Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-269) and index. Translation of: Tanz auf Messers Schneide : Kriminalitat und Recht in den Ghettos Warschau, Litzmannstadt und Wilna.
Contents:
Nazi Jewish Policy in Eastern Europe and the Perspective of the Jewish Councils -- Jewish Council Proclamations: Definitions of Criminal Activity -- The Jewish Police as an Executive Organ -- The Ghetto Courts -- The Ghetto Penal System -- Ordinary Ghetto Residents and Their Relationship with Internal and External Authorities.
Summary:
"The ghettos established by the Nazis in German-occupied Eastern Europe during the Second World War have mainly been seen as lawless 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 under these circumstances highly improvised legal spheres emerged in these coerced and heterogeneous ghetto communities. Looking at sources from multiple archives and countries, this book investigates how the Jewish Councils, set up on German orders, 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, taking with them pre-war notions of justice and morality, and considers the extent to which this rupture led to new judgments on human behaviour. In doing so, this book 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" behaviour, Dance on the Razor's Edge calls for a new understanding of the ghettos as complex communities in an unprecedented emergency situation."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.