No description available.

In Holocaust research, the study of elderly Jews in Nazi German ghettos remains a blind spot. This thesis begins to fill the research gap by exploring the everyday life of elderly Jews and their agency under the structural conditions of the Warsaw ghetto. On a broader scale, my key findings contribute to scholarly debates and lay the foundation for further research, on Jewish responses to ghettoization and agency during the Holocaust, including the continuity and disruption of gender roles and social hierarchies in the family and Jewish ghetto community as well as religious practices as a coping strategy for elderly Jews in the ghetto. The theoretical framework augments current gender scholarship and explanations of agency and structure in the ghetto with intersectional theory, including gender, class as intervening variables, which represents a barely used theoretical approach to an under-researched subject. To answer my main research question "How did gender, class, and family as well as the Jewish community and German authorities influence the life of elderly Jews in the ghetto?”, the analysis is conducted in the tradition of the history of the everyday on the micro-level. My empirical analysis examines the living conditions, agency, survival, and vulnerability to violence and death of elderly people in the Warsaw ghetto. The primary sources used in the empirical analysis are a combination of archival documents - including the clandestine Oneg Shabbat ghetto archive -, diaries and memoirs by elderly Jews as well as oral history interviews of their grandchildren. A general scarcity of sources by elderly, especially poor elderly and female elderly Jews in the primary sources available to the author, constitute the limitations of this thesis.

No description available.

No description available.

This paper explores the mechanisms and processes within the German foreign trade Aryanisation project in Sweden from the mid-1930s to 1945. Aryanisation as a concept has, similarly to the Holocaust and National Socialism before it, for the longest time been seen as a uniquely German affair. While that situation has greatly changed when it comes to the Holocaust, Fascism and National Socialism, Aryanisation is still defined as a German affair affecting only Jews in Germany even by the US Holocaust museum’s Holocaust encyclopaedia.1 As a result, research into Aryanisation efforts in Nazi Germany’s foreign trade sector has been relatively sparse. Drawing on the small existing body of research that was sparked by Swedish historian Sven Nordlund, this paper seeks to complete the picture of the German trade Aryanisation campaign in Sweden by examining its inner workings on the German side of affairs. The study is framed within an elastic interpretation of the rationality v ideology binary and further tied to Holocaust research by highlighting characteristic elements of modernity, bureaucracy and artificiality in how NS ideology crept its way into every aspect of life, even trade with a neutral country. Through a thorough analysis of a large body of associated correspondence and official documents, this study uncovers the complex and evolving picture of German perspectives and processes within its project to shape its trade relations to Sweden according to Nazi ideas.

Carl A. Helmecke, like many German Americans marginalized by the anti-Germanism of the First World War and interwar period, believed that democracy had failed him. A professor with a doctoral degree in social philosophy, he regularly wrote newsletter columns declaring that the emphasis on individualism in the United States had allowed antidemocratic forces to corrupt the government, oppress citizens, and politicize schools and institutions for propaganda purposes. Moreover, widespread hunger and unemployment during the Great Depression added to the long list of failures attributable to democracy. What the United States needed, Helmecke thought, was political change, and he believed that the Nazi regime in his homeland, albeit flawed, had much to offer. In 1937, he went on a teaching sabbatical to Nazi Germany to study the Third Reich's education and social programs. When he returned to the United States, he began promoting Nazi ideals about education and labor camps. Although Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland, followed by the United States entry into World War II, brought his fascist illusions for political change in the United States to an abrupt end, his belief in the correctness of an autocratic system of governance for Germany rather than that of the western democracies endured. His story helps to explain why some German American academics embraced Nazism during the interwar period and later denied the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities.

The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Task Force of 1940, initiated a systematic confiscation of items belonging to Jews throughout Europe. Because of this task force and Hitler's decrees, Jews across Europe were labeled as stateless, and were stripped of ownership and rights to property. Not only did these actions devastate Jews economically, but intellectually and artistically as well. In parts of occupied France, this task force was legitimized by Vichy laws under the label of the Commissariat Générale aux Questions Juives (General Commission for Jewish Issues) and enabled Nazi officials to closely watch Jewish musicians and stop them from performing their music, profiting from anyone else performing it, and to halt any public performance of Jewish compositions. This dissertation exhibits the lost legacy of one such Jewish musician, Józef Szulc. It discusses him as a musician of great importance in the ongoing recovery of Jewish culture, music, and life during World War II. His musical output has historical notoriety, as seen through reviews and performance history. The study of Vichy laws and their effect on Jewish musicians in Paris during the Nazi occupation provides the socio-political context for Szulc's life. It also provides the most plausible reason why his contribution to French vocal music was almost entirely lost. Szulc's success with his operetta compositions created a trajectory of performances that lasted well into the late 1920s and early 1930s.

No description available.

The diploma thesis Czech Press for People Called up to Do Forced Labour in Nazi Germany deals with the weekly Czech Labourer which was sent to the Czech workers called up to German factories during the period of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia within the years 1939-1945. The thesis aims at exploring its origin, publishing and changes concerning its publishers and owners. It also analyses its distribution to Nazi Germany and its content in detail. Furthermore, by means of the quantitative analysis the thesis surveys the thematic agenda of the main articles on the front pages. It discusses the impact of the propagandistic information in media on those who were called up to do forced labour. Within the context, this paper examines the operation of media during the period of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

The diploma thesis deals with Czech political system in the second Czechoslovak Republic (1938 - 1939). In this historically short period, liberal democracy has changed into an authoritative democracy. The power of the right-wing parties prevailed in the political system. In the case of Czech countries a bi-party political system, which is unique in Czech history, has been created. The main aim of the diploma thesis is to describe the political party system in the Czech lands in the Second Republic period, and to look at the political parties that formed it. It also deals with the Second Republic in general, with the historical, economic, cultural and social context of that time. In the final part, there are summarized all the conclusions I came to. The sources were mainly archive sources, specialized literature dealing with the subject and political party periodicals but even non-political periodicals from that time. KEYWORDS Antonín Hampl, authoritarian democracy, Czech - Slovak Republic, Second Republic, Bi-party political system, Munich agreement, Nazi Germany, National Labour Party, Rudolf Beran, National Union Party