ABSTRACT
This chapter centers on the prolific perpetration diaries faced, reading diarists’ emotion-words to determine when, where, and how they felt persecuted. At the center of these feelings were those who carried out the various forms of persecution; this chapter therefore examines the recognition aspect of encounters with persecution and persecutors. Based on the reading of emotional responses to these, the chapter suggests a new taxonomy of perpetration which more precisely captures victims’ experiences of threat and suffering in the ghettos than studies have done in the past. The new categories developed in this chapter are: Taking Advantage, Persecuting Administratively, Robbing, Guarding, Beating, Rounding Up, and Killing. Furthermore, several of these categories have spatial components, such as “Guarding” and “Rounding Up;” this chapter therefore taps into recent trends in Holocaust historiography that take up questions of “space.” Taking a close look at the behaviors included here highlights the incessancy of persecution, the unpredictability of people’s actions, and the essential roles of expectation and change for diarists’ perceptions of people’s movement in and out of these categories throughout the ghetto period.
