Życie kobiet — więźniarek w obozie Auschwitz-Birkenau

The book by Halina Rusek Koleżanki z Birkenau. Esej o pamiętaniu [Friends from Birkenau: An essay on remembering] published by the University of Silesia is a kind of diary about the life of women in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The author describes the fate of her mother and her friends confined in one of the most horrific war camps. This publication, apart from descriptions and memories of female prisoners, contains original letters and photographs collected by families, which allows the reader to refer to the past more directly. The book was divided by the author into chapters which intensify the women’s experiences: from pre-war times through the war period to regaining freedom and returning to their family homes. Reading the book, one gets to know the early life of young girls who were unexpectedly captured and transported to the concentration camp. Their fates are intertwined with the struggle for existence, forced labour, camp experiences and the anticipated freedom. Important throughout the book is the documentation collected by the families of the prisoners. Post-war letters, mutual contacts, feelings and family memories make the reader feel close to the characters. The author tries to describe the lives of girls coming from different regions of Poland, whose fates were intertwined with each other. The book shows different ways in which the female prisoners were treated, based on their nationalities. In an attempt to make camp life more real for the reader, the author refers to prison correspondence. Halina Rusek’s publication shows young readers how important it is to remember the past and what concentration camps were.

Human Trafficking in the Context of Global Migration: Modern Manifestation of De Facto Slavery, Servitude and Forced or Compulsory Labour

In recent years there has been a significant increase in trafficking in human beings as a global phenomenon. COVID-19 pandemic created conditions that increased the number of persons who were vulnerable to human trafficking and disrupted current and planned anti-trafficking initiatives. Human trafficking treats human beings as commodities to be bought and sold and put to forced labour often for lower or no payment. This constitutes a modern form of de facto slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. This article provides an overview of international law on human trafficking and considers response to human trafficking in Africa. It further considers whether diplomats can be held accountable for exploitation of migrant domestic workers in receiving States. It further examines whether diplomatic immunity can be used as a bar to the exercise of jurisdiction by domestic courts and tribunals of a state which hosts the diplomat (the ‘receiving state’) in cases of employment of a trafficked person by a former or serving diplomat. It ends by considering whether trafficked persons should be held to bear individual criminal responsibility for crimes they have committed (or were compelled to commit) in the course, or as a direct consequence, of having been trafficked. Such crimes may include unlawful entry into, presence or residence in another country of transit or destination, working without a work permit, sex work, and use of false identity/false passport.

Practitioner's Insights – The Importance of Strategic Litigation to Fight Human Trafficking and (Labour) Exploitation

This article calls for an increased use of strategic litigation in the anti-trafficking field to ensure long-lasting systemic reforms. While generally, the prosecution of human trafficking or related severe forms of labour exploitation, like forced labour, is quite challenging and prosecutions and convictions lag seriously behind, it is argued that strategic litigation, meaning continuing legal action, aimed at achieving rights-related changes in law, policy, practice, and/or public awareness, can help to ensure that justice is delivered to victims, as several landmark cases also show. Efforts to counter human trafficking through strategic litigation by NGOs remain in their infancy, among others as they are resource-intensive and require access to experienced lawyers in high level courts. The author discusses some examples and dilemmas and identifies needs for NGOs to use strategic litigation more often as an effective tool to effectuate systemic change.

The Demands of Total War

The quality of school life at the NPEA gradually deteriorated during wartime—chronic shortages of everything from steel to salt, from teaching staff to stable-hands, increasingly impinged on the schools’ day-to-day functioning. This chapter begins by considering the great expectations placed on the Napolas by the Inspectorate and the armed forces, in their capacity as de facto officer training schools. Secondly, it describes daily life at the NPEA, including the ‘war missions’ (Kriegseinsätze) which pupils were expected to undertake as leaders on the children’s evacuation programme (KLV) or as anti-aircraft auxiliaries (Flakhelfer). It also explores the all-important connections between the Napola home-front and former pupils at the battle front, as exemplified by the school newsletters or Altkameradenbriefe, which were expressly designed to foster a transgenerational sense of comradeship among all who belonged to the Napolas’ ‘extended family’. Finally, the chapter briefly examines the ways in which the NPEA system profited from or abetted the wartime crimes of the Nazi regime, including the expropriation of asylums and Jewish property, and the use of forced labour (not least that of concentration-camp inmates). The conclusion then situates the experience of the Napolas within the context of existing scholarship on the state of German education and society during this turbulent period of total war. Ultimately, the NPEA were better able to withstand the privations of war than most ‘civilian’ schools during this period, due not least to their centralized administration, and their supposedly vital contribution to the war effort.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN INDONESIA, THE DIALECTIC OF POVERTY AND CORRUPTION

After thirteen years of Law Number 21 of 2007 concerning the Eradication of the Crime of Trafficking in Persons implemented, it still unable to release Indonesia from cases of trafficking in persons. Indonesia, is not only as primarily a source country in the trafficking process, but it is also used as a destination and transit country. And which is very terrible, all provinces (34 provinces) in Indonesia are the origin and destination of trafficking in persons and the victims are mostly experienced by women and children. The most common forms of trafficking are for forced labour and sexual exploitation as women, children and men are moved domestically and across international borders. They are exploited in the sectors of the fishing and fish processing industry, construction; plantation, oil palm plantation, mining and manufacturing. The poverty factor is considered to be the main trigger for prospective Indonesian workers. Another thing is because of natural disasters which are also vulnerable to human trafficking. In addition, endemic corruption among government officials contributes to the vulnerability of trafficking in persons, especially in the travel, hotel and labour recruitment industries. The phenomenon of globalization is one of the factors in the spread of contemporary (modern) issues, which affected to human trafficking. Advances information technology, are opportunities for the expansion of crime networks, both national and transnational (across borders). The borderless world maks cross-cultural social integration, people move around freely without any obstacles, causes various modes of crime to emerge, such as human trafficking.

‘Jáchymov’s Hell’: Trekking in the Memoryscape of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Forced Labour Camps

This article treks through the timeworn remnants of Czechoslovakia’s Communist forced and correctional labour uranium camps in the Ore Mountains in the northwest Bohemian region of Jáchymov. These camps held tens of thousands of detainees, largely political prisoners convicted in sham trials or individuals sent there for re-education. Conditions were deplorable. Throughout the 1950s, the young Czechoslovak Communist regime compelled detainees to hard, life threatening labour and subjected them to maltreatment and arbitrary violence. This article traces some of the visible, invisible or overgrown artefacts of the former camps, as well as public as private memories about what happened there. It reflects on the current memoryscape of these forgotten places of human suffering and describes the aesthetics of these aging sites of atrocity.

Human Rights Act 1998 (European Convention on Human Rights)

This chapter covers the Human Rights Act 1998 (European Convention on Human Rights) and includes topics on The Right to Protection from Torture, The Right to Life, Prohibition of slavery and forced labour, Right to liberty and security, Right to a Fair Trial, The Right Not to Suffer Punishment without Legal Authorisation, Right to respect for private and family life, The Right to Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion, The Right to Freedom of Expression, The Right to Freedom of Assembly and Association, The Right to Marry, and The Right to Protection from Discrimination.