Intimate violence: Jewish testimonies on victims and perpetrators in Eastern Galicia

Abstract

This article focuses on a close reading of Jewish court testimonies from the trials that took place in Poland in the immediate postwar period. Called to testify about the actions of individuals indicted for their collaboration with the Germans during the Second World War, Jewish witnesses described interethnic relations in Eastern Galicia before and during the German occupation. These accounts offer us a window into the process of destruction of Jewish communities in the region from a perspective of individual families. They shed light on the scope of intimate violence perpetrated by former neighbors as well as the survivors’ struggle to grasp and understand it.