Randolph L. Braham, Brewster S. Chamberlain, eds. The Holocaust in Hungary: Sixty Years Later. Shapiro. New York City: Columbia University Press, 2006. xix + 390 pp. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-88033-576-8.
Reviewed by Gabor Szegedi (Independent Scholar [Budapest])
Published on H-German (December, 2006)
Rediscovering the Holocaust in Hungary
In early 2004 two conferences were held, one in Washington D.C. and one in Budapest, on present-day questions and the latest research on the Holocaust in Hungary. Both conferences were marked by the participation of leading scholars of Holocaust studies. This volume is a collection of essays by twenty-three of the experts who presented lectures at these conferences and provides a detailed and much needed account of current trends in Holocaust studies generally and the Holocaust in Hungary specifically. In addition to the essays by these authors, the book includes a foreword by Paul A. Shapiro and two keynote addresses, one by Elie Wiesel and one by Randolph L. Braham.
The two keynote addresses serve not just as introductions to the volume, but are also essential in understanding the current path of Holocaust studies and the arguments the book then follows. They are similar in their inquiring manner, in their determination to raise the attention of the audience to key elements of the Holocaust in Hungary and, in addition to summing up its history, they provide questions that are to be answered throughout the book. Ellie Wiesel focuses on the disturbing question: why were the Jews of Hungary not saved? He points to the fact that they were the last large, intact Jewish community in 1944, only one year before the end of the war, and ponders the catastrophe that took place within a few months in that same spring and summer. Wiesel concludes that "Hungarian Jews could have been saved--and they weren't" (p. xix), pointing out that this "could have been" makes the case of Hungarian Jews different from many other Jewish communities murdered during the war. Randolph L. Braham focuses on contingency in terms of the Holocaust in Hungary, stressing that the German decision to invade Hungary was primarily motivated by military concerns, but also brought with it the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. Braham also points to issues of Hungarian politics, drawing a parallel between the political constellations and public sentiment of the Hungary of sixty years ago and the Hungary of today.
Based on these addresses one can also get a grip on the book's essence and the volume's two general objectives: to provide the reader with the newest research done in this field and to show how contemporary Hungarian society deals with the issue, especially with regards to how in Hungary the Holocaust has fallen prey to political rancor and how antisemitism has become part of the political discourse. The book is divided into four parts: "Antecedents," "Wartime," "Postwar," and "Art and Literature." Less than half of the book deals with the years preceding the Holocaust and the Holocaust itself, but instead a greater part of the essays aim at revealing effects of the Holocaust on Hungarian society and its Jewish and non-Jewish members. Three of the essays deal with the immediate postwar period from 1945-48. These contributions are extremely valuable, as this three-year period of relative democracy and freedom of expression in Hungary is today an era that attracts great public interest, despite the fact that not much has been written about it yet in terms of Hungarian Jewry and the psychological processing of the Holocaust. Transylvanian Jewry and the Shoah in northern Transylvania are also topics that have been overlooked and therefore the volume's inclusion of several essays on the topic is much appreciated and fills a gap in the historiography of the Holocaust. Holly Case, for example, provides an excellent overview of the Hungarian-Romanian struggle over Transylvania in the twentieth century and this conflict's effect on the Holocaust.
The pieces written on the portrayal of the Shoah in Hungarian literature are also essential for a better understanding of its memory in Hungary. It is true that there has been a revival of Holocaust-related fiction since 1989, as the communist "ban on Jewish memory," a term coined by Zsuzsanna Osváth, has been lifted. It was common in the communist world, from Poland to the Soviet Union and East Germany, to try to dilute the suffering of the Jews by labeling them "victims of fascism," thus also accommodating the Holocaust as an element part of the tragedy of war. However, after the change of regimes, in these countries the Holocaust became something that could be openly discussed again. Nevertheless, if we take Germany as an example in comparison to Hungary, we see that in Germany the situation was much different, for West Germany by 1989 had passed the Historikerstreit and already developed a culture of commemoration. Germany was, however, ahead of the Hungarians, Attila Pók's essay is thoughtful piece on why Hungary has not yet had a Historikerstreit, but at least Holocaust fiction, especially after the 2003 Nobel prize was awarded to Imre Kertész, is finally a "legitimate" part of Hungarian fiction.
It is a most sensitive task to relate the Holocaust, antisemitism and present-day Hungarian politics in a scholarly essay. Some essays in this book, Braham's address, handled this issue with great tact. Some, however, more explicitly present their political views. Iván T. Berend's essay, "The Revival of Anti-Semitism in Hungary: The Early 1990s," I believe, shifts slightly more towards a stronger political stance, and this focus could have been avoided. Of course, it is legitimate to include an essay with strong political implications in a volume on history, especially because antisemitism in Hungary today is largely connected to the discourse on the Holocaust. In this case, however, the center of attention should not have been the early 1990s, because in 2006 much of the situation has already largely changed. To talk about Gyula Zsacsek and the antisemitism of the MDF leadership of 1992 and the Hunnia Füzetek in 2006 as if both were happening today seems anachronistic for discussing politics and focuses on events that have taken place too recently for history-writing. Authors wishing to write on Hungarian political antisemitism today, I believe, might focus much more effectively on the antisemitic public discourse of the turn of the millenium, especially on the newspapers Demokrata and Magyar Nemzet, as well as journalists István Lovas, Zsolt Bayer and András Bencsik, and the like.
To sum up, this volume makes a valuable contribution to both the historiography of Hungary and of the Holocaust. Numerous essays in the collection have common themes and common threads link each composition with the others. High scholarly quality combined with a good sense of editing and an interesting choice of topics make the volume that much more enjoyable. After having read the book one feels enriched by the knowledge presented, and above all, regrets having missed the two conferences.
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Citation:
Gabor Szegedi. Review of Braham, Randolph L.; Chamberlain, Brewster S., eds., The Holocaust in Hungary: Sixty Years Later.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
December, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12620
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