Hardback
April 30, 2017
9789633861653
English
332
9.21 Inches (US)
6.26 Inches (US)
1.26 Pounds (US)
$90.00 USD, £67.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference

On the Margins

Essays on the History of Jews in Estonia

Estonia is perhaps the only country in Europe that lacks a comprehensive history of its Jewish minority. Spanning over 150 years of Estonian Jewish history, "On the Margins" is a truly unique book. Rebuilding a life beyond so-called Pale of Jewish Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Jewish cultural autonomy in interwar Estonia, and the trauma of Soviet occupation of 1940–41 are among the issues addressed in the book but most profoundly, the book wrestles with the subject of the Holocaust and its legacy in Estonia.

Specifically, it examines the quasi-legal system of murder instituted in Nazi-occupied Estonia, confiscation of Jewish property, and Jewish forced labor camps and develops an analysis of the causes of collaboration during the Holocaust. The book also explores the dynamics of war crimes trials in the Soviet Union since the 1960s and so-called denaturalization trials in the United States in the 1980s. The haunting memory of Soviet and Nazi rule, the book concludes, prevents a larger segment of today's Estonian population from facing up to the Holocaust and the universal message that it carries.

About the Author

Anton Weiss-Wendt is Head of Research at the Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Oslo, Norway.

Reviews

"What distinguishes this volume from other more traditional histories is the interconnectedness of the author and his personal context with his historical subject. Weiss-Wendt interweaves his own career trajectory and historical and social questions into the contemporary world of Estonia, the historiographical debates about the Final Solution in eastern Europe, and the roll of antisemitism in the history of Estonia and its collaboration with the German occupiers during the war. The result is a unique and compelling collection of essays that sometimes do not hold together, yet which if taken as a whole and read in the spirit for which they are intended, offer real insight and meaning into much neglected areas of Estonian, German, Soviet, and Jewish histories."—Slavic Review

Endorsements

"In the vast spectrum of books concerned with modern Jewish history, On the Margins is highly distinctive and unusually compelling. While focusing on a supposedly 'marginal' entity, Anton Weiss-Wendt demonstrates that we have the potential to learn a great deal about European Jewish history, comprehensively, through an illumination of Estonia's Jews—which fit few of the perceived conventions of Jewish life. It is on the one hand deeply tragic—an interpretation of a country that the Nazis boasted had cleansed itself of its Jews. But on the other hand, Jews in Estonia, while small in number, seemed to embody 'normalcy' before and after the Holocaust—with the lack of attention remarkable in itself. We are indeed fortunate that a talented scholar with courage and integrity has a produced a work that is both deeply personal and a critical part of the whole of Jewish and human history."—Michael Berkowitz

"Anton Weiss-Wendt provides us with a fascinating and important examination of the Holocaust in Estonia and, crucially, Jewish life before the war. Two decades of research inform this original contribution to Estonian and Jewish history. His judicious and meticulous documentation provide needed perspective to a heated and contentious topic. Yet the work is anything but dry—Weiss-Wendt writes as fluidly and compellingly about the broader geopolitics of the region as he does the individual lives affected by the tragic history of the region. The exceptional depth achieved in this volume provides a model for scholarship . . . and will be of broad interest to researchers of both Jewish and Holocaust history generally."—Doyle E. Stevick

"In the context of Jewish history, Estonia long had an image of a haven for anybody who thought differently. The book by Weiss-Wendt challenges this conventional stereotype. It tells a sad story of a tiny and exotic ethnic group, the Jews, who Estonians bestowed minority rights on in the interwar period, helped to exterminate during the Holocaust, marginalized in the post-war period, and vilified in the post-1991 Estonia. The author of the book made an effort to reclaim the memory of the Estonian Jews from the realm of the exotic. This book reads like a warning: it suggests that a people who marginalize a minority and the memory of that minority might themselves be easily marginalized as exotic and insignificant."—Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Central European University Press

9789633861653 : on-the-margins-weiss-wendt
Hardback
332 Pages
$90.00 USD

Other Titles by Anton Weiss-Wendt

The Future of the Soviet Past

edited by Anton Weiss-Wendt, Nanci Adler, with contributions by Kiril Feferman, Johanna Dahlin, Boris Noordenbos, Stephen M. Norris, Nikolay Koposov, George Soroka, Štěpán Černoušek, Ivan Kurilla, Nikita Petrov, Steven A. Barnes
Oct 2021 - Indiana University Press
$50.00 USD - Hardback
$42.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Other Titles in HISTORY / Holocaust

Jewish Cattle Traders in the German Countryside, 1919–1939

Stefanie Fischer, OtherWallstein Verlag
Mar 2024 - Indiana University Press
$90.00 USD - Hardback
$49.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Home after Fascism

Anna Koch
Nov 2023 - Indiana University Press
$90.00 USD - Hardback
$48.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Violent Space

Anja Nowak
Nov 2023 - Indiana University Press
$90.00 USD - Hardback
$45.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Other Titles in Jewish studies

True to My God and Country

Françoise S. Ouzan
Feb 2024 - Indiana University Press
$80.00 USD - Hardback
$35.00 USD - Paperback / softback

The Beginnings of Anti-Jewish Legislation

Mária M. Kovács
Jun 2023 - Central European University Press
$65.00 USD - Hardback

Self-Financing Genocide

Gábor Kádár, Zoltán Vági
Mar 2023 - Central European University Press
$111.00 USD - Hardback
$35.95 USD - Paperback / softback