The Holocaust in Hungary

Seventy Years Later

Description
Table of contents
Reviews

According to most historians, the Holocaust in Hungary represented a unique chapter in the singular history of what the Nazis termed as the “Final Solution” of the “Jewish question” in Europe. More than seventy years after the Shoah, the origins and prehistory as well as the implementation and aftermath of the genocide still provide ample ground for scholarship.

In fact, Hungarian historians began to seriously deal with these questions only after the 1980s. Since then, however, a consistently active and productive debate has been waged about the history and interpretation of the Holocaust in Hungary and with the passage of time, more and more questions have been raised in connection with its memorialization.

This volume includes twelve selected scholarly papers thematically organized under four headings: 1. The newest trends in the study of the Holocaust in Hungary. 2. The anti-Jewish policies of Hungary during the interwar period 3. The Holocaust era in Hungary 4. National and international aspects of Holocaust remembrance.

The studies reflect on the anti-Jewish atmosphere in Hungary during the interwar period; analyze the decision-making process that led to the deportations, and the options left open to the Hungarian government. They also provide a detailed presentation of the Holocaust in Transylvania and describe the experience of Hungarian Jewish refugees in Austria after the end of the war.

Foreword
Randolph L. Braham and András Kovács

I. INTRODUCTION

Hungarian Intentionalism: New Directions in the Historiography of the Hungarian Holocaust
András Kovács

II. THE PATH TO THE HOLOCAUST

The Antisemitism of István Bethlen and Jewish Policy in the Horthy Era
Ignác Romsics

The Numerus Clausus and the Anti-Jewish Laws
Mária M. Kovács

The Coming of the Shoah in Public Discourse, State Policies and Social Realities: An Essay on Continuities of the “Jewish Question” in Hungary since the “Golden Age”
Victor Karady

III. THE AGE OF PERSECUTION

The Origins of the Military Labor Service System in Hungary
László Csősz

Master Plan? The Decision-Making Process behind the Deportations
Krisztián Ungváry

The Holocaust in Transylvania
Zoltán Tibori Szabó

The Sociology of Survival: The Presence of the Budapest Jewish Population Groups of 1941 in the 1945 Budapest Population
Péter Tibor Nagy

Across the Iron Curtain—Hungarian Jewish Refugees in Austria, 1945–49: The Letters to Enns
Rebekah Klein-Pejšová

IV. THE MEMORY OF THE HOLOCAUST

Hungarian Memory of the Hungarian Holocaust
Gábor Gyáni

Global and Local Holocaust Remembrance
Monika Kovács

Digitalized Memories of the Holocaust in Hungary in the Visual History Archive
Andrea Pető

Hungary: The Assault on the Historical Memory of the Holocaust
Randolph L. Braham

List of Contributors
Index

East Central Europe

"The book, a volume of essays edited by Randolph L. Braham and András Kovács, gives an excellent introduction into the state of the art in Hungarian Holocaust research seventy years after the events. Two main questions stand out: how to understand and come to terms with the complicity of non-Jewish Hungarians and the Hungarian state on the level of nationwide history politics, and how to grasp the relationship between the Holocaust and earlier periods in Hungarian Jewish history. In other words, was the catastrophic fate of Hungarian Jewry presaged by a lingering and deep-rooted antisemitism in Hungarian society, or was it, as some Hungarian Jewish spokespeople would still argue in the wake of the war, an unprecedented and entirely unexpected occurrence that was out of step not just with Jewish life in Hungary, but with Hungarian society as a whole? This debate—also known as the intentionalist versus the functionalist dimensions of the Holocaust—informs the different approaches... more