Dance on the razor's edge: crime and punishment in the Nazi ghettos

Investigates how the Jewish Councils, composed of ghetto inhabitants, formulated new definitions of criminal offenses and established legal institutions on their own initiative, as a desperate attempt to ensure the survival of the ghetto communities. Explores how people under these circumstances tried to make sense of everyday lives that had been turned upside down, bringing with them pre-war notions of justice and morality, and she considers the extent to which this rupture led to new judgments on human behaviour. In doing so, Bethke aims to understand how people attempted to use their very limited scope for action in order to survive.