NICOLAE DRĂGUȘIN

Abstract:

This paper aims at analyzing the legal definitions of Jews in romania and Hungary between 1938 and 1944. it does so by focusing on the interplay of the legislators’ racial conceptions, on the one hand, and the roles played by citizenship and conversion to christianity justifying exceptions, on the other hand. This interplay is better understood in the changing political contexts of both countries. The legal definitions produced in Romania in the form of government decree-laws and in Hungary in that of parliamentary laws were not without connection with the different ways in which both countries had addressed the historical so-called “Jewish question” before 1918 and with the transformation of antisemitism after 1918. The paper makes use of the definitions ascribed to Jews and Jewry in the decree-laws and laws, respectively, as primary sources.

Keywords: citizenship, Jew, Holocaust, law, Romania, Hungary, antisemitism

JEHUDA HARTMAN

Abstract:

How was it possible in 1944, in the geographical center of a Europe being consumed by flames, where millions of Jews had already been murdered, that a large Jewish community could still believe that it would continue to live in peace? Why did Jews continue to nurture an idyllic picture of the past, even as it became increasingly inconsistent with the present? What motivated the Jewish leaders, and many ordinary Jews, to adhere devotedly to their Hungarian national identity? How can we explain such a chasm between the self-perception of the Jews and the attitudes of the surrounding society? What led a noted Orthodox leader to declare, just weeks before the invasion, which enjoyed widespread cooperation from so many Hungarians, that after the war, Hungary would gain “eternal admiration thanks to its sublime thought and humanity?”

Keywords: deportation, illusions, German occupation.

ATTILA GIDÓ

Abstract:

This study is an attempt to fill some of the historiographical gaps regarding the attitude of the Hungarian-linked Christian churches of Northern Transylvania towards the Jewish question between 1940 and 1944. According to the Hungarian census of 1941, members of the Roman Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist) and Unitarian churches made up almost the entire Hungarian population of Northern Transylvania and almost half of the total population. My analysis is based on documents found in some of the regional archives of these churches. This is a preliminary sketch which, although it brings new insights into the subject, can and should be expanded by further research. I will show that the Christian churches had a differentiated policy towards baptized Jews and towards the Jewish population as a whole. In general, they supported the anti-Jewish Hungarian laws and profited economically from the expropriation of Jewish property. During the ghettoization and deportations of 1944, the churches’ attitude towards Jews changed slightly. This can be seen in the increased number of baptisms. The conclusion of the paper is that there were personal cases where priests or church leaders tried to help and save Jewish people, but the Christian churches in Northern Transylvania as institutions had an ambiguous policy towards the persecuted Jewish population.

Keywords: Northern Transylvania, Holocaust, Christian churches, conversion of Jews, Jewish properties

JUDIT KÓNYA

Abstract:

This paper discusses the consequences of the decree requiring the compulsory stunning of animals for slaughtering (April 1938) in Hungary and in the territories re-annexed to it by the two Vienna awards. The decree banning Jewish ritual slaughtering had anti-Jewish motives, following the German example; it opened a long series of further anti-Jewish laws. Both the Ministry of agriculture’s archival documents and the rabbinic sources in Hebrew show that the decree could not be enforced in all provinces, nor was its violation sanctioned with equal determination everywhere: enforcing the Ministry’s will depended on local circumstances. Since the decree was unenforceable in Transcarpathia and northern Transylvania, due to the high number of Orthodox, religiously observant Jews, a new decree (of January 1940) exempted the slaughterhouses there from observing it. The compulsory stunning of animals had a severe impact on the Jewish religious communities in Hungary, both economically and spiritually. The economic situation of the poorer, typically Orthodox Jewish communities, was substantially worsened by the non-payment of the tax on meat. In addition, the decree sent a clear message to the Jewish community: the Hungarian State interfered in religious practices, even when the interests of the country dictated otherwise. According to archival documents, the drastic reduction in the number of ritual slaughterings not only made it impossible for Jewish communities to survive but also threatened the livelihoods of all those involved in the meat industry. in 1938, the Hungarian administration put the “humanization” of animal slaughtering before the economic interests of the country.

