English
Magyar
Domokos Szokolay
“Fathers and Sons”
Through his personal story and the fate of his father, whose life was shaped by ties to the communist state security apparatus, the author examines the failures and possibilities of Hungary’s reckoning with its past. He interprets the public accessibility of secret police files not merely as a legal matter but as an opportunity for collective healing. The essay criticizes the elitist “us versus them” logic of public discourse and memory politics as well as the anomalies created by the semi-public nature of the archives. Instead, he calls for a new, reflective discourse capable of creating space for collective processing and the treatment of transgenerational trauma. Rejecting the notion of Hungarian society as a passive victim of history, the author understands the confrontation with the past as a dynamic process shaped by the needs of the community and the challenges of the present.
István Papp
Where Two Worlds Meet
Displaced People from Budapest in Csorvás. (Part I)
In my study, I am not seeking to answer who came to Csorvás – a village in Békés County – and why, nor how they later recalled the years of resettlement in their personal narratives. Rather, I am interested in those who welcomed them. What were the economic and social conditions in Csorvás, what conflicts arose with the group of strangers who appeared overnight, and how did they manage to resolve these tensions – to the point that, to the best of our knowledge, two of the displaced even remained in the village for an extended period? I aim to reverse the perspective of the existing literature: resettlement is not merely the story of those forced to leave Budapest but also that of the residents of the host communities. It resulted that members of the Hungarian society who otherwise would likely never have encountered were brought into close contact with one another. I am interested in interpersonal relationships, and the microhistorical perspective and methodology seemed to be the most suitable approach for this.
János Miklós Kollár
Fault lines of origin and worldview: struggles in the interrogation room
Gábor Karátson in 1956 and during the retaliation era
In the spring of 1957, criminal proceedings were initiated against a law student barely twenty years of age, after the post-revolutionary repressive apparatus determined that the young university student posed a threat to the emerging Kádár regime. This article examines the proceedings and the subsequent trial of the writer and painter Gábor Karátson, demonstrating how the investigators – who carried out the bulk of the work and its practical aspects – attempted to break an idealistic young man who believed in his country and his own potential, and who was determined to act according to his conscience even when he was sometimes more a victim of events than their active shaper. A turning point in background and worldview, on an uneven playing field.
András Lénárt
The plebeian rabbi
Henrik Fisch in the People’s Republic
Henrik Fisch was an almost entirely unknown rural rabbi before 1945. He was born in 1907 in Tarpa, Szatmár County, graduated from the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary in 1933, and was ordained the following year. Like every young rabbi, he aspired to serve in a congregation of high prestige that would provide a secure livelihood, but he had to wait for such an opportunity. During the Holocaust, not only were members of his immediate family killed, but virtually the entire Jewish community of his village. After the war he moved to Budapest and obtained a position in the religious affairs department of the National Office of Hungarian Israelites (MIOI). For him, the new regime represented an advancement: he achieved nearly everything possible within the framework of the Jewish community. In 1950, he was appointed rabbi of one of the largest congregations, the synagogue in Csáky/Hegedűs Gyula Street, and between 1959 and 1972 he served as Chief Rabbi of the Dohány Street Synagogue; he also taught at the Rabbinical Seminary. Through an account of his career, this paper seeks to illuminate the patterns of professional advancement within the Jewish community during the socialist era. A longer version of this study, which also covers the work of Rabbi Imre Benoschofsky, will be published in a volume on the history of the Csáky Street Synagogue, to be issued by the Holocaust Memorial Centre.
Attila Novák–Tamás Bíró
A biased interpretation of an important oeuvre
A bookreview on Veszprémy László Bernát: Hét verem.
Scheiber Sándor küzdelmei a kádári állambiztonsággal.
[László Bernát Veszprémy: Seven Pits. Sándor Scheiber’s Struggles with State Security Under the Kádár Era]
Jaffa Publishing, Budapest 2024. 398 p.
The book has many virtues – its wealth of data, the way it “weaves the threads together” leading abroad with archival sources – but unfortunately, it does not adhere to the basic rules of the historian’s profession. Despite the traditional Jewish quo- tations at the beginning and end, the book is driven by a single concept: the attempt to “dethrone” of Professor Alexander [Sándor] Scheiber, who died forty years ago. To this end, the author often manipulates sources or, even when his sources are accurate, subordinates them to a prejudiced concept.
Erzsébet Pőcz
Caught in the act
A note on an intercepted phone call
Using a phone call intercepted by the ÁVH in 1953 as a starting point, this article attempts to sketch the life stories of the call’s participants. The caller, Kamilla Hollay, a former silent film star, had returned home from exile shortly before the conversation and had been trying for some time to obtain information about her imprisoned husband. Thanks to the political thaw that began after Imre Nagy’s appointment as prime minister in July 1953, she learned in November 1953 that her journalist husband had died in prison eight months earlier. In her desperation, she called her husband’s former friend, the journalist Endre Márton. Endre Márton’s phone had been tapped for quite some time. The State Security caught itself in the act of eavesdropping on the phone conversation.
Ágnes Jobst
The key players in the Cold War: the secret services
A bookreview on Daniela Münkel – Ronny Heidenreich – Martin Stief: Geheimdienste, Politik und Krisen im Kalten Krieg
(Wissenschaftliche Reihe des Stasi-Unterlagen-Archivs im Bundesarchiv. Analyse und Dokumente, 61.)
Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2025. 217 p.
This review of Geheimdienste, Politik und Krisen im Kalten Krieg (2025) argues that the archives of the Stasi, CIA, and BND intelligence agencies were central and influential decision-makers rather than peripheral actors in Cold War history. The book demonstrates that intelligence reports contained heavily constructed and filtered information that shaped policy, while it challenges previous narratives regarding the 1953 East German uprising and Western intelligence strategies. The work underscores the importance of rigorous source criticism and demonstrates that intelligence files are political and manipulated documents rather than sources of the objective truth, thus reinforcing that intelligence records must be analysed alongside traditional diplomatic sources.