The Dictionary of Human Geography

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vast genocidal archipelago (figure 1, page

339) and can in some measure be mapped

on to Hilberg’s (2003 [1961]) four-stage

model of the Holocaust: deprivation; ex-

pulsion; segregation; annihilation. Fried-

lander (1997, 2007) reworked these stages

as follows (the examples given are illustra-

tive, not exhaustive):

 Persecution(1933–9):therightsofGer-

man Jews were increasingly restricted,

and in 1935 they were stripped of their

citizenship; they were also subject to

physical attacks and, from March

1938, many were imprisoned in con-

centrationcampsatDachau,Sachsen-

hausen and Buchenwald.

 Terror (autumn 1939 to summer 1941):

Polish Jews were confined toghet-

toesand subjected to extraordinary

deprivation, and as the Reich

expanded, the number of concentra-

tion camps multiplied and the use of

forced labour intensified.

 Mass murder (summer 1941 to summer

1942): from October 1941, German

Jews were deported to the occupied

eastern territories; 33,700 Kiev Jews

were shot in the Babi Yar ravine

outside the city, and around 27,000

Jews were taken from the Riga ghetto

and shot.

 Shoah (summer 1942 to spring 1945):

in 1942, six concentration camps in

occupied Poland – Auschwitz/Birke-

nau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek,

Sobibor and Treblinka – were desig-

nated as extermination camps, dedi-

cated to the so-called ‘Final Solution’

of the ‘Jewish Question’, and gas

chambers were used for mass killing:

Jews throughout occupied Europe

were arrested, deported to transit

camps, and then sent to the extermin-

ation camps.

It is crucial to understand that these

phases, and their correlative spaces,

cannot be contained by a narrative of

German policies and actions: as Fried-

lander (2007, p. xv) insists, ‘at each step

in occupied Europe the execution of

German measures depended on the sub-

missiveness of political authorities, the

assistance of local police forces or other

auxiliaries, and the passivity or support

of the population and mainly of the

political and spiritual elites’.

(3) The planning and execution of the Holo-

caust thus relied on extensive geograph-

ical knowledge. The Reich Foundation

for Geographical Studies was instrumen-

tal in the ethnic profiling and mapping of

occupied territories, particularly in east-

ern Europe, while Walter Christaller, the

architect ofcentral place theory, was

closely involved in developing the

Generalplan Ostfor the east of Poland.

This vast region was under direct SS ad-

ministration and was to be a laboratory for

a new territorial order (figure 2, page 340):

Germans were to ‘resettle’ the area, Poles

reducedtoslavelabour,and Jewsdeported

to the ghetto in Lodz and ultimately to the

death camps (Ro ̈ssler, 1989, 2001).

As the previous citations indicate, in recent

years several geographers have concerned

themselves with philosophical and historio-

graphical issues surrounding the Nazi

Holocaust, but there have also been substan-

tive studies of the enforced production of Jew-

ishghettoes(Cole and Smith, 1995; Cole,

2000) and of the role oflandscapein the

work ofmemoryand memorialization (Char-

lesworth, 1994, 2004). All of these enquiries

raise profound questions aboutrepresenta-

tionand the capacity of language to render

the experience of such extreme trauma (Fried-

lander, 1992; Agamben, 1999; LaCapra,

2000; Waxman, 2006). These have engaged

the attention of geographers too, but the an-

alysis of the Holocaust is necessarily both an

interdisciplinary and a comparative project,

and the United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum publishes a journal dedicated to

these issues:Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The Nazi genocide continues to cast long

shadows over the present. It has prompted polit-

ico-intellectual campaigns against both those

who deny it and those who exploit it: to fight

‘for the integrity of the historical record’, as Fin-

kelstein (2000, p. 8) puts it. The Holocaust ma-

terially affects political debates, policies and

practices in Germany, Israel and themiddle

east. And it still troubles continental European

philosophyandsocial theory,notleastin

their understandings of modernity and the

verypossibilityof critical enquiry. Indeed, Agam-

ben (1998, 1999) sees the Nazi concentration

camp as paradigmatic of political modernity:

Auschwitz is precisely the place in which the

state of exception coincides perfectly with

the rule and the extreme situation becomes

the very paradigm of daily life... As long as

thestateofexceptionandthenormalsituation

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HOLOCAUST