The Geography of the Holocaust in Italy: Spatiotemporal Patterns of Arrests for Families and Individuals and a Conceptual Model

Abstract

Holocaust and genocide scholars have long recognized the family as a relevant, if neglected, topic of research. In this article, we examine the spatiotemporal patterns of Jewish arrests during the Holocaust in Italy, concentrating on family patterns and building on previous work on arrest patterns for individuals. Starting from a large historical geographical information system of individual victims, we devised a methodology to identify family groups and determine whether and when family members were arrested together, thereby achieving the objective of studying the event from multiple resolutions and scales of analysis. Results show considerable differences in spatiotemporal patterns for families and individuals, suggesting a higher vulnerability of families to roundups and marked differences as concerns the nationality of both perpetrators and victims. In addition to contributing to the geography of the Holocaust, the conceptual model we devised for this study can be used in other contexts where the family is the object of research.