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Space and Time under Persecution

The German-Jewish Experience in the Third Reich

Translated by Haim Watzman
A new history of how the Nazi era upended German-Jewish experiences of space and time from eminent historian Guy Miron.
 
In Space and Time under Persecution, Guy Miron considers how social exclusion, economic decline, physical relocation, and, later, forced evictions, labor, and deportation under Nazi rule forever changed German Jews’ experience of space and time. Facing ever-mounting restrictions, German Jews reimagined their worlds—devising new relationships to traditional and personal space, new interpretations of their histories, and even new calendars to measure their days. For Miron, these tactics reveal a Jewish community’s attachment to German bourgeois life as well as their defiant resilience under Nazi persecution.

288 pages | 8 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2023

History: European History

Jewish Studies

Religion: Judaism

Reviews

"Miron brings to life the complexity of the Jewish world in the Third Reich . . . [and] shine[s] the powerful light of experience on the ripple effects of a fascist government on the everyday of Jewish individuals and their communities. The result is a persuasive and highly engaging monograph that holds great interest for historians of the Holocaust and the bourgeoisie, as well as for a broad audience interested in Jewish history."

Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

"An important and much-needed contribution to our understanding of German-Jewish life in the Third Reich. Miron’s meticulous research, combined with his deep theoretical understanding in a variety of disciplinary fields, makes for a powerful and compelling read and argument."

German History

“With a nimble weave of excerpts from diaries, memoirs, and correspondence, Miron adumbrates the tormented strategies devised by German Jews to cope with their incremental exclusion from the public space and civil religion of Nazi Germany. A veritable scholarly tour de force, Space and Time under Persecution also enriches the theoretical literature on the construction and experience of time and space.”

Paul Mendes-Flohr, University of Chicago

“A highly original and sophisticated argument about the perception of space and time among Jews in Nazi Germany. Drawing on personal memoirs and diaries, Miron shows how German Jews adapted (painfully) to the limits on their public (and later, private) spaces and to the Nazification of their daily and annual rhythms. Miron shows not only how the Nazis limited and destroyed Jewish space and time, but also how Jews used their own agency and imagination to reconfigure as much space and time as they could.”

Marion Kaplan, New York University

“Through meticulous documentation of a series of case studies, and with superb attention to detail, Miron conjures an unforgettable picture of the shrinking mental universe of German Jews after 1933. This is a powerful work of scholarship that would be of great interest to scholars of modern German history, Jewish history, and the history and sociology of time and space.”

Yair Mintzker, Princeton University

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1. Space
Chapter 1. Public Space
Chapter 2. Jewish Places and Spaces
Chapter 3. At Home

Part 2. Time
Chapter 4. The Circle of Time
Chapter 5. The Flow of Time
Chapter 6. Turning toward the Past

Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
 

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