The main goal of this thesis is recontruction of a historical event which took place on the shooting-range in Kladno - Krnčí on 1st June 1942 by using the oral history method. Shortly after the World war 2nd , there was build a memorial, which reminded this tragedy and was soon forgotten. Recording interviews with the contemporaries of that event and family relatives plays the key role. Along side that the thesis stands on information from various fonds of National archive, State regional archives and Archive of safety organs, and also from online sources and print. The author describes in the text his first touch with the oral history method and obstacles deriving from particular interviews. He focuses on finding and interviewing direct witnesses of the tragedy, even a son of the executed in one case. The core of the thesis is dedicated to narators view on the event in 1942 which they could hear or experience. By comparing the archive sources and the narators interpretations there contruction of the incident becomes a solid overview what happens before the execution in 1942. Besides the main proposition of applicability of oral history method on recontruction of the past, the author also thinks of practical experiences in using the oral history method. Keywords: Kladno - Krnčí, execution June 1st...

The subject of the diploma thesis is an analysis of how the official Swiss institutions worked with the reference of World War II, thus contributing to the formation of collective memory of the Second World War in Switzerland. World War II and, above all, Switzerland's role in it, was covered in myths by official institutions in order to maintain a positive attitude towards the actions of Switzerland during the Second World War until the second half of the 1990s. For this purpose, three major myths were made during the war and post-war years in Switzerland around which the official remembrance of World War II was build - the myth of Réduit Alpin, the myth of neutrality and the myth of Swiss solidarity. Main institutions that influenced collective memory in Switzerland during World War II and subsequently in the post-war years were the army headed by General Henri Guisan and the Swiss government. This diploma thesis analyzes the evolution of the perception of the legacy of World War II in Switzerland in two periods. The first one is the period of the Second World War and immediately afterwards. The second one is the period from the second half of the 1990s, when the International Commission of Experts was established which was an important milestone in the debate on the Swiss role in the Second...

The thesis is devoted to the fate of the Jews who lived in Kroměříž - the same fate that all the Jews in Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia suffered in the course the World War II. The beginning of the thesis discusses the history and development of the local Jewish residents and their culture. Most of the thesis is however dedicated to the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s, i.e. the time of the First, and the Second Republic, as well as the Protectorate. A part of the thesis is also devoted to the Jewish sites of historical interest, most of which were sadly destroyed by the Nazi regime. Last but not least, the thesis discusses the return of the Jews, renewal of the Jewish community after 1945, its development, and also describes how to follow the legacy of the Jews from Kroměříž and recall or imagine how big the community was at that time. Keywords Jews, Kroměříž, jewish monuments, culture, Second World War, anti - Semitism, holocaust, deportation

1. Abstract The fateful moments put the duty of decision-making process to the players. They can not make no decision. Even an escape from the decision is an act. The player does not decide only on himself but his decision has a general impact. Historical experience can demonstrate the fact that history subsequently evaluates the actorś decision as if the actor had virtually preserved all the theoretical possibilities of decision-making process. The future judgement is influenced by external circumstances which can not be fully reflected in the time of the decision itself. The crucial theme of the thesis is to demonstrate an ethical dilemma on a particular example. It was Hacha's signature in Berlin, March 1939 that put the fate of our country into the hands of The Empire. The work will scrutinize on the basis of social and political ethics aspects president Hacha's possibilities of other solutions choice. A part of the work will be a general moral evaluation of Hácha's political activity and post- war responses to his acting.

On April 11, 1933, Rabbi Marcus Ehrenpreis delivered a sermon in Stockholm's Reform Jewish synagogue. The text was published by Bonnier's publisher with the title Malachi´s cry to the ages: a speech on old and new bondage. The sermon is a scathing confrontation with Nazism's racial political ideas that would lead to the Holocaust.   The sermon is delivered just a few days after the Nazi regime in Germany introduced its first discrimination laws against Jewish citizens. Malachi´s cry  uses the jewish religion, jewish history and jewish culture to argue for universal human values and rights. The sermon is a part of the Jewish celebration of Pesach - a holiday that aims to commemorate the liberation of the Jewish people from captivity and slavery in Egypt - which led to the Exodus from Egypt and the conclusion of the covenant with God on Mount Sinai. Ehrenpreis argues that a new Mizraim - a new Egypt - has come to plague the Jewish people in Germany. At a time when many believed that the Nazi dictatorship would not mean real and far-reaching persecution of German Jews, Marcus Ehrenpreis already had a clear idea that a catastrophe awaited. Marcus Ehrenpreis envisioned a development that would mean that the German jews were deprived of their civil rights and expelled from the country. He had also already a few weeks after the Nazis introduced their dictatorship in Germany realized that the legal system of the entire world was threatened. According to Marcus Ehrenpreis, no one could predict what consequences the abolition of human rights for the jews in Germany could have for the rest of the world's civilizational foundations.

