scholarly journals Survivor Testimonies and the Coming to Terms with the Holocaust in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia: The Case of the Ukrainian Nationalists

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-240
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Western World ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
Anti Jewish

The question, if and to what extent the Ukrainian nationalists murdered Jews in Volhynia and eastern Galicia during the Holocaust, has haunted Jewish and Ukrainian communities in various countries of the Western world during the entire Cold War. It also puzzled German historians of Eastern Europe and Nazi Germany. Historians, although in theory responsible for investigating and clarifying such difficult aspects of the past, have for various reasons not investigated them or they investigated only other aspects of the Holocaust in Ukraine. This article briefly explains how factions of the Ukrainian diaspora invented a narrative that portrayed Ukrainian nationalists as anti-German and anti-Soviet freedom fighters who did not kill or harm any Jews during the German occupation of Ukraine. In the next step, it shows how testimonies and other sorts of documents left by survivors from Volhynia and eastern Galicia can help historians understand the role that ordinary Ukrainians and the OUN and UPA played in the Shoah in western Ukraine. Finally, it asks why it took Ukrainian, German, Polish, Russian, and other historians so many years to investigate and comprehend the anti-Jewish violence of the Ukrainian nationalists, if relevant documents were collected and made accessible as early as in the middle 1940s.

scholarly journals ‘Non-Remembering’ the Holocaust in Hungary and Poland

2019 ◽  
pp. 471-480
Author(s):  
Andrea Pető
Keyword(s):  
Active Participation ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish

HUNGARY, as an ally of Nazi Germany, introduced anti-Jewish legislation from 1938 but managed to avoid the deportation of Jews from its post-Trianon territory until the German occupation of the whole country on 19 March 1944. The deportation of 430,000 Jews from Hungary was the quickest in the history of the Holocaust, taking less than two months with the active participation of Hungarian civil servants. Miklós Horthy, who governed the country with an iron fist from 1919, initiated discussions with the Allied forces over a separate armistice, but that did not remain unnoticed by the Germans who installed the fascist Arrow Cross party as a collaborationist government on 15 October 1944. The final days of Hungary, following the pattern of the Italian Social Republic, had started....

scholarly journals Cold War Lithuania: National Armed Resistance and Soviet Counterinsurgency

2007 ◽  
pp. 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Reklaitis
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
Underground Resistance ◽  
The Baltic

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union sought to reestablish its control over the areas of Eastern Europe that it had occupied prior to the RussoGerman war. These areas included Western Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltic States of Lithuanian, Latvia, and Estonia.2 In these regions, the Soviets found wellorganized underground resistance movements that were determined to hold off the complete Sovietization of their homelands, a task the Soviets had initially begun in 1940 and 1941, but which had been interrupted by war. While complete victory over the Soviets was recognized as an unreachable goal, these resistance fighters fought on in the hope that either the Soviets would grow weary of waging war or, as the above statement by Juozas Luksa suggests, the Western powers would return to finish the job of liberating Europe. Therefore, the period of 1944 to 1953 in this region is marked by an intense conflict between Eastern European guerrillas and Soviet counterinsurgency forces.

Freedom and democracy

2018 ◽  
pp. 74-131
Author(s):  
Andrea Mariuzzo
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Central Eastern ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter explains the importance of the values of freedom and democracy in the Cold War struggle between Italian Communists and anti-Communists. As soon as Cold War tensions broke down the ‘national unity’ of anti-fascist forces, both fronts claimed to be the exclusive representatives of ‘true’ democracy, and compared their competitor with the defeated fascist enemy. The Socialist-Communist alliance acquired the programme of ‘progressive’ (or ‘people’s’) democracy inspired by the experiments in Central-Eastern Europe, and made it the base for its opposition to the supposed Christian-Democratic ‘restoration’ of a new ‘reactionary clerical fascism’, along with the defense of the guarantees for parliamentary opposition established by the republican Constitution of 1948. The anti-Communist front, on its side, found strong unifying motifs in the description of Soviet dictatorship and the ‘sovietization’ of the countries occupied by the Red Army filtered beyond the Iron Curtain, and in their comparison with ‘totalitarian’ experiences lived by Italians in the past years.

Antijüdische Politik und deren Bewältigung. Das Wirken der Sozialversicherungsabteilung des Reichsarbeitsministeriums im „Dritten Reich“

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Alexander Klimo
Keyword(s):  
Civil Servants ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Pension Insurance ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Anti Jewish

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag beleuchtet die Rolle der Rentenversicherungspolitik des Reichsarbeitsministeriums im „Dritten Reich“. Auf der einen Seite stellt er dar, wie die Rentenversicherung herangezogen worden ist, um zusätzliche Arbeitskräfte für den Arbeitseinsatz zu gewinnen. Dabei wurde die Rentenversicherung durch die Gesetzgebung des Reichsarbeitsministeriums komplett auf die Anforderungen des nationalsozialistischen Arbeitseinsatzes ausgerichtet. Auf der anderen Seite beleuchtet er die Diskriminierung von jüdischen Versicherten und Rentnern. Die zuständigen Beamten des Reichsarbeitsministeriums und der Rentenversicherungsträger besaßen umfangreiche Freiräume, um die Ziele des Regimes zu verfolgen und zu unterstützen. Die nach dem Krieg verfolgten Rechtfertigungsstrategien und die mangelhafte Aufarbeitung der eigenen Rolle im „Dritten Reich“ hinderten hohe Beamte der Sozialversicherung nicht daran, ihre Karrieren in der Sozialverwaltung der Bundesrepublik fortzuführen. Abstract Anti-Jewish policy and its coming to terms with the past. The work of the social security department of the Reich Ministry of Labour in Nazi Germany The article examines the pension insurance policy of the Reich Ministry of Labour in Nazi Germany. On the one hand, it shows how the pension insurance has been used to generate additional workforces for the labour market. The pension insurance was completely aligned by the legislation of the Reich Ministry of Labour on the requirements of the National Socialist labour service. On the other hand, it highlights discrimination against Jewish insurants and pensioners. The responsible civil servants of the Reich Ministry of Labour and the pension insurance providers used their possibilities to pursue and support the goals of the Nazi regime. The justification strategies pursued after the war and the inadequate working up of one’s own role in Nazi Germany did not preventhigh civil servants from continuing their careers in the social administration of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Beatles, the Beatles Generation, and the End of the Cold War

