Jewish Slave Research Articles

The centrality of railways in the German concentration camp system: Jewish slave labourers’ relocation experiences

This article scrutinises the role railways played in the existence of the German concentration camp system during the Third Reich era. Through the lens of Jewish slave labourers’ experiences, I argue that the numerous daily transports of prisoners from site to site were the backbone of the SS camp system. Grounded in survivor testimonies and Nazi administrative records, this paper traces the pathways of Dutch Jewish deportees on a single deportation transport to the concentration camps and addresses the impact of the frequent displacements upon the inmates. In general, the Germans decided which detainee was sent where, yet sometimes the victims could interfere in the selection process or evade relocation to another site. The maps in this article visualise the trajectories of several Dutch Jews; they demonstrate that prisoner relocation was a common phenomenon and reveal the vast distance that inmates covered by train.

Jews and Carolingians — Cooperation, Publicity, Slave Trade and Administrative Resource

The prohibitions on the possession of Christian slaves, adopted at the beginning of the 5th century, squeezed Jews out of the industrial sphere of activity, i.e. from agriculture and handicrafts, to trade and financial and economic services, previously not very revered in the Jewish environment. Since the trade of that period was predominantly the slave trade, Jews became the main slave traders of the early Middle Ages. The texts of sources of the 5th-7th centuries indicate that during this period of time Jewish merchants were not public and hid under Greek pseudonyms — Anthony, Vasily, Priscus. The Saxon Wars of Charlemagne, which began in 770, became manna from heaven for Jews - they gained access to the almost unlimited demographic resource of the pagans, whose sale in slavery was not limited to the Catholic Church. By gifts of Asian luxury items at the beginning of the 9th century Jews were able to significantly strengthen their position in the French court. In 825, Jews received official bulls from Louis the Pious on permission to sell foreign slaves (mancipia peregrina) to countries located “below our empire” (infra imperium nostrum). Here, for the first time, we see elements of publicity — the judgments contain the names of Rabbi Donatus and Samuel (most likely from Paris), David and Joseph from Lyon and Abram from Saragossa. From the letters of Bishop Agobard of Lyons for the period 826-828 follows that these permissions were not purely declarative — in the event of conflicts between Jewish slave traders and the local administration, a “Master of Jewish Affairs” (Iudęorum magister) arrived and settled the situation. In conclusion, we comment on the economy of the Elba-Cordoba slave trade route and give a brief overview of the Jewish slave trade of the 9—11th centuries.

Recognition and Reparations Reconsidered: Lessons from Germany

Racial justice in the United States, and indeed throughout the Americas, can be achieved only by addressing and rectifying the wrongs done in the past to the descendants of African slaves. This is so because under conditions of free market competition, past inequalities and disparities in wealth and asset holding tend to be reproduced and even reinforced in the present. As the US economist Fred Hirsch has shown, under free market conditions, there is no catching up with those who entered competitive markets earlier or with more assets. The benefits of addressing past wrongs with policies of material reparations and symbolic recognition can be understood by comparing the United States to Germany, which has not only paid reparations to Holocaust survivors and the descendants of Jewish slave laborers but also outlawed any public display of any symbols glorifying the horrors enacted in the past.

