Intimate Dispossession as a Form of Violence: Holocaust Plunder of Jewish Personal Belongings in East-Central Europe

Looking at testimonies of victims, bystanders and perpetrators that report wartime theft and looting of Jewish belongings across East-Central Europe, this article focuses specifically on one aspect of genocidal dispossession which has so far received only tangential attention – the theft of the most intimate possessions: personal belongings, especially clothes. In doing so, it addresses the question of how this specific form of intimate dispossession facilitated genocidal policies by creating conditions for violence, incentivising collaboration, and providing a tool to inflict pain. The article lays out the ways in which genocidal dispossession accompanied, facilitated and constituted violence at different stages of Nazi-led anti-Jewish policies, including the phase of ghettoisation and hiding and the phase of mass killing. It also discusses particular measures, such as stripping down the victims and coercing Jews to sort victims’ clothes, as forms of torture. Particular attention is given in this respect to accounts of sexual violence that accompanied dispossession. The study is based on archival sources, including post-war survivors’ testimonies, post-war trials of war criminals and Nazi collaborators, yizkor books, victims’ and bystanders’ diaries, and oral history interviews, predominantly from the area of today's eastern Poland and western Belarus. It focuses on the experiences Jewish victims inside small towns ( shtetls ) that had a significant Jewish majority prior to World War II, and where the conditions for dispossession were particularly favourable.