Closing Thoughts

Author(s):  
Gaj Trifković

This chapter contains a few concluding remarks. This book is the first attempt at a comprehensive analysis of non-violent contacts between the Partisans and the German occupation authorities in Yugoslavia in the Second World War. Far from being the final word on the topic, it is a starting point for further research on various aspects of POW history. Frequent exchanges of able-bodied prisoners between the occupation forces and a resistance movement, partly through a cartel negotiated directly between their high commands, was a distinctive feature of the Second World War in Yugoslavia. It was probably the only place in war-torn Europe where representatives of two irreconcilable ideologies, Communism and Nazism, met regularly at the negotiating table. Both were primarily motivated by the desire to save their own men, but the talks did mitigate, however marginally, the horrors of the war.

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Fellow

From his starting point in the instrumental music of his native Funen, Nielsen aspired towards the world of great art music, placing himself in the continuation of the classical central European tradition. In the first decade of the new century, two of his songs became national treasures, landeplager – i.e. ‘all the rage’, or ‘hits’ as later generations would have called them. He composed the first one, Thou Danish Man (Du danske Mand), as an ironic song for a music hall show, and without knowledge of the text. Even so the song was received as a manifestation of the Danish national spirit, which continued to be the case as late as the mobilisation of public opinion against the German occupation of Denmark in the Second World War. From the composer’s point of view these songs showed first and foremost that he was able to reach a wider public, and they formed the background for the pedagogic project (not National but folkeligt , i.e. Popular, in spirit) that he developed for the rest of his life through his song output, running side by side with his ‘great’ works.


Costume ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-91
Author(s):  
Joanna Regina Kowalska

The Kraków shoemaker Władysław Dziadoń was called the king of shoes among citizens of Kraków. He worked in shoemaking between the years 1920 and 1955. His dream was to create a company of comparable significance to the Czechoslovakian Bata shoe company. During the years of the German occupation in the Second World War, he provided support to the resistance movement, without giving up the business of producing shoes. While he was hopeful that after the war he would be able to realize his dreams and aspirations, the conditions of a totalitarian state and the communist economy meant that these plans were never able to materialize. He was persecuted by the communist state, and in 1955 he had to close his shoe company. In the collections of the National Museum in Kraków there are thirty pairs of shoes made by his company, another three pairs are preserved in a private collection. This high-quality footwear is the only material legacy of Władysław Dziadoń's skills as a producer of shoes. This article illustrates the fate of a shoemaker and entrepreneur in the era of the German occupation (1939–1945) and Stalinism (1945–1955).


Author(s):  
Zbigniew Zaporowski

AbstractZygmunt Mańkowski (1926-2012), Full Professor, was an eminent historian who spent almost his entire professional career at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. He specialized in the Second World War with particular emphasis on the German occupation of the Lublin area. The issue of the resistance movement, in particular his studies on the Home Army, made him the object of interests of the Security Service (Służba Bezpieczeństwa). The authorities took a negative approach to his scientific area of research, as the priority was given to the research on communist resistance movement. Mańkowski was kept under surveillance for eight years (1968-1976). The surveillance process can be divided into several stages. The most important and, at the same time most dangerous one, was the period of the first three years. At that time he had his house bugged, the workplace search was conducted and his correspondence was monitored. All these actions were secret and considered unlawful even in the light of the communist rules. Subsequently, the hostile actions against Mańkowski decreased, but he was still surrounded by secret communist collaborators. During the whole period of his surveillance there were 24 of them. However, his anti-regime activities have never been proven. He remained at the university where he worked for the benefit of science.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 00007
Author(s):  
B Dewi Puspitaningrum ◽  
Airin Miranda

<p class="Keyword">Nazi Germany used Endlösung to persecute Jews during the Second World War, leading them to the Holocaust, known as “death”. During the German occupation in France, the status of the Jews was applied. Polonski reacted to the situation by establishing a Zionist resistance, Jewish Army, in January 1942. Their first visions were to create a state of Israel and save the Jews as much as they could. Although the members of the group are not numerous, they represented Israel and played an important role in the rescue of the Jews in France, also in Europe. Using descriptive methods and three aspects of historical research, this article shows that the Jewish Army has played an important role in safeguarding Jewish children, smuggling smugglers, physical education and the safeguarding of Jews in other countries. In order to realize their visions, collaborations with other Jewish resistances and the French army itself were often created. With the feeling of belonging to France, they finally extended their vision to the liberation of France in 1945 by joining the French Forces of the Interior and allied troops.</p>


2012 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Mónika Szente-Varga

The first diplomatic and consular relations were established between Mexico and the Habsburg Empire in the 1800 s, motivated basically by commerdal reasons and dynastic interests. These got to an abrupt end with the execution of Emperor Maximilian in Querétaro in 1867, and diplomatic relations were resumed only decades later, in 1901, which is, in fact, our starting point. This essay examines the development of diplomatic relations between Mexico and Central-Eastern Europe from the beginning of the 20'' centuiy until nowadays. It is divided into chronological chapters, where we study bilateral relations in the coordinates of the following periods: beginning of the century, the period between the two world wars, the Second World War, Cold War and recent years. The investigation in based on documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico (SRE-AHD) and of the Hungarian National Archive (MOL).


