Mapping the emotional landscapes of the Holocaust: Visualizing space and place in survivor trajectories

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 multi-faceted––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 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) who went through several different locales and 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 spatio-temporal 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.