This book by Swedish scholar Tanja Schult details 31 monuments in 12 countries on five continents dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat rescuer of Jews in Budapest, Hungary in 1944-1945. The 2012 paperback edition contains some recent additions to her 2009 hardcover volume of the same title, which was a slightly revised version of her doctoral dissertation at Humboldt University, Berlin in 2007. Schult was educated in art history and Scandinavian studies in Erlangen and Lund and is currently a researcher at Stockholm University. The publisher’s series promotes international research on the Holocaust, Holocaust remembrance and interpretation, relevance of the Holocaust issues to contemporary society, and dissemination of innovative Holocaust scholarship in the English-speaking world.
More...In the Shadow of Yalta. Art and Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe 1945-1989 is the long-awaited English translation of Piotr Piotrowski’s 2004 book Awangarda w cieniu Jalty published in Poznań, Poland. The title is unusually brilliant, because not only is it clear about what the book discusses, it also entails the particular definition of the Eastern Europe that the author chose to cover: the area falling under Soviet rule following the agreement of the victors of World War II.
More...If we say that “Shakespeare is one of the ever-relevant authors”, we claim that Shakespeare’s plays are relevant in every country, at any time. Lofty statements like this passed into general currency centuries ago and anyone can pronounce them without giving proper thought to their underlying validity. It was the bold venture of a young Hungarian literary historian, Veronika Schandl, to explore and thoroughly explain what a similar statement means in Hungary, in the controversial second half of twentieth century; and her work does not echo the cliché referred to at the beginning but asks and answers the overwhelming question: how is this possible?
More...Keywords: Hungary; Holocaust; Hungarian-Serbian relations; Danilo Kiš; Psalm 44; Vajdaság; Vojvodina; Újvidék; Novi Sad; Cold Days
Danilo Kiš's little known second novel, Psalm 44 (1962) is his first major prose work about the Holocaust. This novel was published for the first time in Hungarian translation in 1966 and English translation in 2012. The novel is quite different from Kiš's later works on the Holocaust, the autobiographical trilogy comprising Early Sorrows, Garden, Ashes, and Hourglass. The first difference is in setting. In Psalm 44, a number of important flashbacks take place in Újvidék/Novi Sad, the region of northern Serbia (then Yugoslavia) under Hungarian occupation after 1941; much of the rest of the book takes place in Auschwitz and associated camps in Poland. The amount of Hungarian material is significant, but the inclusion of so much material from Auschwitz is not found elsewhere in Kiš 's oeuvre. The second difference is in the author's graphic portrayal of gruesome atrocities. For the literary historian, Psalm 44 is an important milestone in the development of Kiš 's thematic and stylistic inventory. For other historians, the novel functions in part as a microhistory of the Újvidék massacres (the "Cold Days") of early 1942. Kiš 's quest to find his own voice to attempt to convey the tragedy of the Holocaust—as important for the entire human family and the very region of Central Europe as it was for his own family—finds a parallel expression in the confusion, exhaustion, and skepticism of the characters in this novel.
More...Keywords: Jews; black market; humanitarian aid; Israel; Joint Distribution Committee;
This article discusses the emergence of the semi-clandestine efforts of a network of international Jewish philanthropies and the Israeli government to send material and financial aid to Jews in early-communist Hungary. Post Second World War Hungary was a special focus for Jewish aid organizations in the west and the Israeli government. They poured resources into Hungary, both to feed, cloth and provide medical care to hundreds of thousands of Jews, and to assist thousands of Jews migrating west through Hungary. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the dominant Jewish aid organization in the world at the time, ran its largest and most expensive program in Hungary. Working with Israeli and Hungarian authorities, it financed a network of welfare services, often through the importation of scarce consumer goods and raw materials. As the Communist Party reshaped the economy, and pushed out “undesirable elements” from Hungarian life, this aid program served a growing population of impoverished, sick, and religious Jews, some exiled in Hungary’s countryside. This program increasingly took advantage of black market networks to distribute aid. Yet, after conditions deteriorated so much that this program ceased officially, Jewish aid providers in the US and Israel adapted their earlier practices and networks to take advantage of the impoverished consumer economy in program to distribute aid clandestinely to Hungarian Jews, with the cooperation of Hungary’s communist authorities.
