Language:
English
Year of publication:
2020
Titel der Quelle:
Naharaim
Angaben zur Quelle:
14,2 (2020) 243-264
Keywords:
Theresienstadt (Concentration camp)
;
Jewish ghettos
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
When German authorities established the Theresienstadt Ghetto for Bohemian and Moravian Jews in late 1941, the site initially functioned muchlike other ghettos and transit camps at the time, as a mere way station to sites of extermination further East. The decision to reconfigure the ghetto as a site of internment for select“privileged”groups of Jews from Germany and Western Europe, and its advertisement as a“Jewish settlement”in Nazi propaganda,constituted an apparent paradox for a regime that sought to make the GreaterGerman Reich“judenrein”(clean of Jews). This article investigates the There-sienstadt Ghetto from a historical-spatial perspective and argues that varying prejudices and degrees of antisemitism shaped divergent“spatial solutions”tosegregate Jews from non-Jews, wherein the perceived divide between so-called“Ostjuden”and assimilated Western Jews played a central role. In this anal-ysis, Theresienstadt emerges as a logical culmination to paradoxical policiesdesigned to segregate select groups of German and assimilated Western European Jews.
DOI:
10.1515/naha-2020-2001
URL:
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