scholarly journals Architecture and Recreation as a Political Tool—Seaside Architectural Heritage of the Worker Holiday Fund (WHF) in the Era of the Polish People’s Republic (1949–1989)

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Wojciech Bal ◽  
Magdalena Czałczyńska-Podolska

The Worker Holiday Fund (WHF) was set up just after the Second World War as a state-dependent organization that arranged recreation for Polish workers under the socialist doctrine. The communist authorities turned organized recreation into a tool of indoctrination and propaganda. This research aims to characterize the seaside tourism architecture in the Polish People’s Republic (1949–1989) against the background of nationalized and organized tourism being used as a political tool, to typify the architecture and to verify the influence of politics on the development of holiday architecture in Poland. The research methodology is based on historical and interpretative studies (iconology, iconography and historiography) and field studies. The research helped distinguish four basic groups of holiday facilities: one form of adapted facilities (former villas and boarding houses) and three forms of new facilities (sanatorium-type, pavilion-type and lightweight temporary facilities, such as bungalows and cabins). The study found that each type of holiday facility was characterized by certain political significance and social impact. Gradual destruction was the fate of a significant part of WHF facilities, which, in the public awareness, are commonly associated with the past era of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) as an “unwanted heritage”.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-14
Author(s):  
Andrzej Grzegorczyk

The Kulmhof extermination camp in Chełmno nad Nerem was the first camp set up by the Nazis to exterminate Jews during the Second World War. The history of Kulmhof has long been an area of interest for academics, but despite thorough research it remains one of the least-known places of its kind among the public. Studies of the role of archaeology in acquiring knowledge about the functioning of the camp have been particularly compelling. The excavations carried out intermittently over a thirty-year period (1986–2016), which constitute the subject of this article, have played a key role in the rise in public interest in the history of the camp.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 22-43
Author(s):  
Zenonas Butkus

This article, based on the archives stored in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia and some recently published documents, investigates the coup attempted by the Soviets on December 1, 1924 in Tallinn and evaluates its consequences within the broad context of international relations. During the research, it was established that an attempt to stage a coup in Estonia had been undertaken both by the Estonian communists and the USSR leadership, which had the highest political body – the Politburo – and the Comintern, a self-crafted tool set up for spreading the communist movement around the world, at its disposal. Thus, the revolution was masterminded by the Soviet authorities, whereas the Estonian communists were mainly responsible for its implementation. The task of the coup leadership was to seize power and hold on to it for some time, long enough to request that the USSR “renders support.” Preparations were underway for such support. This is evidenced by military preparations in the northern regions of the USSR and the territory near the Estonian border as well as by the deployment of Soviet ships in the vicinity of Tallinn and the activities of the Soviet embassy located in the capital. The attempted coup turned into a putsch due to the maximum conspiracy of their organizers. The conspiracy was brought about by the then-public awareness that the revolutionary events in Germany in 1923 had been instigated by the Soviets. The attempted coup in Estonia failed due to the extraordinary defensive operations put up by the Estonian authorities and power structures as well as due to the failure to involve the workers and the other strata of society in the coup. Latvia, Estonia’s only ally, was the first country to stand by Estonia’s side after the country withstood the attempted coup. The lessons were learnt not only by these two countries but by Lithuania as well. They began taking adequate measures to stifle communist activities. Neither France nor England or any other Western state made plans to deploy their fleets to the Baltic Sea to support the Estonians or at least show, in a demonstrative way, their support in such a trying time. They also failed to hold any diplomatic démarches against the Soviets opposing the export of revolution practiced by the Soviets. Due to diplomatic pressure imposed by the USSR, Estonia could not publicly and officially name the actual organizers of the putsch. As a result, only the local communists were indiscriminately accused. Such forced tactics, if only indirectly, had at least partially been influencing the area of historical research as well. However, the sudden and unequivocal liquidation of the putsch in Tallinn could have prompted the USSR to no longer expand its revolutionary export to the West, and the “abstinence” of such kind had lasted until the Second World War. The war itself and the previous collusion with Adolf Hitler made it possible for Stalin to cherish even greater ambitions to renew the spread of communism in other countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 63-72
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Grzybowska

During the First Scouting Alert (Poland 1965), scouts were tasked with finding and describing sites related to the events of Second World War. Those were mostly monuments, places of conflict, graves and body disposal pits. The scouts were tasked with finding such sites in their neighbourhood according to information collected from local communities. The campaign resulted in 26,000 reports in form of the registration sheets containing self-made maps, short descriptions of the found sites and answers to several questions on how to commemorate them. The Alert can be seen as a nationwide response to non-sites of memory. The article analyses the reports of the scouts, as well as considering the action as a process. It presents the political background of the action and diagnoses its influence on the results of the reconnaissance conducted - types of places to be found and registered or overlooked by scouts. In particular cases, the Alert generated opportunities during which non-sites of memory could be restored to the public awareness. The paper summarizes the campaign and focuses on two cases: Krępiecki Forest and Adampol, described to present the influence of the Alert on the memory cultures. In the neighbourhood of Krępiecki Forest, the Alert was an impulse to transform a person who saw the mass murder into a key witness. The case of archaeological investigations conducted in Adampol shows the potential of the Alert archive materials to evoke the state of unrest and to become forensic evidence