Keywords: anti-Jewish legislation, halakha, Holocaust, Hungary, responsa literature, ritual slaughtering

PAUL SHAPIRO

Abstract:

These reflections draw on decades of involvement with the history and politics of the Holocaust in Romania, Hungary, and Transylvania. Under communism, the holocaust was a nearly taboo subject. This did not prevent the Romanians from drawing attention to certain crimes of the Horthy regime, nor did it prevent the publication in Hungary of some studies on the tragedy of the Hungarian Jews. But public awareness of the holocaust was low. More serious confrontation with the holocaust began following 1989, but reaffirmations of nationalism in the wake of Soviet domination led to tolerance for public manifestations of antisemitism and to an extended period of uncertainty in confronting the criminal records of the Horthy and Antonescu regimes. The holocaust-related policies of Hungary and Romania were not “in synch” during the holocaust or during communism, and have remained “out of synch” through the entire post-communist period. This “out-of-synch-ness” and the broader animosity between the two countries, fatal for Jews during the Holocaust, continues to induce insecurity among Jews. in the early post-communist years, it made little difference who was in charge – communist regime holdovers in Romania or center-right and center-left governments in Hungary. Holocaust denial and distortion were the norm in both countries. Their respective paths diverged with the establishment of the Wiesel Commission, which put Romania on a path toward a more honest confrontation with the past. No analogous course correction has occurred in Hungary, with significant negative consequences for the country’s democracy, international standing, and relationship with the truth.

Keywords: antisemitism, distortion, holocaust memorial/holocaust museum, “out-of synch-ness”, Wiesel Commission

MARIANA HAUSLEITNER

Abstract:

While being interrogated in 1945 in Moscow, Gustav Richter, Eichmann’s representative in Bucharest, claimed that Mihai Antonescu had agreed, in July 1942, to the plan of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to begin with the deportation of the Jews from southern Transylvania. The plan was made public in a press conference and published on 8 August 1942 in the newspaper Bucharest Daily. In spite of the German envoy Manfred von Killinger’s declaration of 15 September that preparations for the deportation had been finalized, no Romanian representative took part in the conference in Berlin from 26 to 28 September, in which the schedule for the transportation trains was drawn up. As the reason for their absence, the Bukarester Tageblatt of 11 October specifically referred to Franz Baron von Neumann’s and Wilhelm Filderman’s interventions. On 12 December, Von Killinger stated in resignation that one could no longer assume that the deportations would take place. This article discusses the extent to which the reports of the German envoy, Killinger, and the Swiss envoy, René de Weck, can explain why the deportation plan failed.

Keywords: Romania, Germany, Switzerland, Jews, deportations

LÁSZLÓ KARSAI

Abstract:

In our study, we would like to answer the following questions: after the occupation of Hungary on 19 March 1944, what was the relationship between the German occupiers and the Hungarian authorities: did the latter obey the former in everything, or, on the contrary, took the initiative, enthusiastically, almost forced the Germans to “take over” hundreds of thousands of Jews from Hungary? Is it true that the Germans had no “master plan” for the deportation of the Hungarian Jews? And finally, could the Hungarian Jews have survived the Holocaust?

Keywords: Holocaust, 1944 invasion of Hungary, collaboration, cooperation

JUDIT MOLNÁR

Abstract:

