Holocaust City: The Making of a Jewish Ghetto

by Cole,Tim

• ISBN13: 9780415929684
• ISBN10: 0415929687
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-05-23
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Tim Cole's first book,Selling the Holocaust, explained how the Holocaust has been mythologized in popular culture. With his new book,Holocaust City, Cole again covers new and provocative ground by detailing how the Holocaust was literally constructed, planned and built. Drawing from the ideas of critical geography and based on extensive archival research, Cole chillingly examines such concepts as "Nazi space" versus "Jewish space" - the first a living space of authority and control and, the second, a space designated for death. Cole brilliantly reconstructs the formation of the Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust, focusing primarily on the ghetto in Budapest, Hungary - one of the largest created during the war, but rarely examined. Cole maps the city illustrating how spaces - cafes, theaters, bars, bathhouses - became divided in two. Throughout the book, Cole discusses how the creation of this Jewish ghetto, just like the others being built across occupied Europe, tells us a great dealabout the nature of Nazism; what life was like under Nazi-occupation; and the role the ghetto actually played in the Final Solution. A major contribution to Holocaust studies, Cole's groundbreaking work shows that the architecture of the Holocaust is not the monumental buildings and plans of Albert Speer, but the more modest buildings and structures made for deadly function: the locking gates of the ghetto, the crematorium oven doors. By giving readers a glimpse of daily life in the "Holocaust City", Cole adds to the ongoing debate sparked byHitler's Willing Executionersabout the culpability of people during World War II.

Author Biography

Tim Cole is Lecturer of European Social History at the University of Bristol

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
CHAPTER ONE
Architectural Solutions, Spatial Solutions, and Final Solutions	1	(24)
CHAPTER TWO
Asking Spatial Questions of Holocaust Ghettoization	25	(24)
CHAPTER THREE
Holocaust Ghettoization and the Specifics of Time and Place: Hungary, 1944	49	(32)
CHAPTER FOUR
Planning and Implementing Ghettoization, April-May 1944	81	(20)
CHAPTER FIVE
Implementing Ghettoization, June 1944	101	(68)
CHAPTER SIX
Contesting Ghettoization, June 1944 131
CHAPTER SEVEN
Putting the "Jews" in Their Place, May-June 1944	169	(22)
CHAPTER EIGHT
Planning and Implementing Hyphenated Ghettoization, July 1944-January 1945	191	(30)
CHAPTER NINE
Uncovering the Traces of Ghettoization, 1945 to the Present	221
Notes 251
Bibliography 279
Index	291