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.

Guy Miron is professor of history and vice president for academic affairs 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.