Following the German occupation of Hungary, the government of Döme Sztójay, appointed by Regent Miklós Horthy on 22 March 1944, enacted a series of anti-Jewish decrees ranging from discrimination to plunder, to segregation, and eventually to deportation. Nearly 440 thousand Hungarian citizens classified as Jews were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps. Cooperation between the Hungarian and German authorities was basically harmonious, but on some occasions not without conflict. Horthy gave a free hand to the government. The Prime-Minister, most of his ministers, and the state secretaries responsible for the “Jewish question” regularly consulted the competent German authorities. At local level, the heads of the Gendarmerie districts, prefects, deputy prefects, and mayors consulted German advisers at meetings and banquets. The main question of my research: For what reasons were the deportation trains from some of the collection camps in southern and south-eastern Hungary not destined for Auschwitz-Birkenau, as originally planned, but for Strasshof, which offered a better chance of survival? Other questions I will try to answer are: Why was the route changed only in those areas? At what level and who decided on the route? What did the heads of the provincial administration and public security services know, or were they aware of the decision-making process? Did they have any say in who was put on each train? Was there uniformity in the implementation, e.g., in Pécs, Barcs, Bácsalmás, Szeged, or Szabadka? To answer these questions, I will draw partly on contemporary documents (e.g., the reports of Gendarmerie Lieutenant-Colonel László Ferenczy, the reports he received), partly on post-WWII memoirs (e.g., Rezső Kasztner’s report), and partly on the People’s Court documents of Gendarmerie officers, Police officers, mayors, etc. (e.g., Gendarmerie Colonel László Hajnácskőy, Gendarmerie Captain Imre Finta, deputy mayor Béla Tóth).

Keywords: authorities, deportations, Gendarmerie, Holocaust, Hungary, Strasshof

GEORGE EISEN

Abstract:

Most accounts of the Holocaust focus on trainloads of prisoners speeding toward Auschwitz, with its chimneys belching smoke and flames, in the summer of 1944. In 1941-1942, more than twenty thousand Hungarian Jews, most of them from Transcarpathia and northern Transylvania, were deported to Galicia and summarily executed. In exploring the fate of these Hungarian Jews and their local coreligionists, this new research transcends conventional history by introducing a multitude of layers regarding politics, culture, and, above all, psychology – especially that of the motivation, rationale, and personality of the killers. Relatively low-level SS officials in charge of security outposts with primarily normal police personnel transferred from Vienna, Berlin, and other Reich cities to the east started and carried out the extermination. They were assisted by reserve Police Battalions. This research concentrates on one of these SS officers, SS-Untersturmführer and Kriminalkommissar der Polizei Peter Leideritz, who orchestrated the killings of over eighty-five thousand people.

Keywords: Hungarian Jewry, Galicia, mass murders, retribution, SS

LÁSZLÓ CSŐSZ

Abstract:

This article provides a comparative microhistory of the mass executions and other war crimes committed against the Roma in Hungary from the early autumn of 1944 to the early spring of 1945. First, the article examines the history of the long-standing anti-Roma social discrimination and state violence vis-à-vis antisemitic policies, which formed the context of wartime genocide. Second, it sheds light on the social dynamics and situational factors leading to the “qualitative leap” in anti-Roma policies in the maelstrom of the approaching front. Facing inconsistent persecution before the summer of 1944, the Roma were now collectively made responsible for the atrocities committed by the Allied troops and regarded as “traitors” as an act of scapegoating. Hungarian and German army troops, gendarmerie, and “Arrow Cross” Party paramilitaries indiscriminately slaughtered entire Roma families and even small communities in at least ten localities throughout Hungary. Thousands of Roma were detained and deported to concentration camps in Germany. Seeking the answer to the key question “why”, the article also scrutinizes the profiles and motivations of the perpetrators, as well as the direct and indirect roles of the non-Roma neighbors in the events. The sources analyzed include first-hand accounts of survivors and eyewitnesses, wartime administrative records and press reports, as well as post-war investigative and trial records.

