Thinking Auschwitz spatially

Recent scholarship on Auschwitz has been characterised by a range of distinctively spatial approaches. This chapter seeks to consolidate this putative ‘spatial turn’ by exploring three ways of thinking about Auschwitz spatially, each of which, it argues, brings analytical value to the interdisciplinary study of Auschwitz and the Holocaust more generally. It begins by drawing on analyses of Nazi ideology from the field of political geography, to consider the geographical imaginations that motivated and shaped the projection of genocidal and colonial ambitions on the town of Oświęcim. It then offers a discussion of the geographical theory of “relational space,” which envisions spatial phenomena as dynamic and situated within broader networks. It accordingly suggests that a relational account of Auschwitz can reveal how the distinctive characteristics of this infamous camp emerged in response to and resonated throughout the concentration camp system and wider Nazi regime. It concludes by bringing to bear the fundamental geographical concern with differences across space, to explore what is tentatively labeled the “internal” spatial organisation of Auschwitz. This provides an opportunity not only to analyse how the Auschwitz authorities manipulated space to control the prisoner body, but also the limits of this calculative spatial management.