Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Given its focus on the Warsaw ghetto, Violent Space builds 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 book will appeal to the general reader given the importance of the Warsaw ghetto within the story of the Holocaust. But Violent Space does more than focus on Warsaw alone and so will be of wider interest to scholars of ghettos and the nascent field of Holocaust geographies, environmental histories of the Holocaust and genocide space."—Tim Cole, author of Holocaust Landscapes
"This is an excellent book. It is well-written, clear, original, and relevant. The author never fails, when discussing these experiences, to frame the conversation around the concept of space, with pertinent examples and quite deep reflections on the personal geographies and stories of the witnesses."—Alberto Giordano, editor of Geographies of the Holocaust
"Anja Nowak's Violent Space marks the advent of mature spatial scholarship on the Holocaust. This astonishingly insightful book is infused with Nowak's profound understanding of Nazi spatial theory and practice and how their violent implementation in the Warsaw ghetto created extreme, constantly changing spaces of human suffering. Nowak's lucid prose makes every chapter coherent and powerful, while building a sustained interpretation of ghettoized space as violence, and violence as a flood of spatial acts. Violent Space is spatial history at its very best: deeply geographical, seeking at every turn to determine how spatial ideas became specific actions that affected Jews' lives. A brilliant contribution to Holocaust studies that spatial scholars across the humanities should read."—Anne Kelly Knowles, University of Maine
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface: How We Got Here...
Part I: Localization
Introduction: Localization
1. Spatial Violence
2. Mapping the Ghetto
3. The Archive
4. Streets and Buildings
Part II: The Making of a Violent Space
Introduction: The Making of a Violent Space
5. Jews in Pre-War Warsaw
6. Creation of the Ghetto
7. Dissolution of the Ghetto
8. Contested Space
Part III: Experiences of a Violent Space
Introduction: Experiences of a Violent Space
9. Destruction
10. Decreed Space
11. Buildings
12. Lost Homes
13. Violated Homes
14. Overcrowding
15. Life and Death
16. News
17. Communication
18. Orientation
19. Topography of Violence
20. Public Violence
21. Sound of the Ghetto
22. Deserted Apartments
23. Death Space
24. Spaces of Resistance
Part V: Conclusion
25. Violent Space
Appendix
Works Cited
Index
