Dance on the Razor's Edge
Crime and Punishment in the Nazi Ghettos
Published on 1. March 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-1-4875-2354-1 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"The author has written a highly competent, very readable, and [...] fair-minded account of a disputed issue in the historiography of the Holocaust, one that makes a [...] useful contribution to the literature. Both the subject itself and the author's treatment of it seem to me deserving of scholarly and public attention."- Michael A. Livingston, Rutgers Law School (Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books) "To expert readers, this book provides an important contribution to the examination of ghetto life by adding a well-researched study on legal institutions in the ghettos...To non-expert readers, this book will be eye-opening as it plunges them into the messy, uncomfortable 'choiceless choices' that made up everyday life in the ghettos." - Amy Simon, Michigan State University (Central European History) "[Bethke's] careful examination presents the nitty-gritty everyday of the last years and months of hundreds of thousands of people in horrible conditions. Bethke portrays them without false sentimentality as acting and thinking people who adapted, hoped, and tried to survive. Dance on the Razor's Edge is a bold and important study on how negotiating and breaching rules shows Holocaust victims not as immoral but rather as human." - Anna Hajkova, University of Warwick (American Historical Review) "An important and indispensable resource for those seeking insight into a subject that has been suppressed and rarely discussed in academic research." - Daniela Ozacky Stern, Western Galilee College (Holocaust and Genocide Studies)
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
444 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4875-2354-1 (9781487523541)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
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.
Sharon Howe is a freelance literary translator working from German. She is based in the UK.
Content
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
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