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Ordinary women and men: superintendents and Jews in the Budapest yellow-star houses in 1944–1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2012
Abstract:
The present article investigates how everyday people shaped the outcome of discriminatory measures during the Nazi persecution of Budapest Jews, primarily by looking into micro-level social interactions between superintendents and confined Jews during ghettoization in the Hungarian capital (1944). I argue that besides a multiplicity of relevant political, social and military reasons determining the fate of Budapest Jews, the urban specificity of the Holocaust also needs to be taken into account, given that location and access to urban space enabled different personal strategies to contest or aggravate anti-Semitic persecution. Especially older, nineteenth-century apartment buildings fostered the autonomy of superintendents, who could act independently of various authorities, exploiting certain Jews while aiding others. The article demonstrates how many superintendents made use of this power effectively as the successive regimes toughened their anti-Semitic policies. In addition, the investigation of individual motives and the micro levels of segregation and discrimination highlight major differences between and within apartment buildings, despite the supposedly homogeneous discrimination against Jews envisaged by Nazi policy makers.
- Type
- Eastern European Cities
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012
References
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