Inflation in the Lodz Ghetto

Aug. 30 2024

It might seem strange to use economics to study the Holocaust, but that is precisely what Joshua Blustein has tried to do, and his research helps us understand better the dimensions of this tragedy. At the link below, you can find an interactive timeline of inflation in the Lodz Ghetto, whose residents were shipped off to their deaths 80 years ago yesterday:

If you, God forbid, had lived in the Lodz Ghetto, you would be given a two-week ration and sometimes a workplace soup—which together ranged from ~1,000 to 1,400 calories per day. Worse, you would receive it all at once, and were expected to store and ration it to last two weeks. But because it was so meager, you would likely gulp it all down immediately—and then have nothing left for the remaining time. If you didn’t die in that time, you’d end up flocking to the black market as your only resort—but that would pit you against both the German and Jewish authorities, who outlawed and harshly punished this sort of private commerce.

As this one anecdote shows, it is impossible for nearly all contemporary readers to . . . conceptualize this torturous experience. The story of monetary policy in the Lodz Ghetto is one of terrorizing constriction—the constant opening and closing of a vise that, each time, shut tighter than before.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Economics, Holocaust, Jewish history

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023