More...Keywords: Hungary; outmigration; emigration; Schengen Agreement; European Union;
This preliminary study is based on Hungarian electronic media sources, informal interviews and similar personal communications, as well as statistical data provided by kind and cooperative colleagues in Hungary. Addressing the recent, massive outmigration from Hungary, the article explores some of the primary push-and-pull factors, and then discusses responses to the emigration phenomenon itself and its likely long-term demographic, social and economic implications, by scholars as well as by politicians from both the governing party and the opposition. To give the emic perspective, I cited and translated from my conversations with a few young emigrants, would-be-emigrants, and mothers’ of these young people, and thus illustrate the issue from those most involved. Then, by also citing scholars, authors, columnists, and politicians my aim was to offer the etic, or outsiders’ view, but – since for various reasons – they also appear to be involved in and concerned with the problem of outmigration, theirs is still an emic perspective, though of a different order. Realizing that the present attempt is merely a quick snapshot of an ongoing, potentially volatile and dynamic process, further research and a multidisciplinary attempt to interpret and analyze the recent emigration from Hungary are needed.
More...Művészet és Hatalom. A Kádár-korszak Művészete [Art and Power. Art during the Kádár-Epoch] is a selection of papers presented at a conference under the same title on October 1 and 2 in 2004 at the Petőfi Literary Museum in Budapest in association with the József Attila Kör [Attila József Circle]. Although the book was published a few years ago, in 2005, its importance lies in the cultural studies approach used that presents a process of memory reconstruction in contemporary Hungary. The editors of the volume, Tamás Kisantal and Anna Menyhért, organized the essays about the Kádárist era in three main categories, starting with “Irodalompolitika és irodalmi élet a Kádár-korszakban” [“The Politics of Literature and Literary Life during the Kádár-Epoch”], then “A művészi megszolalásmód és a politika—Kepzőművészet, szinház és film a Kádár-korban” [“The Modes of Artistic Expression and Politics—Fine Art, Theater and Film During the Kádár-era”], and finally “Mátyás királytól a rockzenéig—A korszak tömegkultúrája” [“From Mathias Rex to Rock Music—The Epoch’s Mass Culture”], all of which orient readers to specific topics.
More...Keywords: life history; personal narrative; Holocaust; Jewish studies; women studies; emigration; nation building; trauma; hometown visits;
This essay focuses on the post-Holocaust, Israeli life of five female narrators of Hungarian origin as expressed in their inclusive life histories. A close reading of the later period in the life histories of the five women exposes how they experienced and view their post-Holocaust life as Holocaust survivors and new immigrants in a newly founded State. The women's narratives of finding housing, work, and starting new families show that despite practical hardship they look back on it all with humor, acceptance, and optimism. The women's narratives about the recurrence of Holocaust-related bad memories, nightmares, fears, and worries illustrate that the past is always present and shakes the stability of their post-Holocaust, seemingly rehabilitated lives. This instability or proneness to belated agony is even stronger for two women, who embark on journeys to their past Hungarian hometowns (accompanied by their husbands, likewise of Hungarian origin). The hometown visit narratives are compelling, bothering, and carry a nightmarish quality. Seen against the background of the five women's former Hungarian lives and identity, the narratives of emigration, remembering, and re-visiting clarify that all these experiences are shadowed by the women's Holocaust experiences. Yet, while their later lives offer them some consolation, the memory of the Nazi camps as that of the Hungarian scenes/sites of deportation to Auschwitz, are forever painful and poignant.
