GHETTOIZATION AND THE HOLOCAUST - BUDAPEST 1944

The underlying premise of this paper is that the power of geography is of importance in understanding the Final Solution. Ghettoization, as part of the Jewish Holocaust, forms the basis of this article. It begins by locating the particular perspective which we wish to adopt within the context of recent interpretations of ghettoization. Rather than approaching the spatial segregation of Jews into particular places from the usual ''top-down'' approach, this paper argues that a sensitivity to local conditions and to the role played by local actors is of importance to understanding the nature and spatiality of ghettoization. This thesis is examined within the context of Budapest where ghettoization did not get under way until June 1944. In drawing upon hitherto inaccessible Hungarian archival material, the paper goes on to identify two perspectives crucial to understanding the city's ghettoization: the tensions between implementing spatially concentrated and more dispersed ghettos, and how attitudes amongst the major local social actors differed towards the eventual incorporation of Jews into two large ghettos within the city. The latter perspective, in particular, leads us to suggest that the relationship between ghettoization and the codifying of local social actors in terms of ''perpetrators'', ''victims'' and ''bystanders'' is misleading, providing at most only limited analytical purchase. (C) 1995 Academic Press Limited