Judaism, slavery and commemorative ritual in the Netherlands

Abstract Judaism and slavery in the (Early) Modern Dutch history are connected in a paradoxical way. Jewish merchants played a minor, but substantial role in the initial stages of the Dutch transatlantic slavery and are sometimes accused of having contributed disproportionately to its growth. As a matter of fact, it has been claimed that one of the first documented slaves on Dutch territory was a Jewish slave, property of Jewish masters (the slave Elieser). On the other hand, Jews and (descendants of) slaves sometimes find each other in a shared history of being victim of violence, oppression and discrimination. In light of this, the phenomenon of the Keti Koti Dialogue Tables is of particular interest. The Keti Koti Dialogue Tables are an invention of the Surinamese slave-descendant Mercedes Zandwijken and the Dutch Jew Machiel Keestra. The Keti Koti Dialogue Tables are meant to commemorate the Dutch role in the transatlantic slavery by bringing together descendants of slaves and white Dutch people. In the past five years Keti Koti Dialogue Tables have been organized at different places in the Netherlands and up to 5000 persons have participated. The Keti Koti Dialogue Tables are explicitly inspired by the Jewish Seder meal. As in the Seder meals questions are asked (why are we here tonight?), symbolic food is eaten and songs are sung. In this article I will study the Keti Koti Dialogue Tables against the background of the Seder meal through the theoretical lenses of Multidirectional Memory (Rothberg 2009) and Transfer of Ritual (Langer e.a. 2006). With the help of other special-purpose Haggadot (manuals for the Seder meal), for i.e. the LGBTQ community and ‘earth justice’, I will show that the Seder meal forms a particular useful locus for experiencing and sharing feelings of hope for peace, justice, inclusiveness and dialogue.

The Priestly Slave Revolt in Morality

Abstract In this essay I evaluate a new and influential interpretation of Nietzsche’s idea of the slave revolt in morality. This interpretation was first proposed by Bernard Reginster and has since been extended by R. Lanier Anderson and Avery Snelson. Citing textual evidence from Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality, these scholars have argued for the counterintuitive view that nobles, not slaves, instigated the slave revolt in morality. This is because Nietzsche says that nobles create new values, introduces priests as nobles, and claims that priests began the slave revolt. However, against this new approach I argue that these scholars neglect important evidence from these same texts in which Nietzsche claims that the psychologically slavish can also create values, assumes that politically subordinated nobles can lose their psychological nobility, and asserts that the slave revolt was instigated by psychologically slavish priests. I also argue that these scholars ignore Nietzsche’s related claims that the priestly peasant Luther renewed the Jewish slave revolt against re-ascendant Roman nobles and that the plebeian philosopher Socrates led a slave revolt in morality against the Athenian nobles. Thus, it turns out that none of the leaders of the slave revolt were noble and that one of them was not even priestly. I conclude with a defense of the traditional and straightforward view that Nietzsche always conceived of the slave revolt in morality as an act of revenge by oppressed people who are politically and psychologically ignoble.

Koddaroi and Xurēsitauroi in the letters of Apollonius of Tyana: new evidence for tension between Jews and Gentiles in Sardis during the Flavian period?

Among the letters of the sage Apollonius of Tyana, of the first century CE, are eight that berate the Sardians for their civil strife. Two of the letters refer to two Sardian groups that are at odds with one another, the Koddaroi and the Xurēsitauroi . At the core of this article is an etymological argument that Koddaroi means ‘the foreskinned’, and that Xurēsitauroi , from two Greek words meaning ‘shaving’ and ‘genitals’, refers not to depilation but to the shaved look of the glans penis resulting from circumcision. If my hypothesis is correct, we have a new piece of evidence for Jewish–Gentile tensions in the first-century Diaspora in Asia Minor. I also show that my hypothesis fits well with Apollonius’s remarks in letters 39 and 40. And if my interpretation of letter 41 is correct, there is a reference there to Sardian Jews owning some Jewish slaves – which again would be a new testimony, this time on the issue of slavery among the ancient Jews.

From Radom to Vaihingen via Auschwitz: Testimonies and Memoirs of a Transport of Jewish Slave Laborers

This article examines ways testimonies and memoirs of Holocaust survivors help us better understand official German documentation, providing a new window onto Nazi slave-labor policies and the flexibility with which they were implemented. It discusses three findings extrapolated primarily from a transport list of 2,187 Jewish slave laborers from the Szkolna camp in Radom who arrived in KL Vaihingen in August 1944 via Auschwitz. It considers their ages, their trades (in particular that of butcher), and other evidence documenting their Holocaust experiences. The article sheds light on how German authorities balanced the ideological imperative of eliminating the Jews against the economic need for their labor.