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Myroslav Shkandrij

<p class="EW-abstract"><strong>Abstract:</strong> When Dokia Humenna’s novel depicting the Second World War, <em>Khreshchatyi iar</em> (Khreshchatyk Ravine), was published in New York in 1956, it created a controversy. Readers were particularly interested in the way activists of the OUN were portrayed. This article analyzes readers’ comments and Humenna’s responses, which are today stored in the archives of the Ukrainian Academy of Science in New York. The novel is based on a diary Humenna kept during the German occupation of Kyiv in the years 1941-1943.</p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Dokia Humenna, <em>Khreshchatyi iar</em>, Second World War, OUN, Émigré Literature, Reader Response


Sowiniec ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (47) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Wątor

This is another article devoted to Lt. Col. Bolesław Michał Nieczuja-Ostrowski “Bolko”, “Tysiąc” (1907-2008) who during the Second World War was an officer of the Polish Army, then of the underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK), and since 1944 the commander of the great unit of the AK: the 106th Infantry Division. The article is associated with the investigations conducted against this man and with a trial as a result of which he was sentenced to death. The author used mainly the materials prepared by the functionaries of the Office of Public Security during the inquiry and the trial that were conducted. The information was compared and extended by the data contained in the publications of Lt. Col. Nieczuja-Ostrowski that appeared after 1989.Ostrowski was accused of participation in “illegal organisations” after 1945, and previously he was accused of the contacts that were maintained by the soldiers of the division that he commanded (the division operated on the areas of the AK “Maria” Regional Inspectorate) with the representatives of the German occupation authorities, as well as the supposed killings of Soviet soldiers, people of Jewish ethnicity and communist activists. In the years 1946-1956 he was arrested a number of times, he was repeatedly interrogated, imprisoned and as a result of this he was sentenced to death two times. After the amnesty his sentence was reduced to 12 years of prison (he spent a total of more than seven years in prison).


Author(s):  
Gaj Trifković ◽  
Klaus Schmider

The Second World War in Yugoslavia is notorious for the brutal struggle between the armed forces of the Third Reich and the communist-led Partisans. Less known is the fact that the two sides negotiated prisoner exchanges virtually since the beginning of the war. Under extraordinary circumstances, these early contacts evolved into a formal exchange agreement, centered on the creation of a neutral zone—quite possibly the only such area in occupied Europe—where prisoners were regularly exchanged until late April 1945, saving thousands of lives. The leadership of both sides used the contacts for secret political talks, for which they were nearly branded as traitors by their superiors in Berlin and Moscow. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of prisoner exchanges and the accompanying contacts between the German occupation authorities and the Yugoslav Partisans. Specifically, the book will argue that prisoner exchange had a decisive influence on the POW policies of both sides and helped reduce the levels of violence for which this theater of war became infamous. It will also show that the contacts, contrary to some claims, did not lead to collusion between these two parties against either other Yugoslav factions or the Western Allies.


2018 ◽  
pp. 137-174
Author(s):  
Anthony Rimmington

During the 1930s, a series of reports generated by both German and Soviet intelligence fueled increasing alarm with regard to the perceived BW capabilities allegedly being developed by their potential opponents. After the onset of the Second World War, if either side was going to break the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of gas and bacteriological warfare, to which they had both agreed to abide, then 1942 was the most likely year. However, a number of prominent scholars have strongly disputed Alibek’s account of the deliberate aerosol dissemination of tularemia by the Red Army at Stalingrad in the late summer of 1942. The occasional use by Soviet-supported partisans of biological agents against the German occupation forces is better documented but there is no evidence that these attacks formed part of a wider, centrally coordinated, campaign of biological sabotage by the Soviet authorities.


Author(s):  
Gaj Trifković

What transpired in Pisarovina, a small village located on the outskirts of Zagreb, is unique not only to Yugoslavia, but to the Second World War in general. Pisarovina was the location officially agreed by both the German occupation authorities and the Yugoslav Partisans to function as the center of the prisoner exchange cartel at the end of 1943. In order to facilitate this, the village and its immediate surroundings were declared a neutral zone, quite possibly the only such place in war-torn Europe. The system saved hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners who faced an uncertain fate. Frequent contacts between the envoys provided both the Germans and the Partisans with a "back-channel" for talks on political issues and trade, as well as the opportunity to spy on each other.


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