The study deals with the events related to the last wave of the Nazi courtmartial hearings in Brno in the other half of April 1945 that meant a death penalty for 20 Czech inhabitants of the city. The text also contains a brief genesis of the Nazi courts during the protectorate, taking into account the court in Brno, and the analysis of the post-war investigation of April executions and the trials with the representatives of the court-martials who were members of the Nazi security machinery in 1945–1947.
This paper seeks to map the main aspects of coexistence of the Czech civilian population of Silesia and northern Moravia, and members of the armed forces in the spring of 1945. Another point of focus is the stereotypes associated with the perception of the „enemy“ and the „liberators“ in the collective memory of the region‘s inhabitants, as well as how these stereotypes changed, depending on social development and time elapsed since the events in question took place. Research predominantly draws on chronicles, memoirs, personal documents and eyewitness testimonies.
The Principality of Liechtenstein with an area of 160 km2 had 11,000 inhabitants during the Second World War. Following the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, Hitler's Germany directly bordered Liechtenstein. The unarmed principality declared its neutrality on 30 August 1939, similar to Switzerland. There was a constant danger of a German Anschluss, both from the Reich and through a local Nazi movement. But in April 1939, in a patriotic signature campaign, 95.4% of all those entitled to vote expressed their willingness to preserve the country's independence. From the Reich's perspective, Liechtenstein was like an appendage to Switzerland. Switzerland, however, would not have defended Liechtenstein, for reasons of neutrality. From 1940 to 1944, Liechtenstein, together with Switzerland, was completely surrounded by the Axis Powers of Hitler and Mussolini. Metal processing companies were founded at the end of 1941, the Presta company produced sleeves for Swiss anti-aircraft grenades, and Hilti Maschinenbau produced metal pieces for German auto and armaments companies. The "Volksdeutsche Bewegung in Liechtenstein" celebrated Hitler's victories. But the prince, the government, the parliament, the scouts, the clergy and the vast majority of the people rejected the Nazi ideology. At the end of April and beginning of May 1945, the war came closer, as the French pushed German troops towards Feldkirch. During the night of 2/3 May 1945, 492 members of a Russian-German troop crossed the border; they were interned. On 12 May 1945, Prince Franz Josef II congratulated President Beneš. The Czechoslovak President passed Decree No. 5 on 19 May 1945. The confiscations in Czechoslovakia also affected Liechtensteiners, namely the prince, members of the princely family and 30 other Liechtenstein citizens. They all, although neutral during the war, were treated as "Germans", their property has been confiscated.
Autor srovnal svědectví a fakta o činnosti L. Zotze, a to hlavně za 2. světové války; soudí, že jestliže k vyrovnání s nacistickou minulostí vědy dochází až s půlstoletým zpožděním, pak objektivní hodnocení ideologického působení komunistické totality bude v postkomunistických zemích možné rovněž teprve s časovým odstupem několika desítek let., LOTHAR ZOTZ: ABOUT HIM, AND ABOUT US. The author compares testimony and facts relating to the work of L. Zotz, particularly during the Second World War; he judges that if coming to terms with the Nazi science past required half a century, then an objective evaluation of the ideological impact of the Communist totalitarian régime in the post–Communist states may also take several decades., and Der Autor vergleicht Aussagen einzelner Personen, amtliche Urkunden und teilweise auch die Korrespodenz mit Bezug auf die Rolle und Tätigkeit L. Zotzs, Professor an der Deutschen Universität Prag, während des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Zotz trat der NSDAP am 1. 5. 1933 bei, dem schriftlichen Zeugnis H. Reinerths zufolge soll er mit dem Nationalsozialismus aber schon vor der Machtergreifung sympathisiert haben. An die Universität Prag kam er auf Veranlassung des Reichsführers SS H. Himmler als Vertreter des Vereins Ahnenerbe. Er soll die Funktion eines „trojanischen Pferdes“ an der Prager Universität erfüllt haben. Im Geiste der Absichten des Dritten Reiches war L. Zotz um die Germanisierung des Landes und die Erfüllung seiner Aufgabe, der tschechischen Archäologie habhaft zu werden, bemüht. Der Möglichkeit, seine Absichten zu verwirklichen setzte der Ausgang des Zweiten Weltkrieges ein Ende. Der Autor parallelisiert die Situation in den 50er Jahren in Deutschland und in den postkommunistischen Ländern heute: In Deutschland wird eine Aufarbeitung der NS–Vergangenheit in der Wissenschaft mit nahezu 50 Jahren Verspätung erst heute möglich. Analog bleibt zu hoffen, daß auch in den heutigen postkommunistischen Ländern der unausweichliche Generationswechsel eine objektive Bewertung des kommunistischen Regimes herbeiführen wird, die gleichfalls ausnahmslos auf alle Bürger, einschließlich der Wissenschaftler, einwirkte, jedoch das Verhalten des Einzelnen unterschiedlich prägte, und zwar in Abhängigkeit von ihren Charaktereigenschaften.
