Abstract In this article the author explores how intimacy and familiarity played into the history of the Holocaust in the Netherlands. The two concepts are key to research on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, yet are largely disregarded when it comes to the Holocaust in the Netherlands. Our general perception of the Holocaust in the Netherlands is that of a well-organized, top-down policy: a gradual, bloodless procedure that ended in an anonymous, collective death in the camps of “the East”—the exact opposite of an intimate history of a local community. Using the concept of social death as a frame of analysis, this article investigates the developments in the town of Hilversum during the first two and a half years of the German occupation. In this period, the marginalization and expulsion of the 2,461 Jews in town began. What is immediately striking is the German absence from this story. The initiators of anti-Jewish agitation were local Nazis, and the first restrictions on free movement were issued by the town's mayor. Both actions evoked individual and collective disapproval from fellow citizens. This disapproval underlines the rootedness of Jews in Hilversum, and slowed down the process of their “social death.” It also illustrates the communal character of the Holocaust in this early phase; it touched the broader community of the Dutch town. Thus, this close-up perspective on the Holocaust in a Dutch town reveals how it should be understood as a communal and intimate history. Violence in Hilversum during the Holocaust differed markedly from violence in most towns in Nazi-ruled Eastern Europe; however, in its communal and intimate character there are more similarities between the two geographical stages than one would expect.

Abstract Analyzing Holocaust victims’ diaries, memoirs, and interviews, this essay investigates the ways that Jews felt and exhibited fear. It specifically explores nonlinguistic screams as expressions of fear, employing methods from a variety of academic fields. Holocaust soundscapes resounded with the screams of terrified victims. For the scream-emitters, the oral outbursts were sonic signs of the fear that emanated from within their bodies. Fear was, indeed, fully embodied, flowing kinesthetically within bodies, from releasing adrenaline to falling into a state of semiconsciousness to unleashing nonlinguistic screams. Through screams, fear moved from one person to another, underscoring the social transmissibility of fear. For the auditors, the victim-earwitnesses, hearing the screams of others often activated their own sense of fear, and many joined together in episodes of collective screaming. In their narration of screaming experiences, Jews often invoked screams to signal their psychological breakdown. At the same time, screams functioned as metaphors that they employed in an effort to recount their psychic rupture at the moment of trauma. This analysis demonstrates that emotions played a determinant role in Jews’ experiences and memories of the Holocaust.

Abstract This article examines the flight of Polish Jews from France to Spain in the last months of 1942. It draws on refugee files gathered in the Spanish archives and autobiographical accounts created by the survivors to explore three aspects leading to their illegal escape across the Pyrenees: first, the antisemitic persecution that these Polish Jews experienced in France; second, their strategies and decision-making process leading to eventual passage to Spain; and third, the various ways in which the refugees prepared for this endeavor. For most Polish Jews, the illegal border crossing to Spain was an option of last resort used only when they felt that remaining in France, even in hiding, put their lives in imminent danger. Although they had heard of or experienced firsthand various anti-Jewish measures introduced in France throughout the war, it was not until the latter half of 1942, after massive roundups and the full German occupation of France, that they eventually decided in favor of a clandestine escape to Spain. Even so, their flight was not spontaneous but well-thought-out and carefully planned. By analyzing Polish Jews’ decision to flee from France, this article sheds light on the patterns of behavior that Polish and other Eastern European Jews shared in the face of antisemitic persecution in Western Europe throughout the war.

Abstract The “spatial turn” in Holocaust studies has led to renewed interest in mapping the Holocaust as both event and experience. This article explores experiments with more multifaceted—and “integrated” (per Saul Friedländer)—mapping of Holocaust space and place to include the emotional dimensions of spatial experience. Drawing on Agnew and Duncan's influential introduction of place as a triad that encompasses location, locale, and sense of place, we seek to map the Holocaust as a complex spatial experience. Agnew and Duncan's definition incorporates the idea of abstract space as it is understood in GIScience (location); the social, cultural, political, economic, and material dimensions of place (locale); and the behavioral and emotional component of place (sense of place). Drawing on a close reading of two Holocaust survivors’ narratives, we map their shifting experiences (over both and time and space) at different spatial scales with a particular focus on exploring the relationships between people, place, events, and emotions. The two survivors—Gilberto Salmoni and Gabor Somjen—represent trajectories at two different scales (the continental and city scale, respectively) and two different national contexts (Italy and Hungary) that went through several different locales, not only locations. The article offers a representational model that allows for comparative research of the Holocaust experience at the resolution of the individual that is scalable in two ways: It can include any number of testimonies, and it can graphically render the events and places of the Holocaust at multiple scales and for different spatiotemporal experiences. While critically assessing the limits of the model—specifically vis-à-vis representing emotions and sense of place—the article suggests the value of comparative cartographic analysis in understanding the shifting emotional landscapes of the Holocaust and the place-based nature of victim experience.