Holocaust City: The Making of a Jewish Ghetto

A major contribution to Holocaust studies. Tim Cole brilliantly reconstructs the formation of the Jewish ghetto in Budapest, Hungary -- one of the largest created during the war, but rarely examined. Cole maps the city illustrating how spaces -- cafes, theaters, bars, bathhouses -- became divided in two. Throughout the book, Cole discusses how the creation of this Jewish ghetto, just like the others being built across occupied Europe, tells us a great deal about the nature of Nazism; what life was like under Nazi occupation; and the role the ghetto actually played in the Final Solution. Cole's groundbreaking work shows that the architecture of the Holocaust is not the monumental buildings and plans of Albert Speer but the more modest buildings and structures made for deadly function: the locking gates of the ghetto, the crematorium oven doors.