{"product_id":"9781487504922-dance-on-the-razors-edge","title":"Dance on the Razor's Edge","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCrime and Punishment in the Nazi Ghettos\u003cbr\u003eExploring notions of justice and morality, this book offers a new interpretation of everyday life in the ghettos during the Second World War.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eHistorians 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, \u003cem\u003eDance on the Razor’s Edge\u003c\/em\u003e explores how, in fact, highly improvised legal spheres emerged in these coerced and heterogeneous ghetto communities.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eLooking 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, \u003cem\u003eDance on the Razor’s Edge\u003c\/em\u003e calls for a new understanding of the ghettos as complex communities in an unprecedented emergency situation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53567384813942,"sku":"9781487504922","price":47.62,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/orig_31214025.jpg?v=1730965696","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9781487504922-dance-on-the-razors-edge","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}