View 2010: Holocaust Studies and Materials

2010: Holocaust Studies and Materials

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Publication date:
2010-12-01

Section: Studies

Szaber Frenzy

Marcin Zaremba

redakcja@holocaustresearch.pl

historian and sociologist, lecturer at the Institute of History of Warsaw University and the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, recently published: “Jak nie urok, to... Strach przed czerwonoarmistami 1944-1947” in W objęciach wielkiego brata. Sowieci w Polsce 1944–1993, ed. Konrad Rokicki and Sławomir Stępień (Warsaw, 2009) and “The Myth of Ritual Murder in Post-War Poland: Pathology and Hypotheses”, Polin 23. Currently deals with social emotions, primarily fear in post-war Poland. Publishes in the Polityka weekly

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5036-1793

Institute of History, Warsaw University; Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, 2010: Holocaust Studies and Materials, pages: 173-203

Publication date: 2010-11-30

https://doi.org/10.32927/ZZSiM.124

Abstract

The subject of this article is war, and especially post-war, szaber – a phenomenon of mass looting of unattended property. The text is divided into three parts. In the first part, I attempt to explain theoretically the origin of szaber, indicating (among other things) its links with the culture of poverty and a necessary condition for the szaber to take place – a moment of chaos and a temporary decline of the power structures. In the second part, I formulate a hypothesis that ethnic difference was a necessary condition for szaber to emerge. I illustrate it with examples from September 1939, when first we faced a phenomenon of mass looting of unattended property. The article also deals with the pillage of the ghettos by Poles in 1942. The third part is devoted to the highest wave of looting, which took place mostly in the Regained Western and Northern Territories, immediately after the war. The text is constructed in such a way that at the end I return to the origin of the phenomenon, formulating a thesis that it created a certain szaber culture

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Zaremba, M. (2010). Szaber Frenzy. Zagłada Żydów. Studia I Materiały, (Holocaust Studies and Materials), 173-203. https://doi.org/10.32927/ZZSiM.124

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                            View 2010: Holocaust Studies and Materials

2010: Holocaust Studies and Materials

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Data publikacji:
2010-12-01

Dział: Studies