Keywords: Genocide of the Roma, mass killing, antigypsyism, antisemitism, Hungary

ANDERS E.B. BLOMQVIST

Abstract:

This study examines the Jewish experience of economic nationalization in the Hungarian Romanian ethnic borderlands, focusing on the Princz family’s history from the early 1900s to the present. Their experience was characterized by a dual existence of belonging to, and yet being apart from, majority societies. The Princz family achieved conditional inclusion by cultivating political connections among the elite and leveraging their managerial and engineering expertise. This enabled them to secure economic success and protection. Ármin Princz’s dedication to the Hungarian minority’s cause in interwar Romania earned him enough national merit to be exempted from anti-Jewish legislation, allowing him to attain the status of a “non-Jewish full Jew”. However, his brother József, despite his First World War service as a decorated Magyar patriot, did not receive this status and ultimately perished in the Holocaust. The family’s Jewish identity set them apart, not only through the devastation of the Holocaust, but also through their ability to adapt to shifting national regimes, skillfully navigating magyar, Romanian, and Hungarian rule. This adaptability extended to post-World War II migration, as the Princz family successfully relocated and rebuilt their businesses abroad. Continued antisemitism forced them to adopt strategies to obscure their Jewish identity, including changing their names and downplaying their past. The Princz family’s story highlights the broader themes of survival, resilience, and strategic accommodation in the face of shifting political landscapes and ongoing discrimination.

Keywords: conditioned inclusion, economic nationalizing, exemptions, Holocaust, Northern Transylvania

TÓTH-BARTOS ANDRÁS

Abstract:

After the First World War, the land tenure policy was employed as a tool for ethnic policy. In the newly-acquired territories, measures were primarily implemented so as to benefit the state-forming nation, often at the expense of the ethnic minorities. During the 1930s, in both Hungary and Romania, an intensified antisemitic discourse led to the promulgation of several acts, by the end of the decade and thereafter, explicitly aimed at first restraining and then eliminating the Jewish presence from the economy. Following the Second Vienna Award, the Hungarian land-tenure policy in Transylvania adopted a Magyarizing character, primarily focusing on restricting the number of Romanian-owned properties. The legislation concerning the Jewish landed property, including Act no. 1939: IV and Act no. 1942: XV, was also extended to northern Transylvania. This paper analyzes the Hungarian land-tenure policy in northern Transylvania with regard to Jewish property, specifically focusing on the measures enacted in accordance with the provisions of Act no. 1942: XV, until the period of German occupation in 1944.

Keywords: Fourth Jewish Law, Jewish property, Hungary, land tenure and agrarian policy, northern Transylvania

ENIKŐ ORSOLYA NAGYI

Abstract:

In the early 1940s, the anti-Jewish legislation in Hungary, driven by the Horthy regime, systematically stripped Jews living in the country of their rights, property, and livelihoods. Jews were excluded from public life, dispossessed of assets ranging from houses and farmland to businesses, and ultimately ghettoized and handed over to the Nazi forces. This study focuses on Northern Transylvania, where anti-Jewish policies permeated all levels of society, including law enforcement, the local administration, and the general population. A central role was played by the regional press, which not only documented the confiscation of Jewish property, but also normalized and encouraged the participation of the public in the process. A press analysis reveals how the media served as a tool of propaganda, fostering state and public interest in the spoils of anti-Jewish measures and reflecting a widespread complicity. The research draws on then-contemporary newspaper coverage to trace the progression of looting and the post-war challenges of property restitution.

Keywords: anti-Jewish measures, confiscations, Holocaust, Hungary, Northern Transylvania, property

ȘTEFAN CRISTIAN IONESCU

Abstract:

As a result of the Second World War and its complicated history, the few returning Jewish Holocaust survivors experienced in Northern Transylvania a more complicated restitution process, compared to the Jews in the other parts of Romania. This happened, because the community had a much lower survival rate, its property had been Aryanized under the Hungarian government which had controlled the region from 1940 to 1944 and had to navigate the restitution procedures under a special law adopted in July 1945. The region also experienced tensed interethnic relations and occasional violence. This paper investigates the socio-political context for the emergence of the restitution of Jewish property in Northern Transylvania in early post-Holocaust Romania. It focuses on the historical context surrounding the efforts of the Jewish survivors to rebuild their lives, on the stipulations and problems that occurred in the reparatory process, as well as on several cases of court litigation of Jewish survivors for the restitution of their former assets during the early postwar years.

