Space In Holocaust Research

In recent years, the issue of space has sparked debates in the field of Holocaust Studies. The book demonstrates the transdisciplinary potential of space-related approaches. The editors suggest that “spatial thinking” can foster a dialogue on the history, aftermath, and memory of the Holocaust that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Artworks by Yael Atzmony serve as a prologue to the volume, inviting us to reflect on the complicated relation of the actual crime site of the Sobibor extermination camp to (family) memory, archival sources, and material traces. In the first part of the book, renowned scholars introduce readers to the relevance of space for key aspects of Holocaust Studies. In the second part, nine original case studies demonstrate how and to what ends spatial thinking in Holocaust research can be put into practice. In four introductory essays, the editors identify spatial configurations that transcend conventional disciplinary, chronological, or geographical systematizations: Fleeting Spaces; Institutionalized Spaces; Border/ing Spaces; Spatial Relations. Drawing on a host of theoretical concepts and addressing various historical contexts as well as different types of media, this book offers scholars and students valuable insights into cutting-edge, international scholarly debates.

The EHS issues are thematic. Each issue features a selection of peer-reviewed research articles, which offer novel perspectives on the main theme. Includes: - Andrea Löw and Kim Wünschman: Film and the Reordering of City Space in Nazi Germany: The Demolition of the Munich Main Synagogue - Michal Frankl: Cast out of Civilized Society. Refugees in the No Man`s Land between Slovakia and Hungary in 1938 - Beate Meyer: Foreign Jews in Nazi Germany - Protected or Persecuted? Preliminary Results of a New Study - Dominique Schröder: Writing the Camps, Shifting the Limits of Language: Toward a Semantics of the Concentration Camps? - Tal Bruttmann, Stefan Hördler, and Christoph Kreutzmüller: A Paradoxical Panorama: Aspects of Space in Lili Jacob's Album - Irina Rebrova: Jewish Accounts of Soviet Evacuation to the North Caucasus - Malena Chinski: A New Address for Holocaust Research: Michel Borwicz and Joseph Wulf in Paris, 1947–1951 - Anna Engelking: "Our own traitor" as the Focal Point of Belarusian Folk Narrative on Local Perpetrators of the Holocaust - Hannah Wilson: The Memoryscape of Sobibór Death Camp: Commemoration and Materiality Der Band erscheint vollständig in englischer Sprache.

Seventy years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, the contributions collected in this volume each attempt, in various ways and from various perspectives, to trace the relationship between Nazi-occupied spaces and Holocaust memory, considering the multitude of ways in which the passing of time impacts upon, or shapes, cultural constructions of space. Accordingly, this volume does not consider topographies merely in relation to geographical landscapes but, rather, as markers of allusions and connotations that must be properly eked out. Since space and time are intertwined, if not, in fact, one and the same, an investigation of the spaces – the locations of horror – in relation to the passing of time might provide some manner of comprehension of one of the most troubling moments in human history. It is with this understanding of space, as fluid sites of memory that the contributors of this volume engage: these are the kind of shifting topographies that we are seeking to trace. This book was originally published as a special issue of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History.

“[A] pioneering work . . . Shed[s] light on the historic events surrounding the Holocaust from place, space, and environment-oriented perspectives.” —Rudi Hartmann, PhD, Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado This book explores the geographies of the Holocaust at every scale of human experience, from the European continent to the experiences of individual human bodies. Built on six innovative case studies, it brings together historians and geographers to interrogate the places and spaces of the genocide. The cases encompass the landscapes of particular places (the killing zones in the East, deportations from sites in Italy, the camps of Auschwitz, the ghettos of Budapest) and the intimate spaces of bodies on evacuation marches. Geographies of the Holocaust puts forward models and a research agenda for different ways of visualizing and thinking about the Holocaust by examining the spaces and places where it was enacted and experienced. “An excellent collection of scholarship and a model of interdisciplinary collaboration . . . The volume makes a timely contribution to the ongoing emergence of the spatial humanities and will undoubtedly advance scholarly and popular understandings of the Holocaust.” —H-HistGeog “An important work . . . and could be required reading in any number of courses on political geography, GIS, critical theory, biopolitics, genocide, and so forth.” —Journal of Historical Geography “Both students and researchers will find this work to be immensely informative and innovative . . . Essential.” —Choice

The Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century: Relevance and Challenges in the Digital Age challenges a number of key themes in Holocaust studies with new research. Essays in the section “Tropes Reconsidered” reevaluate foundational concepts such as Primo Levi’s gray zone and idea of the muselmann. The chapters in “Survival Strategies and Obstructions” use digital methodologies to examine mobility and space and their relationship to hiding, resistance, and emigration. Contributors to the final section, “Digital Methods, Digital Memory,” offer critical reflections on the utility of digital methods in scholarly, pedagogic, and public engagement with the Holocaust. Although the chapters differ markedly in their embrace or eschewal of digital methods, they share several themes: a preoccupation with the experiences of persecution, escape, and resistance at different scales (individual, group, and systemic); methodological innovation through the adoption and tracking of micro- and mezzohistories of movement and displacement; varied approaches to the practice of Saul Friedländer’s “integrated history”; the mainstreaming of oral history; and the robust application of micro- and macrolevel approaches to the geographies of the Holocaust. Taken together, these chapters incorporate gender analysis, spatial thinking, and victim agency into Holocaust studies. In so doing, they move beyond existing notions of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders to portray the Holocaust as a complex and multilayered event.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum reveals and traces the transformation of ancient Jewish symbols, rituals, archetypes and narratives deployed in these sites. Demonstrating how cloaking the 'secular' history of the Holocaust in sacred garb, memorial museums generate redemptive yet conflicting visions of the meaning and utility of Holocaust memory.

Classes and books on the Holocaust often center on the experiences of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders, but rescuers also occupy a prominent space in Holocaust courses and literature even though incidents of rescue were relatively few and rescuers constituted less than 1 percent of the population in Nazi-occupied Europe. As inspiring figures and role models, rescuers challenge us to consider how we would act if we found ourselves in similarly perilous situations of grave moral import. Their stories speak to us and move us. Yet this was not always the case. Seventy years ago these brave men and women, today regarded as the Righteous Among the Nations, went largely unrecognized; indeed, sometimes they were even singled out for abuse from their co-nationals for their selfless actions. Unlikely Heroes traces the evolution of the humanitarian hero, looking at the ways in which historians, politicians, and filmmakers have treated individual rescuers like Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler, as well as the rescue efforts of humanitarian organizations. Contributors in this edited collection also explore classroom possibilities for dealing with the role of rescuers, at both the university and the secondary level.

Lessons and Legacies XII explores new directions in research and teaching in the field of Holocaust studies. The essays in this volume present the most cutting-edge methods and topics shaping Holocaust studies today, from a variety of disciplines: forensics, environmental history, cultural studies, religious studies, labor history, film studies, history of medicine, sociology, pedagogy, and public history. This rich compendium reveals how far Holocaust studies have reached into cultural studies, perpetrator history, and comparative genocide history. Scholars, laypersons, teachers, and the myriad organizations devoted to Holocaust memorialization and education will find these essays useful and illuminating.