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-169
Author(s):  
Ronen Yitzhak

This article deals with Lord Moyne's policy towards the Zionists. It refutes the claim that Lord Moyne was anti-Zionist in his political orientation and in his activities and shows that his positions did not differ from those of other British senior officials at the time. His attitude toward Jewish immigration to Palestine and toward the establishment of a Jewish Brigade during the Second World War was indeed negative. This was not due to anti-Zionist policy, however, but to British strategy that supported the White Paper of 1939 and moved closer to the Arabs during the War. While serving in the British Cabinet, Lord Moyne displayed apolitically pragmatic approach and remained loyal to Prime Minister Churchill. He therefore supported the establishment of a Jewish Brigade and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in the secret committee that Churchill set up in 1944. Unaware of his new positions, the Zionists assassinated him in November 1944. The murder of Lord Moyne affected Churchill, leading him to reject the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-199
Author(s):  
Regina M. Frey

At present, there is no societally relevant political newspaper in Germany that is based on a Christian worldview. The Rheinischer Merkur, founded in 1946 shortly after the end of the Second World War and shut down by the German Bishops’ Conference in 2010, was a newspaper of this kind. It went beyond the Christian milieu in the fulfilment of its mission in the public arena. The closure of the Rheinischer Merkur obscures even today the decisive role it played in the elaboration of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany and the substantial quality of the paper. This essay sketches the history of the Rheinischer Merkur and its self-understanding, as well as its decline, locating these in the context of the journalistic autonomies and media-ethical tensions to which every journalistic medium is subject.


Author(s):  
Luke Strongman

New public management organisations tend to import managerial processes and behaviour from the private sector, and have been doing so in the post-Keynsian era. Increasingly those economies that were nationalised for large collective rebuilding programs after the Second World War were being deregulated and new models of management based on private enterprise and monetary accountability became the norm. This chapter provides an overview and contextual commentary on the origins of the public and private, the current era of public management, describes the characteristics of public and private partnerships; the factors of partnership performance, the characteristics of success and limitations, and concludes with a contextual discussion of Public and Private Partnerships.


2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
HARUKO TAYA COOK ◽  
THEODORE F. COOK

We examine the strata of memory in Japan’s recollections of the wartime experience and explore the shaping and releasing of memory in Japan, seeking to penetrate and recover individual Japanese experience. Individual memories that seemed tightly contained, when released were told with great emotional intensity and authenticity. That there has been little public discourse does not mean that individual Japanese have forgotten that war, but that the conflict – a war with no generally accepted name or firmly fixed start or end – seems disconnected from the private memories of the wartime generation. Japan was defeated thoroughly and completely, and in the history of memory we see no well-established narrative form for telling the tale of the defeated. In Japan's public memory of the war, War itself is often the enemy, and the Japanese its victims. Such a view is ahistorical and unsatisfactory to nations and peoples throughout Asia and the Pacific. The prevailing myths during Japan's war, developed and fostered over 15 years of conflict, and the overwhelming weight of more than three million war dead on the memories of the living forged a link between a desire to honour and cherish those lost and the ways the war is recalled in the public sphere. Enforced and encouraged by government policies and private associations, protecting the dead has become a means of avoiding a full discussion of the war. The memorials and monuments to the Dead that have been created throughout Japan, Asia, and the Pacific stand silent sentry to a Legend of the war. This must be challenged by the release into the public sphere of living memories of the War in all their ambiguity, complexity, and contradiction without which Japan’s Memory can have no historical veracity. Moreover, the memories of the Second World War of other peoples can never be complete without Japan’s story.


2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Delany

In the century since Emin Pasha's observations in 1878, the study of mammals in Uganda has gone through three distinct phases. Up to the First World War the main studies were through expeditions and collectors and the material they brought back to museums in Britain and America. Their work was supplemented by significant contributions from a small number of dedicated residents. The second phase, broadly between the two world wars, was largely dependent on field studies by local residents who continued to send material overseas. The last phase, following the Second World War, witnessed an enormous expansion in mammal studies. These were made possible through easier access to the country, improved facilities in Uganda, the need to develop management techniques for the large mammals and a greater desire to understand tropical faunas. Unfortunately, by the mid-1970s, due to social and economic pressures, these studies had to be greatly curtailed.


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