In this article the author raises several theoretical questions connected to an insuffi ciently researched topic, Czech society in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (15 March 1939-8/9 May 1945). He considers, on the one hand, possible theoretical starting points, which he sees as residing in the thorough application of sociological approaches to historical research, and, on the other hand, the debates over the terms ''collaboration'' and ''resistance''. The term ''collaboration'' (kolaborace) was imported into the Czech milieu, and is generally used to mean dishonourable work with, or for, the enemy. The author therefore sees the use of this term as being chiefl y in research on public policy, in which the extant sources usually provide enough information to form a reliable picture of the individual actors and their motives. In this respect the author also refers to the views of some Czech historians who have already pointed out that when discussing the behaviour of Czech society in the Protectorate it is extremely diffi cult to set a clear, universally valid boundary between resistance and collaboration. For actual research on Czech society in the Protectorate the author prefers semantically neutral terms, free of moralizing connotations. He sees inspiration in sociology, whose approaches enable the development of a more complex model than the hitherto widely held view of a society that lived in some kind of permanent dilemma between resistance and collaboration. Apart from research on everyday life in the Protectorate - the milieu which the individual actors moved about in - the author recommends exploring also the ''extent of adaptation'' (the way theactors accommodated themselves to the conditions of the new regime) and the ''extent of identifi cation'' (whether the actors identifi ed with the new regime and to what extent they considered it something unchangeable). From a comparison of both factors the author then deduces the actors’ basic attitude to the regime (positive, neutral, potentially hostile, hostile) and their basic modes of behaviour (loyalty, law-breaking, opportunism, resistance). The ''extent of identifi cation'' in particular constitutes the dynamic factor whose value was dependent on a whole range of circumstances. In researching Czech society in the Protectorate one must therefore consider other important topics, for example, the effect of Nazi and Allied propaganda, the responses in Czech society to the news about the course of the war, and, last but not least, fear, an integral part of Protectorate reality. To understand the behaviour of Czech society in the years of the Second World War (and therefore its values and orientation at the time of Liberation), one must in historical research devote suffi cient consideration to the elementary fact that this society found itself in the grip of a totalitarian regime and was consequently not operating on the principle of freedom of choice.
The key idea of our project is to convey to the widest possible readership detailed abstracts of the testimonies of Roma and Sinti and thus their personal and irreplaceable experience of the Second World War. We hope that the Testimonies of Roma and Sinti project will contribute to greater awareness of their genocide and will be an irreplaceable source of information for researchers, relatives of the victims, or anyone else interested in this important topic.
First of all, we defined the project geographically: we focused on the testimonies of Roma and Sinti from the Bohemian lands (today's Czech Republic) and Slovakia. The second definition is that we are only processing printed testimonies into the database. A valuable, and extremely demanding, part of the database is the detailed abstracts of these testimonies prepared by Romani studies experts in cooperation with historians and linguistic stylists. These abstracts are important not only for Czech and Slovak readers, as many publications with testimonies are not easily accessible, but especially for users from abroad - whether researchers, members of Romani communities or any other interested parties - as the vast majority of the hundreds of published testimonies exist only in Czech, Slovak or Romani, and are thus inaccessible to most people from abroad.
Within the database, the testimonies are analyzed according to several criteria, which allow detailed searches and their classification, for example, according to the type of war experience (internment, participation in armed struggle, hiding, etc.). In the analysis, we then focused mainly on geographical data. Therefore, projections of collected data on maps are an integral part of the database, which allow us to show the war trajectory of individuals and groups, to show, for example, the locations of mass murders or guerrilla fighting, or to search for testimonies related to a place.