Violent Space: The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw [Hardcover]

For Nazi Germany, the ghetto was a conceptual tool used to facilitate social and political exclusion and further their anti-Jewish campaign. For the Jews who lived in them, the ghetto became the center of their liveseven though they were also sites of immense suffering.

Combining thorough historical research with an interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship between space and violence,Violent Spaceprovides a unique insight into the history and the socio-spatial topography of the Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Warsaw (19391943). Using rare archival materials and firsthand accounts, many of which have never been translated into English, Anja Nowak traces out the trauma that the space of the ghetto inflicted on its Jewish inhabitants, and how it alienated, disoriented, and harmed them.

While the physical ghettoits buildings, boundaries, and streetshas been reabsorbed and redefined by modern-day Warsaw's urban structure,Violent Spaceshows us that its presence still lingers in the narratives of those who were forced into this first phase of the Holocaust.

Anja Nowak received her PhD from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She is author of a German monograph on Theodor W. Adorno,Elemente einer ?sthetik des Theatralen in Adornos ?sthetischer Theorie. She is editor (with Bo|ena Karwowska) ofThe More I Know, The Less I Understand: Young Researchers' Essays on Witnessing Auschwitz. She works as a freelance writer, researcher and educator in Frankfurt, Germany.

Given its focus on the Warsaw ghetto,Violent Spacebuilds on a number of existing works in important ways through its focus on the topography of the ghetto and the spatial practices of ghetto inhabitants. As the author notes, the destruction of the ghetto means that these places and spaces are no longer present in the contemporary city and the author follows Engelking and Leociak in excavating them and bringing them to life. Here the boló&