and ethnic divisions, the paper reconstructs the controversies between Christianity and Judaism, as well as linguistic elements, folk customs, and contemporary reality. At the source of the Bosnian Franciscan literature, at the beginning of the 17th century, we find Divković, who, as is often the case in pre-modern culture, relates the religious Other to the ethnic Other. This tradition is continued by the 19th century’s Franciscan chroniclers (Lastrić, Benić, and Bogdanović), while Martić, Jukić, and Knežević, who stepped into the era of the rebirth of Croatian Illyrianism, we can trace various normative implications of the relationship between political, ethnic, racial and religious identity. Since the Bosnian Franciscans of that time, we remember the ecclesiastical and intellectual elite among the Catholic population in Bosnia, the imagotypical statements about Jews in their works reflect both the Christian heritage through history and the Eurocentric view of the Others. Therefore, reconstructing the Bosnian Franciscans’ perceptions and ideas about the Other and the Different is, at the same time, reconstructing the genesis of the narrative about the Other, i.e., social and religious stereotypes and prejudices, as well as the continuity of talking about oneself by talking about the Different.
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Review of: Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939–1959). History and Memory of Deportation, Exile, and Survival. Hrsg. von Katharina Friedla und Markus Nesselrodt. Academic Studies Press. Boston 2021. XXIX, 319 S. ISBN 978-1-64469-749-8. ($ 139,–.)
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The studies on Polish francophone literature put an emphasis on a selected group of authors (Potocki, Mickiewicz, Krasiński) and on some literary genres (diary and travelogue). The aim of this paper is to study the work of a lesser-known feminine writer, Anna Nakwaska, member of cosmopolitan literary milieu and author of several short stories and novels, written in French. Applying selected concepts of spatial literary studies, the first part of the article proposes to perceive the publishing strategies of Nakwaska as a tool for introducing Polish feminine literature in a broader European context. In the second place, the study of some Nakwaska’s short stories show her interest for a literary presentation of several geographical problems, including demography (put in the context of antisemitism) and regional ecology. The use of Polish toponymy brings a foreignization of the francophone fiction.
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Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt commonly referred to as the camp on Przemysłowa Street in Łódź, in operation between December 1942 and 19 January 1945 was a very special place. This is because it was the only place where exclusively children were held under conditions comparable to concentration camps. The article takes a closer look at the reality that minor prisoners had to face and the history of this cruel place. The most important theme, however, is the post-war reckoning with the history of the camp, mainly in the form of trials of child abusers. We also learn how the history of the camp was manipulated in the post-war era to achieve the desired propaganda effect and how its history and victims were being exploited. The author is highly critical of the content of the only monograph on the camp by Józef Witkowski and describes in detail the notorious court case of Eugenia Pol from 1970–1976. She was then sentenced to 25 years in prison. To this day, it is difficult to determine whether the camp supervisor was in fact a ruthless torturer or a victim of a judicial crime. Without settling the issue definitively, the author presents how the unreliable conduct of Eugenia Pol’s trial today hinders the search for the truth and is a pretext for further misrepresentations and manipulations.
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A high level of anti-semitism in the newly revived Polish state had to be taken into account by the Soviet diplomacy in the first half of the 1920s. The disclosed documents from the correspondence between the Plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Warsaw with the central office of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs introduced into the scholarship for the first time testify to the existence of a Jewish problem in Polish-Soviet relations. Moscow had to keep track of the number of Jews in the diplomatic mission in Warsaw as well as to consider the request of Polish officials, including the Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski, about the desirability of appointing a person of Russian origin the head of the mission in Warsaw given the level of anti-semitism in the Polish society. The deputies of the Polish Sejm at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee attributed the shortcomings in the Polish-Soviet negotiations to the Jewish nationality of the representative of the USSR. Another problem in Polish-Soviet relations in 1923 was represented by the destiny of Jews who escaped through Poland from Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine to the United States. After the introduction of immigration quotas in the USA in 1921 about 6 to 8 thousand Jews were not able to receive entry visas in the United States in 1923. The Polish government required their urgent deportation. Other countries did not want to see them on their territory either. The Jewish organization “Joint” was forced to ask Moscow to approve of their repatriation to the USSR on condition it took charge of covering all expenses. After some hesitation, the USSR agreed with such repatriation. However, it was not organized in a civilized way. The Polish authorities simply ordered to drive Jews to the borders with the USSR. It meant the spontaneous transfer across the border which caused a new scandal in the already strained Polish-Soviet relations.
