| Abstract: | When studying spatial patterns, GIScientists often employ distance‐based methods and techniques, such as network analysis. When studying human behavior, however, spatial patterns often emerge that cannot be adequately examined assuming a physical conceptualization of distance. Such patterns emerged during our study of the process of ghettoization of Jews as implemented in Budapest during the course of 1944. As part of an NSF‐sponsored research project on the geography of the Holocaust, we built a Historical GIS of the Budapest Ghetto with the objective of discovering patterns of Jewish concentration and dispersion as well as simulating potential daily spatial interactions between the Jewish and the non‐Jewish population. Spatial analytical techniques allowed us to discover distinct spatial patterns of isolation, interrelation and concentration, but a whole set of patterns appeared that were the opposite of what we expected, and that could only be explained by thinking of distance not in spatial terms but in social ones. In this article we employ social network analysis to examine the geography of oppression in the Budapest ghetto. What jumped out from our study is the interweaving of space and place – intended as a community bounded by social relations and living in a specific time and location. |
