TY - JOUR
AU - Zahra, Tara
AB - TRAVEL AGENTS ON TRIAL: POLICING MOBILITY IN EAST CENTRAL EUROPE, 1889–1989 In the winter of 1889, a sensational trial in the small Galician town of Wadowice captivated the Austrian press and public. The de- fendants in the case were Jewish travel agents from the nearby town of Os ´wie ¸cim — known to the world today as Auschwitz. Oswie ¸cim, located at the juncture of Prussian, Russian and Austrian railway lines, had recently developed a booming emigra- tion business. Since 1880, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans had trekked towards the German ports of Hamburg and Bremen en route to North America. The sixty-five defend- ants in the case were accused of seducing emigrants into aban- doning their homeland with false promises of American riches, whereas, in reality, prosecutors argued, Eastern European peas- ants were delivered to hard labour in American factories, mines and brothels. The defendants stood trial for a host of unsavoury crimes: fraud, smuggling, bribery, assault and generally swindling emigrants out of their last heller as they set out for America. If the Wadowice trial had been just another expose ´ of ‘Jewish corruption’ in an Eastern European city, it might have passed unnoticed. But the 
TI - Travel Agents on Trial: Policing Mobility in East Central Europe, 18891989
JF - Past & Present
DO - 10.1093/pastj/gtu002
DA - 2014-05-13
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/travel-agents-on-trial-policing-mobility-in-east-central-europe-fdw6qSwW6b
SP - 161
EP - 193
VL - 223
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -