Dance on the Razor's Edge: Crime and Punishment in the Nazi Ghettos (German and European Studies) - Softcover

Book 17 of 50: German and European Studies

Bethke, Svenja

 
9781487523541: Dance on the Razor's Edge: Crime and Punishment in the Nazi Ghettos (German and European Studies)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1487523548 ISBN 13: 9781487523541
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2021

Synopsis

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.

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About the Authors

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.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Publication date
2021
Language
English
ISBN 10 
1487523548
ISBN 13 
9781487523541
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
304

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9781487504922: Dance on the Razor's Edge: Crime and Punishment in the Nazi Ghettos (German and European Studies)

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  1487504926 ISBN 13:  9781487504922
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2021
Hardcover