![]() ![]() His knack of being authoritative and heart-rending at the same time lifts this book above mere history it is a fitting memorial to a Lodz that is no more. ![]() Few local studies in this genre (Auschwitz is the exception) have dared to attempt anything so ambitious.He brilliantly juxtaposes what passed for life in the ghetto with the fun and games on the "Aryan" side. Moreover, Horwitz synthesises the history of both the ghetto and the city. Publishers Weekly 20080310 It is remarkable that Ghettostadt: Lodz and the Making of a Nazi City is the first English-language study of the Lodz ghetto and Gordon Horwitz is the first scholar to draw together the mass of material that has been published or come to light since the appearance of the ghetto chronicle in 1984. ![]() This required forcing the Jews into a ghetto with the help of Jewish leaders, especially the arrogant, dictatorial and reportedly lascivious industrialist Chaim Rumkowski.Horwitz's understated prose helps put into relief the full horror of these events. The Nazis attempted to "re-engineer" the Polish city of Lodz, home to more than 230,000 Jews (one-third of the city's population) before the war, into a model-and Judenfrei-German city embodying health and beauty they called Litzmannstadt. The Nazis' use of bureaucracy to achieve their genocidal aims comes through clearly in this historical tour de force. ![]()
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