Rumor Culture among Warsaw Jews under Nazi Occupation: A World of Catastrophe Reenchanted

An oft-forgotten fact about Warsaw Jews during World War II is that until they were deported to Treblinka, they lived in an urban space. In order to understand the wartime life of Warsaw Jews, then, we must investigate the new modes of urbanism that evolved in those years. This article seeks to investigate the new modes of communication that emerged during the war as a result of the transformed Warsaw Jewish public sphere. More specifically, it examines the new culture of rumors that emerged and prevailed during that time and that replaced the highly literate pre-war Jewish public sphere of Warsaw. The first section of the article describes various aspects of this phenomenon, and the second section, which constitutes the bulk of the article, focuses on rumor culture’s semiotics and hermeneutical procedures. In so doing, this article uncovers a fundamental social practice of the time, enabling us to scrutinize and map Warsaw Jews’ wartime mentalité (popular beliefs, mindsets, and “mental” processes), which was completely transformed under Nazi occupation.