Keywords: Aryanization, Holocaust, Northern Transylvania, survivors, restitution

OVIDIU CREANGĂ

Abstract:

Since the end of the Holocaust, Jews from greater Hungary who survived the nazi persecution have faced many challenges in their quest for compensation. This reality seemed impossible to reconcile with their lived experience as survivors of expropriation, deportation and extermination. While transitional justice scholars have extensively criticized Germany’s indemnification program for its restrictive criteria, which severely disadvantaged Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe, including Hungary, few have paid attention to the ways in which those barriers to compensation have been reduced over the years for uncompensated, or only minimally compensated, victims of the Holocaust. This chapter traces the efforts of the Claims Conference to secure financial compensation from Germany for the Hungarian Holocaust survivors. It reviews German federal and supplementary programs that were amended or created anew as a result of its advocacy to compensate Hungarian Holocaust survivors. This new funding, obtained after much negotiation and always long overdue, represented a small measure of justice for the Hungarian victims of the Holocaust.

Keywords: Claims Conference, compensation, Germany, Holocaust, Hungary, survivors

FRANK BARON

Abstract:

Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler’s escape from Auschwitz, on 7 April 1944, was extraordinary in its daring, courageous execution, and impact. The challenging task of the two escapees was to inform the world of previously unimaginable crimes, and to do so in a way that made the unbelievable believable. Because the deportations to Auschwitz were still in progress, it was essential to inform the threatened Jewish populations that they were slated by the Germans to be part of the “final Solution”. When and how the transmission of the resulting text took place made all the difference. Decisive transmissions involved secret networks in Switzerland and Hungary, taking place independently. Despite the presence of the Gestapo and the German Army, finally, in early July 1944, two independent, increasingly powerful efforts, engendered primarily by the report, converged in Budapest. Only then could one of the most remarkable rescues of World War II take place. Without wishing to detract from the courageous actions of Ferenc Koszorús, my research has identified crucial actions of Elizabeth Wiskeman in Switzerland and Lajos Kudar, as well as Géza Soos in Hungary, as instrumental for this success.

Keywords: Auschwitz Report, Rudolf Vrba, Alfred Wetzler, Hungary, Switzerland

FRED R. BLEAKLEY

Abstract:

The common phrase “timing is everything” is particularly apt in assessing the importance of the escape of Czesław Mordowicz and Arnost Rošin from Auschwitz on 27 May 1944. Would the more than two hundred thousand Jews of Budapest have been saved from deportation to Auschwitz if the report of Mordowicz and Rosin had not corroborated earlier testimony of two other escapees? Answering this question requires a careful look at the timing of the testimony of the two pairs of escapees and when influential action was taken. The Auschwitz gas chambers had already taken the lives of four hundred thousand Hungarian Jewish men, women, and children. It was “the most concentrated and methodical deportation and massacre program of the war, a slaughter machine that functioned, perfectly oiled, for forty-six days on end”, wrote historian Gerald Reitlinger.

Keywords: collaboration, deportation, intermediaries, timing, testimony

ATTILA NOVÁK

Abstract:

A few years ago, the Budapest City Archives came into possession of important documents of Ernő Szilágyi (a member of the Kasztner Group and a Hungarian Zionist leader, who was also known as Zvi in the movement) and his family. The collection contains the papers of him, László Szilágyi (his brother), and his wife, Borbála Szentgyörgyi, and her family. The Szilágyi family (originally called Sterzfinger) originates from kaposvár. The identified fond contains a lot of material, but perhaps the most valuable are those from relatives, friends, and acquaintances who wrote to lászló Szilágyi about what had happened to them in 1944. The materials also include (of course) Ernő Szilágyi’s personal papers, such as correspondence with the Swiss authorities, when he continued to organize Keren Kayemeth Leyisrael (the Jewish National Fund) there for a few years after 1945. Some of the texts for which it is not known who wrote them may also have been those of Ernő Szilágyi; this can be decided based on style characteristics.