More...Keywords: Hungarian migrations; virtual and actual homecomings; ideologies and myths; long distance nationalism;
This study examines various ideologies and myths immigrants hold about their homeland, then turns to look at the relationship over time between immigrants and their natal Hungary. First it explores massive emigrations and minimal remigrations from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While it is impossible to sharply divide economic push factors from political ones, the motivations to leave Hungary were primarily economic in that time. Then I turn to three periods: migrations during the era between the two World Wars; immediately after the Second World War; and to the socialist regime between 1948 and 1989. These times the push factors were mainly political. Finally, I pay attention to the first dozen years of the post-socialist period when emigration was, once again, mainly economically motivated, and remigrations were frequent particularly, though not only, for retirees. (As the study that follows the present one will illustrate, since the Fall of 2010—along with global economic problems—political factors, generally low morale, lack of trust in a viable future are major factors once again for the massive outmigration). The immigrants’ ties with the homeland changed through time depending not on the intentions of the individuals, but on global politics, and the transformation of the various regimes in Hungary. I discuss some versions of both virtual and actual homecoming, as well as expressions and meanings of long distance nationalism.
More...Keywords: Austro-Hungarian Monarchy; Max Nordau; Theodor Herzl; bilingualism; Judaism;
The name of Theodor Herzl (Herzl Tivadar) evokes his Hungarian ties and the major stages of his life and work with relative ease, but doctor, writer and journalist Max Nordau (1849, Pest – 1923, Paris), requires a more delicate approach, having essentially sunk into oblivion despite his prolificacy in literature and his wide-ranging Zionist activities. In the case of Max Nordau, the second personality discussed in this paper, the aim of this paper is not to remedy the lack of information on Nordau, but to draw a comparison and a parallel between the years Nordau and Herzl spent in Pest in terms of assimilation and issues of language and identity. We first highlight events that are relevant to Nordau and Herzl’s family background, schooling, school transfers and university education, and then discuss in greater detail the linguistic and cultural paradigm shift that began in 1861 and forced Nordau first into a defensive position and then into isolation both socio-culturally and occupationally, but led to well-balanced bilingualism in Herzl’s case.
More...Keywords: Hungarian exiles; Hungarian diaspora; Cultural history; Twentieth century migrations; Argentine immigration; Cultural identity; Ethnic identity; Dual identity;
This paper presents the cultural activism of a group of Hungarian émigrés who fled their homeland following Soviet occupation at the end of World War II and arrived in Argentina around 1948. It deals with the intellectual activity of these exiles, especially through their cultural and educational institutions. Within five years of their arrival as dispossessed “D.P.’s,” they founded a Hungarian Center (“Centro Húngaro”) that housed, among others, a theater group, a free university, a cultural and scientific academy, a weekend school, and scout troops. At the same time, new periodicals appeared, and a substantive number of books banned in Hungary were published. I argue that it is due to the work of these institutions that the community flourished and is vital to date, in spite of its isolation and lack of reinforcement through new emigrant waves, and in spite of its hostile relationship with the government of the People’s Republic of Hungary and of a series of Argentine economic crises that forced many of its members to re-emigrate. I also discuss the impact the exiles had on their descendants, contending that as a result of the strong cultural foundations laid by them during their first twenty years of emigration, third- and fourth-generation Hungarian-Argentines have maintained to this day a strong cultural and ethnic identity, while fully integrating into Argentine society at large.
More...Keywords: usage of personal names; regulations of given names and family names usage among national minorities; various forms of Hungarian women´s names in Slovakia;
The use of personal names by minority Hungarians, both men and women, varies not only according to the circumstances of the country where they live but also from community to community and even from individual to individual. This study focuses on different forms of first (given) names and family names (surnames) characteristic of female ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia, including the usage of the Slovak feminine suffix -ová with Hungarian surnames of women. The paper also discusses the topic of relevant legislation – laws and regulations – concerning the use of personal names of members of national minorities which, to a great extent and especially for women, can influence the choice of the form of their given name and surname.
More...