The present thesis offers a new perspective on Holocaust memory in Greece by examining the ways in which divergent mnemonic representations about the Greek 1940s, as evidenced in polarized public contestation, influence the position of Holocaust in contemporary Greek collective memory. Adopting a micro-level case-study approach, the thesis focuses on the process of renaming a street in Salonika (or Thessaloniki), by examining public discourses around the issue. On the basis of theoretical elaborations in the area of collective memory, and through an application of Kubik and Bernhard's conceptualization of the politics of memory, a qualitative evaluation of Holocaust memory in Salonika is presented by attempting to categorize the memory regime emerging. It is assessed that the memory regime pertaining to the Holocaust is affected by the salience of pre-established memory regimes, occupies a secondary status in the wider mnemonic field and, what is more, is not unified. In such context, a problematic tendency to actually distort the historical record of the Holocaust, in the form of downplaying the complicity of local elites in the implementation of the Nazi genocidal policy, is also detected and explained as a repercussion of the specific dynamics at play whenever political actors engage in discussions about the Greek 1940s. All things considered, the study demonstrates that the official institutionalization of Holocaust memory on a commemorative level, a phenomenon observed during the past twenty years, should not be equated to the emergence of a cosmopolitan Holocaust memory in the country.

Miroslav Eisenhammer Forced use of secondary school students during the occupation Supervisor: PhDr. Jan Gebhart, CSc., DSc. Abstract This dissertation deals with yet completely unprocessed issue of forced labor deployment of secondary and vocational school pupils in the Czech lands during the occupation by Nazi Germany. After the initial characteristics of the development of the German and the Protectorate economy and the Nazi attitude to use workforce of its own population and of occupied countries, the other chapter is devoted to the situation in the Czech education in 1939-1945. The Nazis considered the Czech intelligence as the enemy, so after the closure of Czech universities they deliberately restricted Czech secondary education. These restrictions did not have only national political, but also economic significance. From 1939 workers from the Czech lands were sent to work in the Reich. This trend increased significantly from 1942, when Germany intensified the expansion of war production and at the same time they started extensive program of forced labor of foreign workers in German industry. One of the labor sources were secondary school pupils, who the new legislation from February 1943 allowed to acknowledge de facto incomplete education based on the confirmed certificate in forced labor...

The master thesis focuses on German population living in Slovakia during the Second World War. Moreover, it examines the way the status of Germans was changing after Slovak autonomy had been established and which role did Deutsche Partei led by Franz Karmasin play in this process. The political party attempted to form collective identity of Carpathian Germans and have control of the entire German social life. The thesis analyzes on political, economical and cultural level how the party suceeded in fulfilling this ambitious purpose or influencing Germans and getting sympathy. Futher, it deals with the wartime aftermaths, retributive justice and coming to terms with the past.

The master thesis focuses on similarities and disparities in the politics of memory related to the 'forgotten' Romani Holocaust in Slovakia and Hungary after 1989. It scrutinizes based on particular topic areas to what extent is the Romani Holocaust marginalized, excluded or integrated into the historical narratives of nation-states and whether it can be classified as a competitive or multidirectional form of memory. The reference point for the comparative discursive analysis represents the Jewish Holocaust. By employing the discourse-historical approach, the thesis attempts to identify various current or long-term strategies of instrumentalizing the Romani Holocaust in specific politics of memory. Moreover, it endeavours to find out which role can the Romani Holocaust play in forming the national identity in these states or its potential endangering.

The Prague uprising signified the end of the Second World War in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. As the Soviet and American armies progressed through the country towards Prague and the war was apparently soon to come to an end, Czechoslovaks themselves wanted to take part in the resistance against the Nazi oppression. The uprising was also a turning point for the succesful liberation of Prague. After the Czechoslovak communist party seized power in February 1948, the way the public perceived the uprising had to be changed to fit the party's interpretation, purposely overlooking the contribution of any non-communist resistence. This ideologically suitable interpretation had to be accepted even by the main leader of the uprising. The aforementioned interpretation can still be seen in historiographic books, even those published after the Velvet Revolution. Interpretation of the same event with the targeted use of words and phrases allows for different sounds and thus influences the reader. Targeted use of historical events can achieve the long-term prevalence of rumors, the refutation of which is a necessity and the work of historians. On the example of key moments of the uprising, such as its spontaneous beginning, the involvement of The Russian Liberation Army or the surrender of German troops...