Keywords: Holocaust, Kasztner group, memoir, Ernő Szilágyi, Zionists

ZOLTÁN TIBORI-SZABÓ

Abstract:

In May 1944, at the request of Georges Mantello-Mandel, Florin E. Manoliu, the economic counsellor of the Romanian legation in bern, Switzerland, agreed to take a thousand San Salvadorian citizenship certificates to Northern Transylvania for Mantello’s relatives and friends. At the railway station in Vienna, he was detained by the German authorities, taken to Berlin, investigated, and threatened not to interrupt his journey to Bucharest in Hungary. The Romanian diplomat finally arrived in Bucharest, from where he traveled to northern Transylvania. But there were no Jews left in any of the towns in that province, belonging to Hungary then. He took the certificates to Budapest, where he gave them to Mose (Miklós) Krausz, the representative of the Palestine agency, hiding in the Swiss legation building in Budapest. From Krausz, who had been contacted with the help of the Swiss vice-consul Carl Lutz, Manoliu obtained an extremely important document compiled from several Auschwitz Protocols written by escapees, that he then handed over to Mantello in Geneva, at dawn, on 21 June 1944. This was to be the source of the information disseminated throughout the Allied press in the following years about what had happened at Auschwitz. Manoliu was prosecuted for corruption after the war, once acquitted, fled illegally from Romania to Switzerland in 1947. He later settled in Argentina, where he was a professor at the University of Bahia Blanca. This study aims to shed light on some of the details of his mission, as well as his life and fate, in the specific context of the war and post-war years.

Keywords: Auschwitz reports, diplomacy, intelligence, Florin Manoliu, nazi Germany

VIRGILIU-LEON ȚÂRĂU

Abstract:

The paper discusses, in the light of new information, the fate of the Jewish community from Cluj in the former half of 1944. The focus is on the escape routes (luna de Sus and Făget in particular) initiated by some Romanian locals from Cluj during World War II (Aurel Socol Jr. in the forefront). These routes were used in the spring and early summer of 1944 to save members of the Jewish community. Based on new information researched in the archives at the national level (National Archives, Ministry of the Interior, Gendarmerie and Police Fonds, and the CNAS Archives), and also at the local level (Cluj and Turda), the presentation tries to describe how the networks were constructed, how they functioned, and the results of their wartime activities. Looking at the routes during the war helps us evaluate the changes that took place in 1944 and how the networks managed (in some cases) to
circumvent the counter-measures of the Hungarian and Romanian authorities.

Keywords: escaping networks, escaping routes, northern Transylvania, Romanian-Hungarian border, saviors

GÁBOR ÁDÁM

Abstract:

The hundreds of Jewish cemeteries throughout Transylvania serve as a genuine testament to Jewish life and provide a connection between the descendants of the Jews who left the region before or after the Holocaust. In addition to those who look for their Transylvanian ancestors for traditional or religious reasons, an increasing number of people have recently expressed a desire to become citizens of Europe in honor of their Transylvanian ancestors. In addition to presenting a few concrete cases of how the graves of those ancestors believed to be missing have been found and the cemetery “put in its place”, my study aims at raising awareness of the importance of preserving these cemeteries in a proper way and making all information about them available. It would be necessary not only to photograph the gravestones and organize the inscriptions in a database, but also to systematically search for and process other materials (cemetery registers, documents relating to burial bureaucracy, etc.).

