“One Must Not, and It Is Not Proper to Talk About This”: Non-Jewish Readings of Distrust Related to Holocaust Memory Cover Image

„Erről nem szabad, nem illik beszélni”. A holokauszt emlékezetéhez kapcsolódó bizalmatlanság nem zsidó olvasatai
“One Must Not, and It Is Not Proper to Talk About This”: Non-Jewish Readings of Distrust Related to Holocaust Memory

Author(s): György Csepeli, Richard Papp
Subject(s): History of the Holocaust
Published by: Korunk Baráti Társaság
Keywords: Hungary; Holocaust; Jews; memory; trauma

Summary/Abstract: The Holocaust is the Philoktetes wound tormenting every European country occupied by Hitler’s armies between 1939 and 1945. Paradoxically, it may be the Germans who feel this pain the least, as they have nowhere left to escape the curse of their role as perpetrators. This article presents the results of research on the memory of the events in Hungary, the last theatre of Hitler’s European campaign against the Jews. The researchers returned to the sites of the drama that unfolded in the summer of 1944, searching for traces of the vanished Jewish life in both the physical and social-psychological spaces, where the void created by the destruction of the Jews is filled with fear, distrust, confusion, silence, and cognitive dissonance. Based on the research findings, it can be stated that 80 years after the Holocaust, in Hungarian villages, small towns, and Budapest, both within and outside the current national borders, today, in Macbeth’s words, “nothing is, but what is not”.

  • Issue Year: 2025
  • Issue No: 02
  • Page Range: 97-106
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: Hungarian
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