GAVRIEL D. ROSENFELD Building after Auschwitz: Jewish Architecture and the Memory of the Holocaust.

Abstract

In this landmark book Gavriel D. Rosenfeld has taken on a vast and contentious topic. As with his other important writings on the urban context and cultural memory of Nazism and the Holocaust, Rosenfeld has succeeded in making his subject matter both scalable and accessible. The book's risk revolves around the identification of an architectural style, or collection of styles, as “Jewish,” and moreover as an after-effect of the Nazi genocide. Some may find this nomenclature discomforting. Yet this book is the opposite of a reductionist, essentializing gesture; the context-based concepts of Jewishness that the author relates are superlative in nuance and detail. In short, Rosenfeld has provided the first investigation of “Jewish themes in architectural form” (p. 160). The book is an achievement of historical writing that brings together architectural and cultural history, memory and Holocaust studies, and urban and Jewish studies, an accomplishment that may appear far simpler than it actually is.