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Vessela Misheva
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Western World ◽  
Standard Process ◽  
Communist System ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

An effort to rationalize history brought the Western world to perceive the “velvet,”“bloodless” revolutions that swept Eastern Europe as arising from the fact that people there had become painfully aware of the conditions in which they lived and the shortcomings of the system they had built. The author of this article argues instead that it was those young East Europeans who early in childhood failed to fall in love with the social system in large numbers who, when they finally came of age, put an end to the Cold War, and not because they were dissatisfied with the economic conditions, but because they wanted to put an end to the world’s East-West division. But how could people with “different” minds grow up inside the communist system, and how could they miss going through the standard process of communist socialization? To answer these questions, the author explores the hypothesis that Beatlemania, along with The Beatles themselves, may have contributed in a significant way to the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

Introduction: The Political Ambiguities of Pius XII

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Simon Unger-Alvi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
German History ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract This collection of essays evaluates the relations between Eugenio Pacelli and Germany from the beginning of his career as a papal nuncio in Munich in 1917 until his pontificate during the wartime and post-war periods. The contributions to this volume do not provide a complete overview of this topic. Instead, they should be understood as case studies on certain aspects of Vatican-German history. At the core of this work are the complexities and ambiguities of papal politics between four political systems from the Kaiserreich to the West German Federal Republic. Ultimately, this volume thus touches upon very diverse subjects ranging from Pacelli’s ‚concordat diplomacy‘ in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich to his silence during the Holocaust and the German occupation of Italy, the anti-communism of the Cold War, and the Vatican’s path towards reform in the post-war period.

Antijüdische Politik und deren Bewältigung. Das Wirken der Sozialversicherungsabteilung des Reichsarbeitsministeriums im „Dritten Reich“

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Alexander Klimo
Keyword(s):  
Civil Servants ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Pension Insurance ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Anti Jewish

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag beleuchtet die Rolle der Rentenversicherungspolitik des Reichsarbeitsministeriums im „Dritten Reich“. Auf der einen Seite stellt er dar, wie die Rentenversicherung herangezogen worden ist, um zusätzliche Arbeitskräfte für den Arbeitseinsatz zu gewinnen. Dabei wurde die Rentenversicherung durch die Gesetzgebung des Reichsarbeitsministeriums komplett auf die Anforderungen des nationalsozialistischen Arbeitseinsatzes ausgerichtet. Auf der anderen Seite beleuchtet er die Diskriminierung von jüdischen Versicherten und Rentnern. Die zuständigen Beamten des Reichsarbeitsministeriums und der Rentenversicherungsträger besaßen umfangreiche Freiräume, um die Ziele des Regimes zu verfolgen und zu unterstützen. Die nach dem Krieg verfolgten Rechtfertigungsstrategien und die mangelhafte Aufarbeitung der eigenen Rolle im „Dritten Reich“ hinderten hohe Beamte der Sozialversicherung nicht daran, ihre Karrieren in der Sozialverwaltung der Bundesrepublik fortzuführen. Abstract Anti-Jewish policy and its coming to terms with the past. The work of the social security department of the Reich Ministry of Labour in Nazi Germany The article examines the pension insurance policy of the Reich Ministry of Labour in Nazi Germany. On the one hand, it shows how the pension insurance has been used to generate additional workforces for the labour market. The pension insurance was completely aligned by the legislation of the Reich Ministry of Labour on the requirements of the National Socialist labour service. On the other hand, it highlights discrimination against Jewish insurants and pensioners. The responsible civil servants of the Reich Ministry of Labour and the pension insurance providers used their possibilities to pursue and support the goals of the Nazi regime. The justification strategies pursued after the war and the inadequate working up of one’s own role in Nazi Germany did not preventhigh civil servants from continuing their careers in the social administration of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Neither Hegemony nor Dominance: Reconsidering German Power in Post Cold-War Europe

2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES SPERLING
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
German Unification ◽  
Structural Power ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
The Past ◽  
Processes And Incentives

German unification in 1989 raised the spectre of German hegemony in post-cold war Europe. In this article, I demonstrate that Germany lacks the structural power consistent with European hegemony or dominance; that there is little evidence supporting an appreciable gap between Germany's structural power and foreign policy ambitions; and that apparent symptoms of German hegemony, particularly the process of institutional emulation in Central and Eastern Europe, reflect other international processes and incentives emanating from the state system itself. This reassessment and downgrading of Germany's relative and absolute power resolve the paradox of German structural power and German reluctance identified by others. But this alternative narrative raises another more important question: why is Germany treated as a potential or even aspiring hegemon in Europe? The answer to that question is located in the interconnected legacies of Auschwitz and the occupation regime. This joint legacy constitutes an important part of the historical context within which we frame our assessments and judgements of German power; explains the frequently unwarranted exaggeration and suspicion of German power; and demonstrates how the past can function as a powerful prism though which we interpret the intentions, ambitions and capabilities of a state.

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