The Complete Lives of Camp People

In The Complete Lives of Camp People Rudolf Mrzek presents a sweeping study of the material and cultural lives of twentieth-century concentration camp internees and the multiple ways in which their experiences speak to the fundamental logics of modernity. Mrzek focuses on the minutiae of daily life in two camps: Theresienstadt, a Nazi ghetto for Jews near Prague, and the Dutch isolation camp Boven Digoelwhich was located in a remote part of New Guinea between 1927 and 1943 and held Indonesian rebels who attempted to overthrow the colonial government. Drawing on a mix of interviews with survivors and their descendants, archival accounts, ephemera, and media representations, Mrzek shows how modern life's most mundane tasksbuying clothes, getting haircuts, playing sportscontinued on in the camps, which were themselves designed, built, and managed in accordance with modernity's tenets. In this way, Mrzek demonstrates that concentration camps are not exceptional spaces; they are the locus of modernity in its most distilled form.