Session Abstract

This panel explores the potential of drawing on GIS and geo-visualization to uncover and answer new questions about past times and past places. The focus centers on ghettoization, deportation and concentration during the Holocaust, ranging from the scale of the continent/nation/region, through the scale of the city, to the scale of the camp. Papers present the results of three case studies from a broader NSF-funded research project into Holocaust Geographies that pioneers interdisciplinary research in the digital humanities.  In a paper co-authored by Alberto Giordano, Tim Cole uses GIScience to reconstruct the street networks of the Budapest Ghetto, revealing that the ghetto walls not only separated Jews from Hungarian non-Jews, but from their fellow Jews as well, dividing many inhabitants from important resources within their incarcerated community.  In “Retracing the Hunt for Jews,” Alberto Giordano and Anna Holian analyze the spatio-temporal patterns of arrest, detention, and deportation of Jews in German-occupied Italy from September 1943 through March 1945.  Finally, Paul Jaskot uses architectural historical analysis to demonstrate how German officials intended to build and control the Auschwitz complex, and utilizes a digital model of Birkenau to understand the workings of Auschwitz’s killing center.