ABSTRACT
Time is a central dimension of the refugee experience. While much scholarship on Jewish refugee temporality has centered on the bureaucratic limbo of Western European transit hubs and seaports, this chapter broadens the lens beyond the paralysis of waiting. Drawing on a rich body of testimonies from Jewish refugees displaced by the Nazi and Soviet invasions of Poland in 1939, it identifies recurring temporal motifs in refugee narratives shaped by the collapse of state structures and, later, by genocide—such as the interrupted present, unrealized futures, and the erasure of the past. Situated at the intersection of Refugee, Memory, and Holocaust Studies, the chapter develops a set of temporal concepts to articulate the disorienting effects of forced migration.
