Belarusian education in General District Latvia (1941–1945)

The article deals with the Belarusian school system in Latvia under German occupation. Belarusians were one of the most numerous minorities in that country, both in the inter-war period and during World War Two. In German-occupied Latvia, Belarusian nationality was declared by more than 50,000 people. For political reasons, the occupation authorities allowed Belarusian schools to operate in areas with significant Belarusian population. As a result, thirty-five primary schools, two middle schools, and one secondary agricultural school, employing about a hundred teachers in total, were opened. These schools were attended by a few thousand pupils, the majority of which were children of petty and landless peasants. The Belarusian school system struggled because of numerous material issues.

Holocaust Monuments in Kamianets-Podilskyi as a Resource for Tourism Development

The Holocaust peculiarities of the Jewish population in Ukraine during the Second World War are revealed. Ten sites of the largest mass executions of Jews in Ukraine by the German occupation authorities during the Second World War have been identified and characterized. The largest number of victims are crimes in Kyiv (Babyn Yar – almost 34 thousand people) and Odesa (25 thousand people). The third-largest death toll was in the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre (23,000 people), but it was the first chronological case of the Nazi massacre of Jews in Ukraine. The peculiarities of the mass extermination of the Jewish population in Kamianets Podilskyi, where a ghetto was created not only for the local Jewish population but also for Jews deported from Hungary, are highlighted. Three memorialization ‘waves’ of Holocaust memorial sites in Kamianets-Podilskyi have been identified. The main monuments of the Holocaust have been characterized, and directions for its further memorialization as a resource for the development of memorial tourism have been proposed.

Likovna umetnost v Mariboru v času nemške okupacije 1941–1945

The article deals with the organisation of art life in Maribor during the German occupation. Based on archival material, various aspects of the Maribor affiliate of the Graz-based association Comradeship of Styrian Artists and Friends of Art (Kameradschaft Steirischer Künstler und Kunstfreunde) are presented, as well as art exhibitions held in Maribor from 1941 to 1943. The activity of the Maribor affiliate is set in the context of the German occupation policy in Lower Styria, especially in the context of their efforts to Germanise the region and annex it to the Third Reich.

Local Testimony and the (Un)Silencing of Sexual Violence in Lithuania under German Occupation during WWII

The memory of sexual violence in Eastern Europe under German occupation during WWII has long been silenced by the opacity of local events to outside observers, a conspiracy of silence on the issue of collaboration, and conventions on how the Holocaust should be represented. Since the collapse of the USSR, the opening of archives has stimulated the production of a large and growing literature on the nature and causes of communal violence, but with relatively limited attention to sexual violence as an aspect of genocide. Based on a qualitative analysis of select audio-visual testimonies collected from non-Jewish Lithuanians since the 1990s, this paper demonstrates that local knowledge of sexual violence has persisted for decades in the post-genocidal space. However, these testimonies have been overshadowed by politicized narratives of national martyrology, and neglected by local and international researchers alike, despite their importance to the process of historical reckoning.

O prawie III Rzeszy Niemieckiej w Polsce (1939–1945)

Studies on the legal situation of Poles under German occupation during the Second World War have been conducted in Poland for a long time. For many years, however, they have not sufficiently addressed the problem of the fundamental difference between the legal positions of Poles and Western Europeans during the German occupation. The book published in 2017 by Maciej Mitera, entitled Ordinary Fascism. The Legal Position of the Citizens of the Second Polish Republic in the General Government 1939–1944 is an opportunity to sort out the concepts of the law applied to Poles under German occupation. In addition to general regulations, laws, and decrees issued by Governor Hans Frank, the German authorities issued several general orders or prohibitions which defined the legal status of General Government residents. These regulations differentiated the legal position of various population groups in the territory of the General Government, segregating people and excluding certain groups from normal social life. At the same time, German regulations were the basis for the exploitation of society and served the purpose of confiscating its property, and finally — extermination. Further research is needed to gain a complete picture of the German occupation of Polish lands.

Sądownictwo polskie w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie. Refleksje o najnowszej książce Andrzeja Szulczyńskiego

The monograph discussed in this review article is not a comprehensive synthesis which fully covers the complex issues of the organization and functioning of the Polish judiciary in the General Government during the Second World War. The opinions formulated in the paper are polemical and often critical. However, many of the facts presented by Andrzej Szulczyński are completely new and significantly expand the state of our knowledge. The findings made by the author and the conclusions he formulated in the monograph will constitute an impulse for further research on the judiciary in Poland under German occupation during the Second World War, which I believe is necessary.

Uništenje Univerzitetske biblioteke u Luvenu u Prvom svetskom ratu i njena obnova u posleratnom period = Destructon of the University of Leuven Library in First World War and its Renovation in the Post-War Period

Uništavanje biblioteka i njenih kolekcija od davnina su sastavni deo ratova i osvajačkih pohoda: od uništenja Aleksandrijske biblioteke u starom veku, jezuitskih biblioteka u Kini tokom 17. i 18. veka, Narodne biblioteke u Beogradu u Drugom svetskom ratu, Nacionalne i univerzitetske biblioteke Bosne i Hercegovine u Sarajevu 1992. godine, pa sve do spaljivanja rukopisa u biblioteci u Timbuktuu 2013. godine. U fokusu ovog rada je uništenje Univerzitetske biblioteke u Luvenu, od strane nemačke okupacione vojske u Prvom svetskom ratu, kao i njena obnova u posleratnom periodu. = The destruction of libraries and its collections has long been an integral part of wars and conquests: from the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in the old century, Jesuit libraries in China during the 17th and 18th centuries, the National Library in Belgrade in World War II, the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo in 1992, until the manuscript was burned in the library in Timbuktu in 2013. The focus of this paper is the destruction of the University Library in Leuven by the German occupation army in First World War, as well as its restoration in the post-war period.