Dance on the Razor's Edge
Crime and Punishment in the Nazi Ghettos
Seiten
2021
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-0492-2 (ISBN)
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-0492-2 (ISBN)
Exploring notions of justice and morality, this book offers a new interpretation of everyday life in the ghettos during the Second World War.
Historians have mainly seen the ghettos established by the Nazis in German-occupied Eastern Europe as spaces marked by brutality, tyranny, and the systematic murder of the Jewish population. Drawing on examples from the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna ghettos, Dance on the Razor’s Edge explores how, in fact, highly improvised legal spheres emerged in these coerced and heterogeneous ghetto communities.
Looking at sources from multiple archives and countries, Svenja Bethke investigates how the Jewish Councils, set up on German orders and composed of ghetto inhabitants, formulated new definitions of criminal offenses and established legal institutions on their own initiative, as a desperate attempt to ensure the survival of the ghetto communities. Bethke explores how people under these circumstances tried to make sense of everyday lives that had been turned upside down, bringing with them pre-war notions of justice and morality, and she considers the extent to which this rupture led to new judgments on human behaviour. In doing so, Bethke aims to understand how people attempted to use their very limited scope for action in order to survive. Set against the background of a Holocaust historiography that often still seeks for clear categories of "good" and "bad" behaviours, Dance on the Razor’s Edge calls for a new understanding of the ghettos as complex communities in an unprecedented emergency situation.
Historians have mainly seen the ghettos established by the Nazis in German-occupied Eastern Europe as spaces marked by brutality, tyranny, and the systematic murder of the Jewish population. Drawing on examples from the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna ghettos, Dance on the Razor’s Edge explores how, in fact, highly improvised legal spheres emerged in these coerced and heterogeneous ghetto communities.
Looking at sources from multiple archives and countries, Svenja Bethke investigates how the Jewish Councils, set up on German orders and composed of ghetto inhabitants, formulated new definitions of criminal offenses and established legal institutions on their own initiative, as a desperate attempt to ensure the survival of the ghetto communities. Bethke explores how people under these circumstances tried to make sense of everyday lives that had been turned upside down, bringing with them pre-war notions of justice and morality, and she considers the extent to which this rupture led to new judgments on human behaviour. In doing so, Bethke aims to understand how people attempted to use their very limited scope for action in order to survive. Set against the background of a Holocaust historiography that often still seeks for clear categories of "good" and "bad" behaviours, Dance on the Razor’s Edge calls for a new understanding of the ghettos as complex communities in an unprecedented emergency situation.
Svenja Bethke is a lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Leicester. Sharon Howe is a freelance literary translator working from German. She is based in the UK.
Acknowledgments
Note on Names and Places
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Nazi Jewish Policy in Eastern Europe and the Perspective of the Jewish Councils
2. Jewish Council Proclamations: Definitions of Criminal Activity
3. The Jewish Police as an Executive Organ
4. The Ghetto Courts
5. The Ghetto Penal System
6. Ordinary Ghetto Residents and Their Relationship with Internal and External Authorities
Conclusion: Criminality and Law between the Poles of External Power and Internal Autonomy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 10.05.2021 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | German and European Studies |
| Übersetzer | Sharon Howe |
| Verlagsort | Toronto |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 159 x 235 mm |
| Gewicht | 560 g |
| Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918) |
| Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945 | |
| Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Zeitgeschichte | |
| Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-4875-0492-6 / 1487504926 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-4875-0492-2 / 9781487504922 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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