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

From Slavery to Freedom: Abolitionist Expressions in Maskilic Sea Adventures

“Black” themes held a substantial place in twentieth-century American Yiddish poetry and prose, as well as in Yiddish journalism. As Hasia Diner notes in her work on Jews and blacks in the United States in the twentieth century, Jews sympathized with the plight of American blacks and their fight for civil rights. However, this had not always been the case, as evidenced by the many staunch Jewish supporters of slavery and Jewish slave owners and traders. Jonathan Schorsch claims that “under the sign of theHaskala…little changed” in this respect. In discussing a reference by Isaac Satanov to black slavery, Schorsch notes:One cannot gauge from this brief comment whether Satanov knew about the abolitionist movements beginning to agitate in England and France at the time. Satanov's reportage was remarkably non-committal, betraying little, if any, sympathy for these developments.

Reconsidering Anti-Semitism and White Slavery in Contemporary Historical Fiction About Argentina

In Argentina, a multimedia boom in historical fictions about the so-called Jewish White Slave Trade of the early twentieth century in Buenos Aires has created a consensus about a particular set of events that deviates in consistent ways from the available evidence. In this essay I show how the literary consensus about the history of white slavery emerges as a consistent set of narrative tropes; then I discuss how in several contemporary historical novels the admixture of history and fiction seems to allow anti-Semitism to be both omnipresent and depoliticized — simultaneously minimized in Argentine political history and dramatized as the hobby of eccentric fictional sociopaths. Furthermore, Jews are split into “good” and “bad” elements, with the unmanageable part cast out through collaboration between “good” Jews and gentiles so as to consolidate a Jewish-Argentine identity. I then consider how the portrayal of anti-Semitism in the novels resonates with cultural debates about historical anti-Semitism — particularly the contested anti-Semitism of the right-wing dictatorship that governed Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Specifically, I suggest that the “splitting” of Jews that occurs in these novels, together with the view that anti-Semitism only exists “outside” the state, make possible the mutual legitimization of a continuous Jewish-Argentine subject and a continuous Argentine state. Finally, I show how contemporary literature, by breaking radically with both the cultural consensus about white slavery and its univocal narrative of anti-Semitism, can actually help to theorize a different affective relationship to history.

'Footprints in the Concrete': A Study of the Chemin des Juifs (Jews' Road), Jewish Slave Labour Camps, and Related Sites, in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France

The concepts of 'dissonant heritage' and 'minority' heritage have become of particular importance in heritage management. Jewish heritage, both nationally and internationally, is a prime example of a 'dissonant' minority heritage. In the English and European context, those working with Jewish heritage often typify it as a 'hidden' or 'neglected' heritage' and report that it is especially prone to misinterpretation, misuse, physical degradation, or loss. This is even more the case with sites associated with the Shoah or Holocaust whose preservation as 'hot' or 'difficult' heritage poses inevitably contentious internal and external issues for the host country. This article highlights the heritage and landscape of the Holocaust in the Nord-Pas-deCalais region of Northern France where an archaeology of lost or forgotten concentration camps housing Jewish labourers working on the concrete constructions of the Atlantic Wall vividly commemorates both victim and perpetrator. To date, these remains of the Holocaust have never been fully identified, mapped, recorded, or examined archaeologically. Using a newly released resource of Allied aerial photographs — TARA — in combination with Google Earth™ and field research, an attempt is made to identify the camps and, potentially, the sites of mass graves. The article concludes with an appeal to carry out more archaeological study of these sites so that they can be appropriately memorialized, conserved, and used in historical and ethical education.

