Temporal Regimes and Narratives of Extreme Violence

Abstract

This paper examines violence as a temporal phenomenon and explores how specific regimes of time under Nazi rule structured living conditions in Judenhäuser and concentration camps and shaped the experience of violence. A central assumption is that extreme violence deforms time: it blocks the future, destroys biographical continuity, and appropriates temporal horizons, thereby becoming an expression of domination. The paper demonstrates how perpetrators controlled tempo, duration, and rhythms, while victims were trapped in a state of »violent time«, defined by powerlessness. Based on diaries, letters, and interviews, it reconstructs three modes of violent temporality: the everyday expropriation of time, the transformation of temporal dimensions (past, present, future), and the sudden compression of violence in moments of crisis. Narratives function as central structural elements that retrospectively organize and interpret the temporal order of suffering.