Co-operation with the occupant is described by resorting to the concepts of: treason, collaboration and Quislingites in an attempt at adapting the precision of the conception to the complex nature of a given situation. However, societies living in an extreme situation are unable to preserve en bloc a negative attitude towards the occupant. This fact has been emphasised already in reports prepared in conspiracy conditions. Czeslaw Madajczyk estimated the number of voluntary collaborators of the occupation apparatus in the General Government at about 5%, while the number of persons ready to put up resistance totalled 25%. Demoralisation was characteristic for all social groups. Traditional authorities went through a crisis, and the continuum of Polish statehood gave rise to assorted doubts. Ambiguous attitudes were generated by the necessity of daily official contacts with the Germans. Contrary to the ethical and legal standards sanctioned by the Underground administration of justice, groups of contradicting such standards emerged in numerous environments . An assessment of their conduct necessitates, however, an individual analysis of motifs. Collaboration continues to remain an open question in Polish historiography. The author maintains that in certain circumstances it could have served the raison d'etat of a vanquished nation. The German occupation system left little place for collaborators, and thus, to a certain degree, for potential partners. It became a prevailing regularity that willing collaborators, or those forced by circumstances, were to be found in those spheres where the occupant permitted 'co-operation'.
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Dostęp do pełnego tekstu na zewnętrznej witrynie WWW
During the German occupation of Poland, the Wartheland played a distinctive role in the persecution and extermination of Jews. It is there that German Nazis developed methods of murdering people and built the first extermination camp in the history of humanity where they partly realized the process of the 'final solution of the local Jewish issue' even before the Wannsee conference, murdering there about two hundred thousand people. The remaining persons of Jewish origin from the area were murdered mostly at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. They were for the most part prisoners previously concentrated in the ghetto in Lódz. Until its close-down in 1944 the Lódz ghetto functioned as a peculiar kind of factory, operating according to the principles of a concentration camp with a large slave workforce whose labor was exploited both inside and outside the ghetto. Material evidence of the murderous exploitation of Jews during German occupation has remained even until today (e.g. in Poznan: the artificial lakes Rusalka and Malta, the cemetery at Milostowo, the communication routes to Berlin and the airport at Krzesiny). The above mentioned examples are manifestations of a brutal termination of many centuries of coexistence of Poles and Jews on this territory, a coexistence which was problematic but also based on partnership.
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Dostęp do pełnego tekstu na zewnętrznej witrynie WWW
The article presents the scientific and organizational activity of Professor Karol Marian Pospieszalski at the Institute for Western Affairs. Special emphasis is placed on his endeavors to maintain a continuity of studies on the German occupation of Polish territory.
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Dostęp do pełnego tekstu na zewnętrznej witrynie WWW
A review of a book which presents the history of the Warsaw library collections during the German occupation. The author describes dispersion and dislocation of libraries, confiscation and exportation and creation of new cultural institutions into which the mixed and moved collections were incorporated. He also describes the activities of Polish librarians engaged in the Polish Underground State, who sought to save endangered collections. Contribution of German librarians, who were trying to take care of property entrusted to their authority, are also described.
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Dostęp do pełnego tekstu na zewnętrznej witrynie WWW
(Title in Polish - 'Niemiecka polityka wysiedlania Polaków oraz osadnictwa Niemców w latach 1939-1945 w Okregu Gdansk-Prusy Zachodnie, powiat swiecki'). The article tackles the theme of displacements of Polish families (as a matter of fact they should be defined as expulsions) from farms and other rural and urban real estates confiscated without any compensation by the German occupant. The study has been narrowed down to the county of Swiecko in order to show as if under a microscope the structure of the activities of the German administration: from government guidelines through local police and administration on the level of 'Gau Danzig-Westpruessen' down to concrete instances of displacement. In this way we obtain a clear and coherent picture showing the implementation of the German plans of displacements (expulsions) of Poles from territories annexed to the Reich. Whole families were expelled to the so-called displacement camps (Umsiedlungslager) which were then sealed and within a short time transformed into concentration camps with forced labor, like e.g. the Potulice camp (Umsiedlungslager Lebrechtsdorf) - it was built at the turn of 1940/1941 and since 1942 already functioned as a branch of the penitentiary concentration camp Stutthof. The homes of the expulsed Polish families were settled by German migrants from the Baltic states, Bessarabia (Moldova, Romania) and Volhynia or passed into the hands of the local Germans. The campaign of expulsion and settlement was personally supervised by H. Himmler by means of security forces and police as well as central and lower level institutions for displacement (in Pomerania - the Central Office for Displacements in Gdansk).
The author of the study attempted to reconstruct one of the many cases of Nazi reprisals taking place in Slovakia during German occupation in 1944 – 1945. In particular, he is interested in clarifying the tragic events occurring in the Novohrad villages of Závada and Pravica, where the Nazis executed several locals accused of collaborating with the partisans. It should be appreciated that the author made an effort to reconstruct the events also based on memories of the eyewitnesses, local chronicles and available literature. Individual sources (especially the ones resulting from oral tradition) are approached cautiously, maintaining critical and balanced distance. By mapping the partisan activity in the region in the period preceding the tragedy in the introduction, the author is setting the topic in a broader context. The conclusion of the study also briefly describes the way in which the villages commemorated the events during Socialism, on the background of developing revolutionary and resistance traditions.
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Dostęp do pełnego tekstu na zewnętrznej witrynie WWW
The article presents German economic policy on the so-called territories annexed to the Reich in the years 1939-1945. The study provides a synthetic overview of the major sources, objectives, stages and means used by the German occupants in implementing their goals in selected areas and branches of economy. The economic policy which was realized on those lands was an important element of building the German 'living space' (Lebensraum) in the East of Europe. Its sources were of an ideological, economic and political character. Racism and a glorification of country life became a foundation for the policy of extermination of foreign ethic groups, Germanization of annexed lands, deportation of their hitherto inhabitants and settlement of German peasants. Factors such as treating the 'lands annexed to the Reich' as colonies in terms of economy, natural conditions, the doctrine of the 'Great Space Economy' (Grossraumwirtschaft) and war demands led to a restructuring of the economy of those territories so as to make them complementary to the economy of the so-called Old Reich accompanied by maximal exploitation of their production and population potential. The plunder of property that Germans practiced on mass scale, a policy of concentrating production, escalation of predatory economy and destruction resulting from military operations led to an economic degradation and significant civilizational regress of those areas.
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