Holocaust Research in Hungary. Reflections on the State of the Art

Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, 2017

A concise overview of the state of Holocaust scholarship in Hungary

There was a significant debate in the Hungarian journal of social sciences and culture Kommentár in 2008 initiated by Gábor Gyáni as to whether Hungarian Holocaust research had or had not been successfully integrated into international discourse after 1989.1 One element missing from the debate was that after 1989, main concepts and the language of the discipline derived from the Western side of the (fallen) Iron Curtain. The histories of the Holocaust survivors had been only descriptive in nature, while the experiences of Jewish communities, the members of which had lived under communism was of predominant focus. There was no theoretical inquiry in Holocaust scholarship as long as the objective fact-finding was taking place, expanding on questions as to when, where, and what had happened to which actors. Historical inquiry, however, needs to extend further to explain the uncovered events and experiences. For instance, a significant element missing from the scholarship in its entirety is gender analysis, and this observation brings to the fore the lack of discussion on methodology and the consequent absence of acknowledging developments. Hungarian scholarship of Holocaust historical inquiry with a central aim evolving around gender analytical perspectives is still nonexistent, yet there are some contributions about women and the Holocaust in the English language, for instance by Andrea Pető.2 This special edition of the Hungarian Historical Review lines up studies which draw on new modes of analyses and frameworks with the aim of achieving knowledge production on a whole new level about the Holocaust in Hungary.

These participants were mostly PhD candidates and early post-docs. Throughout the seminar they gained insight into new research trends and methodological challenges. Lectures, round table discussions as well as opportunities to explore the city itself provided participants an understanding of the debate and controversy surrounding the question of how to remember the Holocaust in Budapest and – more broadly – Central Europe. The seminar also provided a platform for participants to present and discuss their research and learn more about the EHRI project and its various offerings. The seminar opened with a roundtable discussion focused on Holocaust Research in Hungary and Poland. Ferenc Laczó, Andrea Petö, Andrea Löw, Jakub Leociak and Jakub Petelewicz discussed the current state of research in their respective countries, gave insight into their own research and shared personal stories about their interest in working in the eld of Holocaust studies. Afterwards, Ferenc Laczó and Jakub Leociak took an even closer look at the historiography and (often as a result) the methodological challenges in Holocaust research in Hungary, respectively Poland. While Andrea Löw and Karel Berkhoff talked about the challenges and benets that the use of photographs present for scholarly works, Nicolai Zimmermann demonstrated how useful it is to read German documents properly – and to pay attention to details like the color of the pen used for signing these documents. Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano presented a number of examples of how the use of historical cartography and the analysis of large datasets can enable researchers to ask new questions in the eld of Holocaust Studies. In their presentations on the International Tracing Service and the Visual History Archives of the USC Shoah Foundation, Ildikó Barna and Andrea Szőnyi provided two examples of major international institutions where sources crucial for almost every aspect of the Holocaust studies eld can be found.

2015

This paper deals with the Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Year 2014 and the ongoing debate about how to assess Hungary's involvement in the Holocaust. By introducing the Holocaust Memorial Year 2014, erecting the Monument on the German Occupation and initiating a Memorial to Child Victims of the Holocaust (the House of Fates), the Hungarian government tried to establish a common narrative about the Holocaust in Hungary. For various reasons, however, this attempt failed. Instead, it turned out that the anniversary year 2014 fostered the emergence of diverse new cultures of commemoration at different levels of society. This study discusses the reasons for these developments and provides an overview of the (public) events surrounding commemorations in the Holocaust Memorial Year, thus exploring Hungary's process of coming to terms with its past. The events in 2014 were accompanied by disputes at multiple levels that were held in the public domain and involved all types of traditional and modern media. This study highlights the reactions to several statements and explains how they came about. Our aim is to engender interest in further scholarly examination.

SIMON, 2014

This paper focuses on Hungary, where the most unmerciful and the fastest destruction took place in the course of the European Holocaust. Even though it was indeed 'the most unmerciful‛ and ‚the fastest‛, Holocaust research still fails to take a prominent role in Hungarian historiography. The archival collections do not constitute an inherent part of the Hungarian national historical heritage. That is to say that the experiences of both the Holocaust and the Roma Genocide have not yet become part of collective knowledge; nor have they been able to shape collective identities. This paper seeks to explore this ignorance through an analysis of existing digital oral history collections on the Holocaust in Hungary. The collections will appear in the order of their creation and will be discussed on the basis of questions such as who supported the collection and for what reason, how much research was done or what results they produced; we will also address whether the collections were established for museological, educational, scientific or tourism-stimulating purposes. The paper identifies three main reasons for the ignorance: First, it argues that – after the regime changes 1989/90 – while coming to terms with the memory of Nazism and autochthonous authoritarian regimes was one of the challenges of Eastern European societies, this process was competing with and retarded by the other challenge, namely the coming to terms with the communist system. Second, it states that the status of the research on the Holocaust and on the Roma Genocide is highly influenced by the actual social, cultural and political environment, while, third, we argue that one reason is the conservative attitude of European historiography.