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The point of departure of the presented text is a polemic with Adam Leszczyński’s Facebook entry condemning the inclusion of a photograph showing a mask of a Jew among a group of carollers (supposedly without a commentary), featured at the Ethnographic Museum in Cracow. In her reply the author of the text, simultaneously one of the Museum curators, not only explains the intention of including this particular depiction into museum space but also reconstructs the entire complex context and history of the motif of the Jew mask among the carollers. At the same time, she poses a question about the role played by an ethnographic museum and the limits of publicistic commentary (and associated abuse)."I found masks showing Jews and Gypsies, present in assorted caroller groups, disturbing. Upon numerous occasions I was asked why do we show such caricatures? What about the feelings of Jewish and Romani visitors, facing such depictions of themselves and asking: is this my museum, a museum about me?How did the Jew character find himself among carollers? Did this take place when older carol singing became linked with the Church ritual theatre? How did the Jew-rabbi appear amidst the canon of carollers (together with King Herod) or the Jew Trader among those singing together with the turoń? Perhaps this is a distant trace of the commedia dell-arte, an echo of the Pantaloon (Venetian trader) dramatis persona and the Servants? Or is the reason entirely different? It is worthwhile to exploit the opportunity provided by the omittance of the commentary on the part of a recognised journalist and historian, as well as his propagation of false information about its absence. The crux of the matter is, after all, the existence of a mask portraying a Jew as pars pro toto of the entire permanent ethnographic exhibition. This is not the first time when the nature of this object, i.e. the disguise and hence the disclosure of exiting but concealed contests, makes itself known. The context of the ethnographic museum constitutes an excellent backdrop for such reflections”.
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This article examines the role Antisemitism had on the decision of Salonican Jews to migrate from Salonica to the Habsburg Empire and its successor states. The period under examina-tion extends from 1867, when the December Constitution was proclaimed and equal politi-cal rights were given to the Jews in the Habsburg Empire, until 1938 and the Anschluss. The article examines how Antisemitism influenced the decision of people to leave Salonica and choose these states to settle in. It argues that, despite contemporary views about Antisem-itism in the Austrian lands during the imperial and interwar period, the perception of it among the Jewry in Salonica was quite different. The application of Critical Discourse Anal-ysis on two major Jewish newspapers demonstrates that Antisemitism was considered to be relatively marginal as a phenomenon, especially in comparison to other countries, such as France. While taking into account the significant events of the some seven decades in ques-tion, most notably the transition from empires to nation states, the article argues that it was the continuity of links between the persons under examination and the specific places that impacted their decisions, even during the interwar period. Moreover, and in line with recent research examining the impact of Antisemitism on the decisions of Salonica Jews to migrate elsewhere, the article argues that Antisemitism was not a push factor leading people to leave Salonica, as the main reasons for this choice were the potential financial opportunities in the Habsburg lands and the political upheaval in Salonica. However, as is demonstrated, Anti-semitism functioned as a pull factor towards Austria-Hungary and, in particular, towards Moravia, where the majority of the Salonica Jews were to be found. The article aims to offer an account on the migration of Salonica Jews to the Habsburg Empire and its successor states, while also addressing the issue of Antisemitism in both the countries of origin and the destination, thus offering new insights on both major research topics.
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This paper explores one of the most influential conspiracy theories of all time, as described in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, by employing the method of structural analysis. The “master myth” of the Protocols represents a basic structure of the conspiracy narrative, whose motifs were subsequently modified throughout the 20th and 21st centuries according to current events and moods. However, to understand the pamphlet as a whole, it is also important to shed a little light on its specific historical context and the religious, political, and social fervour of the time, which eventually gave rise to this text. The text is one we can still consider a blueprint of contemporary conspiracy narratives about the global cabal that occupies a prominent place within the modern conspiracy culture.
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The article is devoted to Oleksandr Kozyr-Zirka, one of the most famous atamans of the period of the Ukrainian national revolution 1917–1921. In November 1918, he joined the uprising against Hetman Paweł Skoropadski. After the overthrow of the Hetmanate, he became famous mainly for the robberies in the rear of Ukrainian Army and the pogroms in Owrucz at the turn of 1918 and 1919. His fate inspired Mikhail Bulgakov to create the character of the bloody ataman KozyrLashka, one of the side characters of the novel „The White Guard”.
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The article examines the activity of the Bulgarian Youth Union “Father Paisiy” (BMSOP), its goals and ideology, as well as its role and place in the political life of Bulgaria in the 1940s, based on documents of the union from the period 1942–1943 – a relatively calm and successful period of development of BMSOP. The selected sources reveal the attitude of the organization to the personality and work of Tsar Boris III and to the Jewish question (and disavowal of Metropolitan Stefan of Sofia). They contain rich information about the BMSOP’s idea of organizing and conducting national propaganda, as well as about the organization’s actions in infiltrating the existing organizational structures in the country, its work in schools.
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After 22 June 1941, the German occupier launched an anti-communist propaganda campaign on the Polish lands. The tool for its implementation became, among others, brochures written in Polish, portraying the Soviet Union as a country threatening European civilisation and wishing to destroy Polishness. For this reason, much space was devoted to the Soviet-occupied eastern Polish areas, showing the brutality of everyday life under Soviet rule.
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