Holocaust Poetry and Testimony

Elie Wiesel has claimed that testimony is the generic legacy of the Holocaust.1 Other critics have pointed out that testimony, in the sense of first-person literary accounts of events to which the author was eye-witness, also characterized earlier historical calamities, in particular the First World War.2 That war produced testimony in the form of lyric poetry, in which the reader recognized the author as a witness and assumed a close fit to the poem's speaking subject. Yet it is not poetic but prose testimony that is typical of Holocaust eyewitness, while Holocaust poetry is considered a separate and self-contained genre. In this essay, I will explore the reasons why this should be so, and whether there is a closer link than at first appears between the construction of the first-person narrator of a prose testimony, such as Wiesel's Night (1958), and the lyric 'I' of some Holocaust poetry. For the purposes of this investigation I have chosen two very different examples of self-consciously testimonial Holocaust poetry. The first is the sequence of four poems entitled 'Razglednicas', the word for 'Postcards' in Serbo-Croatian,3 by the Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti. Radnoti was of Jewish origin although his chosen allegiance was to Catholicism. However, he was called up as a Jewish slave labourer and had been anticipating death as an 'objective certainty'4 since the Nazi accession to power in 1933, on account of his Jewish antecedents. Such 'certainty' seems more politically astute than 'mystical', in Zsuzsanna Ozsvath's term.5 'Razglednicas' were composed while Radnoti was a slave labourer in German-controlled copper mines at Bor in Serbia, and written in a notebook provided by a local peasant. Radnoti was shot and thrown into a mass grave by Hungarian gendarmes in October 1944, and the notebook was only found when his corpse was exhumed some nineteen months later. In this sense Radnoti' s last poems were almost literally what Shoshana

Jewish slaves and slaves of the Jews in central-north Italy in medieval and modern history. Research notes

Jewish slaves and slaves of the Jews in central-north Italy in medieval and modern history. Research notes

Forced Foreign Labourers, POWs and Jewish Slave Workers in the Third Reich: Regional Studies and New Directions

Forced Foreign Labourers, POWs and Jewish Slave Workers in the Third Reich: Regional Studies and New Directions

Flavius Josephus on the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

By the end of the first century ce the Jewish community in Rome had already had a long and chequered history.1 Their origins there stretched back as far as the middle of the second century bce. In subsequent decades the numbers of Jews in Rome grew especially through the arrival of slaves. In 61 bce large numbers of Jewish slaves were brought to Rome for the triumph of Pompey. Smaller scale wars in 37 bce, 4 bce and 6 ce also added to their num bers, while the Jewish revolt of 66-70 resulted in the influx of a huge wave of Jewish slaves into the city. Many other Jews entered Rome independently along with immigrants from many other parts of the world.2 Recent estimates have put the Jewish com munity at between two and six per cent of the total Roman popula tion by 19 CE (20,000-60,000),3 though the numbers presumably had increased by the end of the century. While the Jews in Rome enjoyed several privileges dating back to the time of Julius Caesar,4 their position in Rome also suffered from a number of vulnerabilities. As an identifiable minority group the Jews were periodically subjected to the indignity of expulsion from the city.s The reasons for these expulsions varied, but more often than not were connected to food shortages and the fear of famine.6 Sometimes religious reasons were given. The earliest known expulsion of Jews occurred in 139 bce.7 Other such occur rences are dated to 198 and 49 CE.9 Some scholars believe that Domitian was contemplating similar action against the Jews at

The Impact of Household Slaves on the Jewish Family in Roman Palestine

AbstractIn late antiquity most of the slaves owned by Jewish slave owners in Roman Palestine seem to have been domestic slaves. These slaves formed an integral part of the Jewish household and played an important role within the family economy. In a number of respects the master-slave relationship resembled the wife-husband, child-father, and student-teacher relationships, and affectionate bonds between the slave and his master (or nursling) would have an impact on relationships between other members of the family. Master and slave were linked to each other through mutual ties of dependency which counteracted the basic powerlessness of slaves. On the other hand, slaves had to suffer sexual exploitation and were considered honorless. Rabbinic sources reveal both similarities and differences between Jewish and Graeco-Roman attitudes toward slaves. The Jewish view of the master-slave relationship also served as the basis for its metaphorical use.