Keywords: burial records, genealogy, Jewish cemeteries, memory, Transylvania, tombstones

BINYAMIN HUNYADI

Abstract:

Volf Tambur (Vladimir Tamburu, 1915-1995) began his Yiddish literary career in interwar Romania, but only achieved prominence after the communist takeover of the country, particularly during the years of the so-called “minor cultural revolution” introduced by Nicolae Ceaușescu. Tambur’s first Yiddish-language novel, Friling on zun (Sunless Spring), published in Arad in 1947, the first part of a planned trilogy, was one of the earliest literary treatments of the Holocaust in Transylvania. His later works, written in the 1970s and 1980s, woven around the same theme, drew a different picture of the Holocaust in Romania than generally accepted by the official Romanian historiography, or commonly presented by the literature of other minority languages, such as Hungarian and German, or in the majority Romanian literature. This article discusses Tambur’s first novel, his rise to prominence under the communist regime, and his role in the Yiddish-language cultural establishment during the Ceaușescu era, and lastly his writings on the Transylvanian chapter of the Holocaust and its aftermath in communist Romania. Furthermore, the article sheds light on the status and assigned role of Yiddish under the Ceaușescu regime, the policies of remembrance and representation of the Holocaust in Romania, and finally the power dynamics between the Party directives and the authors’ personal agency in the Yiddish cultural milieu.

Keywords: Holocaust literature in Yiddish, Ceaușescu era, Holocaust in Transylvania, minor Cultural Revolution, Volf Tambur

GYÖRGY CSEPELI

Abstract:

A black hole’s attractive force is so strong in a galaxy that it swallows forever anything that gets too close. In the course of our research into the local memory patterns of the Holocaust in Hungary, we have found that the events of the fatal year 1944 have been swallowed by black holes of the collective memory. As time has passed, these black holes have become more impenetrable. The study to be presented will attempt to reveal the painful memories buried deeply in the black holes of the local communities’ past.

Keywords: Holocaust, Hungary, memory, memorialization, Transylvania, trauma

RICHÁRD PAPP

Abstract:

Over two years ago, our teamwork started researching the local memory of the holocaust in Hungarian settlements. We used qualitative social science methods to explore and interpret contemporary meanings of holocaust memory. One of the most important and thought-provoking findings of our research relates to the almost complete absence of visible local signs of the holocaust, but also to the term “taboo” that appears repeatedly in our interviewees’ narratives. Thus, my paper will attempt to interpret the significances of “taboo” and absence associated with holocaust memory and their historical and contemporary social contexts.

Keywords: absence, holocaust, Hungary, memorialization, local memory, taboos.

ADAM KERPEL-FRONIUS

Abstract:

The mass deportation of Jews from Hungary was nearly the final and one of the most momentous chapters of the Holocaust. Still, despite its significance, this pivotal chapter does not receive nearly as much attention in the collective international memory of the Holocaust as it would arguably deserve. This is especially true about the history of the deportation of Jews from northern Transylvania – outside of the geographic region where the events took place, they are hardly known and much less understood. The reasons for this underexposure are manifold: the complexity of the region’s history, the persisting linguistic barriers, the complex entanglement of responsibilities between the German occupiers and the Hungarian authorities for sending hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths are significant factors that contribute to this deficiency, and so was the enduring silence of post-war Hungary and Romania that covered up this difficult past for nearly half a century. In this presentation, we will consider prominent examples of how the history of the Holocaust in northern Transylvania is presented outside the region, how memorial culture focusing on this chapter evolves both in and outside the region, reflect upon some of the difficulties in making this history relatable to a wider international public, and consider how to try to tackle them in the future.

Keywords: deportations, northern Transylvania, memorialization, international reflection

EFRAIM ZUROFF

Abstract:

In 2004, the “Simon Wiesenthal” Center launched its flagship project to attempt to identify and hopefully facilitate the prosecution of Nazi perpetrators in Hungary, the sixth country in which the project was initiated (the others were Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in 2002, and Austria, Romania, and Poland in 2003). The project offered financial rewards for valuable information, which could assist in finding criminals alive and healthy enough to be prosecuted. Despite the fact that the extent of the Hungarian participation in the mass murdering of Jews was more limited than that of other collaborators in Eastern Europe, several Hungarian suspects were identified and indicted. The lecture describes the cases and explains the outcomes of the legal proceedings, both in Hungary and overseas.

Keywords: Hungary, Nazi perpetrators, Nazi-hunters, identification, prosecution