Traces of the Holocaust: Journeying in and out of the Ghettos

Description

'The universe began shrinking,' wrote Elie Wiesel of his Holocaust experiences in Hungary, 'first we were supposed to leave our towns and concentrate in the larger cities. Then the towns shrank to the ghetto, and the ghetto to a house, the house to a room, the room to a cattle car...' Adopting an innovative multi-perspectival approach framed around a wide variety of material traces - from receipts to maps, name lists to photographs - Tim Cole tells stories of journeys into and out of Hungarian ghettos. These stories of the perpetrators who oversaw ghettoization and deportation, the bystanders who witnessed and aided these journeys, and the victims who undertook them reveal the spatio-temporal dimensions of the Holocaust. But they also point to the visibility of these events within the ordinary spaces of the city, the importance of an economic assault on Jews and the marked gendering of the Holocaust in Hungary.

Dr Tim Cole is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary European Social History at the University of Bristol, UK, specializing in Holocaust studies.

The book was awarded a special commendation by The Fraenkel Prize judges 2011.