Language:
English
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
Cities into Battlefields
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2011) 133-149
Keywords:
Jewish ghettos
;
Jewish ghettos
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Budapest (Hungary) History 20th century
;
Warsaw (Poland)
Abstract:
Compares the ghettoizations of the Jews of Warsaw in 1939-40 and those of Budapest in 1944 as processes of geographic reshaping of the respective cities. From the very beginning, the authorities realized that placing the Jews into a closed ghetto had implications for the city's non-Jewish population and for the infrastructure. Remarkably, despite the fact that the ghettos were established at different stages of the war and despite the radically different outcomes for their populations (Jews of Warsaw were deported to their death, while most of the Jews of Budapest were liberated by the Soviets in 1945), the ghettoizations raised a similar range of problems and followed similar paths. In both cases, the authorities, having begun with an ideologically motivated resettlement plan (e.g. removing the Jews from the city to the suburbs in Warsaw; re-distributing housing "fairly" between Jews and non-Jews and using Jews as a live shield against Allied bombings in Budapest), changed it for more pragmatic plans that could be implemented quickly. In both cities the authorities began with designating areas of "Jewish absence", i.e. prohibited to Jews, and finished with areas of "Jewish presence", i.e. closed ghettos. In the end, in both cities ghettoization was shaped by the realities of the Jewish demographies in them, thus formalizing existing Jewish demographic patterns in the cities.
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