2017

From the perspective of the past two (almost three) years, it seems that the significant anniversary of 2014 went down in the annals of history as a remarkable fiasco of Hungarian memory politics. Controversial Monument, Divided Hungarians, Angered Jewish Community – these newspaper headlines are still fresh in our minds. Over the course of the year, the Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Year turned to become somewhat infamous, and scandal followed upon scandal not only in domestic media but also in foreign newspapers. However, everything had started off well in the beginning. This essay will first briefly introduce the broader context of this fiasco, discussing the main differences between Eastern and Western European memory politics before and after 1989. It will then distinguish some milestones of the Hungarian ambiguity and delay in coping with the European tendencies in Holocaust remembrance. After that, it will turn to its central subject, analysing the main events of the Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Year 2014. Toward the end, the essay will map the different initiatives between the coordinates of memory politics and show some unintended consequences of the unsuccessful governmental intentions.

Analysis of memory studies is usually focusing on processes of remembrance, looking at the actors, sites, processes, institutions of remembering. This article however looks at non-remembering as a conscious strategy of not participating in commemorations of the 70th Anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary. It claims that lack of common language, the imprisonment of a “true” versus “false” dichotomy is contributing to the further pillarisation of the Hungarian memory culture.

Desde que o brilho da inteligência humana iluminou a face da Terra e o homem começou a se locomover sobre a superfície terrestre, surgiu a necessidade imperiosa de se posicionar e de se orientar em seus deslocamentos. Para atingir tal mister, o homem, inicialmente, orientou-se, em seus deslocamentos próximos ao local em que habitava, utilizando-se das estrelas que embelezavam a abóbada celeste, bem como de referências físicas existentes ao longo dos trajetos que percorria. Todas as civilizações, desde o homem das cavernas, mostraram extraordinária atração em relação ao céu e suas entidades, quer sob o aspecto místico, quer do ponto de vista do desenvolvimento científico. As civilizações egípcia e grega, por exemplo, proporcionaram as bases para a fundamentação da astronomia moderna. Além da necessidade de posicionamento e orientação, também brotou a carência de registar os itinerários e os pontos de referência utilizados pelos homens em seus deslocamentos, estes cada vez mais alcançando distâncias maiores em relação ao ponto de partida. Surgem os registros feitos sobre placas de argila. O espírito aventureiro do homem levou-o a grandes deslocamentos, exigindo o desenvolvimento de instrumentos que foram adquirindo, com o ecoar do tempo, elevado grau de sofisticação, tal como, em nossos dias, utilizam-se os denominados receptores GPS, que captam os sinais emitidos por satélites artificiais que orbitam em torno do planeta Terra, transformando-os em posição georreferenciada. Estes receptores permitem, de maneira rápida e precisa, a determinação da posição de pontos situados em qualquer local da superfície terrestre, assim como uma navegação segura (posicionamento e orientação), quer em ambientes marítimos, ambientes fluviais e ambientes lacustres, quer em ambientes do espaço aéreo, quer no espaço sideral – além da fronteira externa da atmosfera terrestre. O ato de registar seus deslocamentos fez surgir a Cartografia. O vocábulo Cartografia foi cunhado pelo eminente cartógrafo português, o Visconde de Santarém, numa carta escrita pelo mesmo ao historiador Francisco Adolfo Varnhagem, no ano de 1839. Pode-se, a princípio, entender a Cartografia como sendo a técnica do traçado de cartas geográficas e de seu estudo. Embora o termo Cartografia seja recente, a sua história é muito antiga. A humanidade já expressava seus conhecimentos geográficos muito antes do aparecimento da escrita, em que a feitura de mapas inclui-se entre os tipos mais antigos da arte gráfica. O denominado Mapa de Ga-Sur, inscrição esculpida em uma estela de barro cozido, é a mais antiga representação cartográfica conhecida. Este referencial histórico foi descoberto na região do atual Iraque, cuja elaboração estima-se estar situada no período compreendido entre 3.800 e 2.500 anos antes da era cristã.