The Topography of Genocide

Abstract

This could be an essay that encircles the whole globe from the Jewish refugees on the SS St Louis off Cuba, the Polish Underground emissary Jan Karski in Washington, the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg, the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth to the leafy street in Berlin where the Wannsee Conference was held. I have chosen to deal with the topographies of the epicentre of the genocide: the ghettos and deportation points on the European mainland, the camps that received the prisoners and the killing sites. This essay is not, however, an inventory of the landscape and topography of every site of genocide on soil under German occupation 1933--45.1