Ghettostadt: Lodz and the Making of a Nazi City by Gordon J. Horwitz

Under the Third Reich, Nazi Germany undertook an unprecedented effort to refashion the city of Łódź. Home to prewar Poland’s second most populous Jewish community, this was to become a German city of enchantment—a modern, clean, and orderly showcase of urban planning and the arts. Central to the undertaking, however, was a crime of unparalleled dimension: the ghettoization, exploitation, and ultimate annihilation of the city’s entire Jewish population. Ghettostadt is the terrifying examination of the Jewish ghetto’s place in the Nazi worldview. Exploring ghetto life in its broadest context, it deftly maneuvers between the perspectives and actions of Łódź’s beleaguered Jewish community, the Germans who oversaw and administered the ghetto’s affairs, and the “ordinary” inhabitants of the once Polish city. Gordon Horwitz reveals patterns of exchange, interactions, and interdependence within the city that are stunning in their extent and intimacy. He shows how the Nazis, exercising unbound