Violent Space

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 Ästhetik des Theatralen in Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie. She is editor (with Bożena Karwowska) of The 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 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

• AcknowledgmentsPreface: How We Got Here...Part I: LocalizationIntroduction: Localization1. Spatial Violence2. Mapping the Ghetto3. The Archive4. Streets and BuildingsPart II: The Making of a Violent SpaceIntroduction: The Making of a Violent Space5. Jews in Pre-War Warsaw6. Creation of the Ghetto7. Dissolution of the Ghetto8. Destruction of the GhettoPart III: Experiences of a Violent SpaceIntroduction: Experiences of a Violent Space9. Destruction10. Decreed Space11. Buildings12. Lost Homes13. Violated Homes14. Overcrowding15. Life and Death16. News17. Communication18. Orientation19. Topography of Violence20. Public Violence21. Sound of the Ghetto22. Deserted Apartments23. Death Space24. Spaces of ResistancePart V: Conclusion25. Violent SpaceAppendixWorks CitedIndex