CFP: A Marketplace Without Jews: Everyday Economics and the Final Solution in South-Eastern Europe
In 2016, the Serbian government announced that it was initiating a programme of restitution for Jewish victims of the Holocaust in wartime Serbia. The “heirless property restitution law,” the first of its kind in Eastern Europe, proposed that thousands of buildings confiscated from Jews during the occupation would be handed to the country’s Association of Jewish Communities. The government also undertook to offer financial support to the community in the form of an annual sum of 950,000 Euros for the next twenty-five years. In the wake of this announcement, a number of governments in the region adopted similar restitution programs. These restitution measures have coincided with and in some cases stimulated an increasing interest among scholars in the Aryanization of Jewish property and assets in Southeastern Europe as a prelude to the Final Solution. However, so far relatively little has been written about the phenomenon from the “integrated” perspective famously set out by Saul Friedlander in an essay more than a decade ago.
With this in mind, submissions are invited for an interdisciplinary and comparative edited book volume which aims to consider the role played by the confiscation of Jewish property, businesses and assets and the exclusion of Jews from the national economy in shaping society, economy, public attitudes, and the Final Solution in wartime South-Eastern Europe. Proposals are welcome from all disciplinary areas related to the study of the Holocaust, including anthropology, political science, economics, and history. While all thematic areas are encouraged, we are particularly interested in papers that take an interdisciplinary, social and microhistorical approach and focus on processes from the bottom up as well as the top down. Proposals that consider the relationship between victims, perpetrators, and bystanders of/to Aryanization are particularly welcome.
Among the topics that might be considered are:
- The impact of Aryanization on national economies and patterns of consumption and exchange
- Support from below and social resentment as a driver of Aryanization (for example, denunciations, participation in public auctions and “wild” Aryanizations such as pilfering, looting and squatting)
- The subjectivity of victims, perpetrators, or bystanders of/to Aryanization (for example, as related in private diaries, letters and official correspondence)
- The cultural politics of Aryanization (for example, in visual art, film, advertising and literature)
- Social mobility and social transformation in the aftermath of Aryanization
- Non-Jewish Aryanizations (for example, of persecuted national minorities, “asocial groups” and undesired foreigners)
- Resistance to and subversion of Aryanization by Jews and non-Jews alike (for example, legal circumvention, strategic imposture, bureaucratic interventions)
- The role played by Aryanization and the Final Solution in shaping attitudes towards understandings of property ownership, private assets, and the individual in the post-war period
Prior to the drafting of chapters, we plan to organize a Zoom/online conference/workshop sometime in November where participants and contributors can discuss and debate proposals and ideas in more detail. Submissions are welcome from both established academics as well as advanced post-graduate students. In the first instance, if you are interested in contributing to this volume, please contact Rory Yeomans on the email below or at amarketplacewithoutjews@gmail.com.