Space and Time under Persecution: The German-Jewish Experience in the Third Reich

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.

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  

About the Author :
Guy Miron is professor of history at the Open University of Israel. He is the author of several books, including The Waning of the Emancipation: Jewish History, Memory, and the Rise of Fascism in Germany, France, and Hungary. Haim Watzman is a Jerusalem-based writer, journalist, and translator. Among his recent translations is Law and Identity in Israel: A Century of Debate by Nir Kedar.

Review :
"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." "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." "A landmark book that transcends its subject matter. Miron restages and replaces the German-Jewish bourgeois response to the Nazi regime, shifting effortlessly between multiple scales, temporal worlds, and spheres of this everactive and erudite community who bequeathed incredibly rich insights about their struggles to hold onto space and time." “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.” “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.” “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.”