Blog Post #5

            The atrocities of the Holocaust changed the lives of millions of people and their families. Mapping the paths these individuals took while they were in the concentration camps is possible as long as there is documentation. However, I would say, as I am sure many others would and have said, it is hard to map let alone document adequately the pain and suffering of individuals let alone such a large group of people. The idea of mapping the human experience  has to be in many ways problematic to begin with in the sense that one would be quantifying the human struggle and human suffering, which in many ways dehumanizes their journey. Mapping with digital tools does give us an interesting perspective on data we know a great deal about. It is now possible to show this data in new ways that was not possible several decades ago.

            Geographies of the Holocaust grapples with many of these issues as well as different ways to map out the different case studies throughout the Holocaust. I found chapter seven “From the Camp to the Road: Representing the Evacuation from Auschwitz, January 1945” (written by Simone Gigliotte, Marc J. Masurovsky, and Erik B. Steiner) to be the most interesting because it addresses the challenging nature of mapping and quantification of the human experience. I also find it of particular interest because I am interested in how human experience, struggle, suffering and trauma has an impact on memory and not necessarily on the individual who experienced the events and is the “owner” of these memories but those who surrounded them and came after them. The chapter also addresses the benefits of mapping this data set. To me the mapping aspect seems to take a back seat in the first half of the chapter and later discusses how to map out the data given in the first portion.

            One specific graph that piqued my interest which is located on page 212, in two sections, shows how the lines looked of people leaving when they initially departed from Auschwitz. It continues by showing how, over time the lines became unorganized or disorderly for various reasons including people falling behind or even people stopping for a brief moment where in this instance were often shot. It also showed how far the guard who was standing in the back of the line’s sightline was (Gigliotti, Simone, Marc J. Masurovsky, and Erik B. Steiner, 212). This is significant because there would be less consequences for people further ahead in line. Also, if someone was shot near the back of the line the people further ahead would be less likely to notice and the fear level wound not be nearly as high as it would have been towards the back where the person was shot and killed (Gigliotti, Simone, Marc J. Masurovsky, and Erik B. Steiner, 212). The second half of this section looks at types of guards and communities of prisoners. It showed how different types of guards were with their prisoners (i.e. controlling, hostile, etc.) Personally, the section on community in this visualization section was a little confusing for me. However, nonetheless, these have just as much merit as the rest.

GIS enables a greater level of team research because it gives people access to tools to do large scale research on a topic like the Holocaust the took place in so many different countries. There are many benefits to doing such large-scale research with many other researchers working on the same book – mainly you can cover more ground, both literally and figuratively, and I think many different topics could benefit from this, especially any subtopic that could fall under the umbrella of African American history, such as slavery. A few good examples of this would be mapping the sale of slaves from port cities to the Deep South or the sale of cash crops harvested by slaves throughout the South and the rest of America. These topics do pose ethical and moral issues as I mentioned. In my personal opinion, I enjoy studying history and writing about it because you get to read about people, their lives, experiences, so on and so forth. It is not all about that but that is why I enjoy it and there is always more to learn. To me, when you try to quantify the data of a people that was especially tragic and painful for them and map it out, it seems to lack humanity altogether but that is just my opinion. That is why I choose to study social history, to engage in the stories of individuals and share their lives so others can know their stories. GIS, mapping, quantifying data, and research of this kind can also be problematic especially if people experienced the event they are writing about but are still alive. This can be problematic because one does not want to come across as insensitive or the like.

Cole, Tim, Alberto Giordano, and Anne Kelly Knowles, “Geographies of the Holocaust,” Geographies of the Holocaust, ed. Anne Kelly Knowles, Tim Cole, and Alberto Giordano, 1-17. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014.

Gigliotti, Simone, Marc J. Masurovsky, and Erik B. Steiner, “From the Camp to the Road: Representing the Evacuations from Auschwitz, January, 1945,” Geographies of the Holocaust, ed. Anne Kelly Knowles, Tim Cole, and Alberto Giordano, 193-125. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014.