Matthew Shaer Christian Science Monitor 20080521 This is a remarkable book. Horwitz relies on a rich mix of primary sources-including diaries, testimonies, and memoirs of the Lodz Jews themselves-to tell the story of the Lodz ghetto in a fashion that is as thorough and compelling as it is horrifying. Surprisingly, it is the first English-language study of the Lodz ghetto. Evans New York Review of Books 20080626 chilling new history.Ghettostadt is more than just another recounting of the horrors of the Holocaust.

The Jews were removed from their sight by being forced into a ghetto. Jews.Horwitz's vivid narrative makes effective use of unpublished sources in German, Yiddish, and Polish to paint a detailed picture of how the German population was strengthened by more than 20,000 ethnic German immigrants from Galicia, Volhynia, and further afield, within a few months of the German conquest. For the process of becoming German also involved ridding the city of its Horwitz points out in Ghettostadt, his brilliantly readable book on the city during World War II, there was a dark side to this glowing picture, a side barely mentioned at all by the mayor and his cohorts. As resources were poured in from the Reich, it would, declared its new German mayor, become a magnet for German immigrants from the East.

David Cesarani Times Higher Education Supplement 20080515 'Litzmannstadt, City of the Future,' was designated by Hitler as a special center of urban development. His knack of being authoritative and heart-rending at the same time lifts this book above mere history it is a fitting memorial to a Lodz that is no more. Few local studies in this genre (Auschwitz is the exception) have dared to attempt anything so ambitious.He brilliantly juxtaposes what passed for life in the ghetto with the fun and games on the 'Aryan' side. Moreover, Horwitz synthesises the history of both the ghetto and the city. Publishers Weekly 20080310 It is remarkable that Ghettostadt: Lodz and the Making of a Nazi City is the first English-language study of the Lodz ghetto and Gordon Horwitz is the first scholar to draw together the mass of material that has been published or come to light since the appearance of the ghetto chronicle in 1984. This required forcing the Jews into a ghetto with the help of Jewish leaders, especially the arrogant, dictatorial and reportedly lascivious industrialist Chaim Rumkowski.Horwitz's understated prose helps put into relief the full horror of these events. The Nazis attempted to 're-engineer' the Polish city of Lodz, home to more than 230,000 Jews (one-third of the city's population) before the war, into a model-and Judenfrei-German city embodying health and beauty they called Litzmannstadt. The Nazis' use of bureaucracy to achieve their genocidal aims comes through clearly in this historical tour de force.

Ghettostadt by Gordon J. Horwitz