A Survey of Jewish Slave Labour in the Nazi System

This article surveys the development of the Nazi use of Jews for slave labour. It considers continuities and shifts in the use of labour, differences over time, between places and between German institutions that used slaves. It also assesses the differing motivations for use of slave labour, and the differing conditions in which slaves worked. Finally, it addresses the relationship between slave labour and the ‘final solution of the Jewish question’.

New Evidence Concerning the Allies and Auschwitz

Within the title of the recent volume The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted To Do It? lies the tragic paradox that is at the heart of contemporary discussions about the Allies and Auschwitz. The title asks whether the Allies should have attempted to bomb Auschwitz, and much of the book consists of essays arguing over whether or not they had the military capability to do so. Yet the reality is that Allied bombers did bomb Auschwitz—five times. On August 20, 1944, a fleet of U.S. bombers dropped more than one thousand bombs on the factory areas of Auschwitz, situated less than five miles from the gas chambers. On September 13, American bombers struck the factory areas again; this time, stray bombs accidentally hit an SS barracks (killing 15 Germans), a slave labor workshop (killing 40 prisoners), and the railroad track leading to the gas chambers. U.S. bombers carried out similar raids on December 18, December 26, and January 19. The frequent Allied bombings of seven other synthetic oil refineries near Auschwitz during 1944-1945 included a January 20 raid on Blechhammer, forty-five miles from the death camp, which made it possible for forty-two Jewish slave laborers to escape.1 In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel recalls how he and other Auschwitz prisoners reacted when the bombers struck: We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life. The raid lasted over an hour. If it could only have lasted ten times ten hours!2 While half the essays in The Bombing of Auschwitz argue that Auschwitz's gas chambers and crematoria could likewise have been bombed, the other half assert either that an Allied raid on Auschwitz was militarily unfeasible, or that it would not have saved any significant

Joodse religieuse uitbreiding in die Nuwe-Testamentiese tydvak: Was die Juda�sme �n mission�re godsdiens? (Deel II)

Jewish religious expansion in the New Testament era: Was Judaism a missionary religion? (Part II) In the first part of this article five factors were identified which would have contributed to the significant numerical increase of Jews towards the end of the Second Temple period. Here six others are discussed: Jewish slaves in non-Jewish households, adoption of children, the universalistic tendency in certain circles, the role of the synagogue, the attractiveness of Judaism in spite of a negative cross-current and the influence of apologetic-propagandistic literature. In weighing the evidence for a full-scale centrifugal missionary movement a mostly negative conclusion is reached. In this sense first century Judaism cannot be described as a missionary religion. We could, however, speak of an indirect mission in the sense that non-Jews were attracted to Judaism mainly through the quality’ of Jewish belief and life-style and that they were encouraged to do so.

Joodse religieuse uitbreiding in die Nuwe-Testamentiese tydvak: Was die Judaïsme ’n missionêre godsdiens? (Deel II)

Jewish religious expansion in the New Testament era: Was Judaism a missionary religion? (Part II) In the first part of this article five factors were identified which would have contributed to the significant numerical increase of Jews towards the end of the Second Temple period. Here six others are discussed: Jewish slaves in non-Jewish households, adoption of children, the universalistic tendency in certain circles, the role of the synagogue, the attractiveness of Judaism in spite of a negative cross-current and the influence of apologetic-propagandistic literature. In weighing the evidence for a full-scale centrifugal missionary movement a mostly negative conclusion is reached. In this sense first century Judaism cannot be described as a missionary religion. We could, however, speak of an indirect mission in the sense that non-Jews were attracted to Judaism mainly through the quality’ of Jewish belief and life-style and that they were encouraged to do so.