Dan Mikhman Book order

This book is a linguistic-cultural study of the emergence of the Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust. It traces the origins and uses of the term "ghetto" in European discourse from the sixteenth century to the Nazi regime. It examines with a magnifying glass both the actual establishment of and the discourse of the Nazis and their allies on ghettos from 1939 to 1944. With conclusions that oppose all existing explanations and cursory examinations of the ghetto, the book impacts overall understanding of the anti-Jewish policies of Nazi Germany.

Historical research on the Holocaust has not dealt evenly with all the persecuted Jewish communities. The fate of the Jews in Belgium has been relatively neglected.Since what little has been published or written is in either Dutch or French, the material has been largely unavailable to readers outside West Europe. This volume is the first of its kind in English. A variety of researchers from Belgium, France, and Israel discuss issues such as the make-up of Belgian Jewry before the war; Nazi anti-Jewish policies; the attitudes of various segements of Belgian society to the Jews before, during, and after the occupation; Jewish strategies and activities for survival; the problematics of reconstruction in the aftermath of the war; the contacts with the Yishuv in Palestine; emigration to the United States; and the policies of postwar commemoration.