"[...] Everywhere, of course, there were hidden costs in terms of deteriorating physical and psychological health. 'Inter-war unemployment bred in the poor the fear that they might be left on the margins,' recalls Dimitri Kazamias, who grew up in the refugee quarters of 1930s Athens. 'You saw the "bum" fear he was losing his worth, and the "scab" his faith in the law and justice.' The slump changed the very rhythms of social and family life. Men out of work walked more slowly than women, who still had housework to do, and stood around aimlessly. 'Nothing is urgent anymore; they have forgotten how to hurry,' noted observers of the unemployed in one German town. 'For the men, the division of the days into hours has long since lost its meaning. Of one hundred men, eighty-eight were not wearing a watch and only thirty-one had a watch at home. Getting up, the midday meal, going to bed, are the only remaining points of reference. In between, time elapses without anyone really knowing what has taken place.' * [...]"
* D. Kazamias, Sta ftocha chronia tis dekaetias tou '30 (Athens, 1997), p. 71; M. Jahoda, P. Lazarsfeld and H. Zeisel, Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community, cited by R. Overy, The Interwar Crisis, 1919-1939 (London, 1994), p. 113
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Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, Penguin, 1998, p. 116
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