Geographies of the Holocaust

Chapter 1 of Geographies of the Holocaust defines the purpose, theoretical grounding, and history of the Geographies of the Holocaust mapping project, which is an interdisciplinary effort by a wide range of scholars to take spatial analysis of the Holocaust into new domain through mapping techniques. This effort is meant to work with, rather than replace, text-based Holocaust histories in order to “gain insight and understanding” by “asking spatial questions and employing spatial methods to investigate…the history of the holocaust” (1-2).

In terms of scholarly significance, this work takes holocaust studies (which the authors point out is an interdisciplinary area of study) into new directions to cultivate a broader understanding of it as a “profoundly geographical phenomenon” (1). One of the aims of the project is to show how geographical/spatial analysis can contribute to a body of knowledge, which, based on the chapters I’ve studied, they appear to have been successful in doing (1-2).

One particular aspect of this chapter that stood out to me is how the project is grounded in the idea that “spatial analysis and geovisualization can complement and help specify the humanistic understanding of space and place by exploring and quantifying relationships among things and people” (5). This statement resonates with our discussion in our last class on historical GIS in which we talked about the need to keep empathy for the human experience at the core of what we do as humanists and let bright shiny technology or big data detract from the humanist message of our projects. In this case of the Holocaust project, the scholars appear to be focused on using the spatial and visual to extend understanding of the human experience, which is alluded to in the aim to understand “relationships among things and people” and the statement that “the places and spaces of the Holocaust were both intensely personal and governed by multiscaled systems of ideas and the machinery that put those ideas into action” (4).

Chapter 5, “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: Spatialities of Ghettoization in Budapest” by Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano specifically drew my attention because I briefly taught English in Hungary in 2013 and visited the Dohány Street Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe and home to a museum and memorial dedicated to the Hungarian Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

But even having visited the synagogue, which is in a part of the city with a high population of Jews in 1944, I had the mistaken impression of the Budapest ghetto as a formal and clearly demarcated boundary. The study described in this chapter complicates that idea, as the maps show how, despite initial plans by the SS to have clearly-defined ghettoes, in actuality ghettoization in Budapest was much more about limits on mobility and access to resources than about gated or walled parts of the city that overtly limited movement by Budapest’s Jews.

For instance, Cole and Giordano’s maps show how Jews and non-Jews, depending on location, could be living in close proximity to one another: as close as across the hall or across the street. But with limits on when Jews time and means of transportation, living far from markets or hospitals would severely impede their way of life, as their designated time to be in public areas would be consumed by walking and standing in lines.

The takeaway for me about this particular chapter/case study is what mapping/spatial analysis revealed about the dispersion of power in this particular city and time, showing that the control of spaces took place on a micro level (down to particular residences) and through more symbolic means of identifying Jews as “othered” through the labeling of the ghettos with gold stars. I think this instance would be ripe for Foucaultian analysis of how power is decentralized, which the geospatial/visual aspect of this study helps us better understand.

Knowles, Anne Kelly, et al, editors. Geographies of the Holocaust. Indiana University Press, 2014.