The New Past and Future

Short summary of articles
We deliberately publish the last issue of 2004 at the beginning of the New Year. Since we dedicate the entire volume to the memory of the Hungarian Holocaust, we wish to emphasize with the gesture of the last issue the symbolic significance of two dates: the liberation of the ghetto of Budapest on 19 January 1944 and the freeing of Auschwitz on 19 January 1944. These two dates embody the end of the destruction of Hungary's Jewry.

Randolph Braham's article discusses the historical dimensions of the Auschwitz Album. As the most eminent social scientist of the Hungarian Holocaust, he assesses the historical message of these pictures which have been available in Hungary since 1963 and which were exhibited during the jubilee year, unfortunately, without context. Janos Kobanyai's part two of his "On the Land of Accomplices", which originally was written under the title "Items from the Hungarian Holocaust Museum" for the Board of Trustees of the Memorial Collection and Documentation Centre, exposes the hopelessness of expert leadership of the said institution. The author demands an open debate with the involvement of the entire Hungarian society and world experts. Kobanyai, in his other article, "The Gates of Auschwitz" reviews the special Holocaust editions of Historia (Nos. 1-2, 2004) and Rubicon (No.11, 2004). In these two journals, the elite of the Hungarian historical profession provide research results that may bring a fundamental turn to our knowledge of the Holocaust.

Gyorgy Valas, once a tenant of a Jewish children's refuge, does not recall the Christmas of 1944 as a celebration of the Christian spirit. Jozsef Koczo in his "Vamosmikola" erects a memorial to the history and the destruction of the Jewry of a village on the bank of the Ipoly River. His plea for forgiveness is as good as if the head of state would have announced it. Norbert Kerenyi's recollections about the last days in the life of Gyorgy Bihari and his student association most of whose members (with the notable exception of the well-known American politician Tom Lantos and the philosopher Agnes Heller) perished during the Holocaust. Lajos Erdelyi's report brings to life a little known but enlightening episode of the Hungarian Holocaust. He describes how following Romania's desertion of its Nazi allies, the Hungarian army occupied most of southern Transylvania and massacred the local Jewish population in a mere two weeks.
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The next part of the issue is preoccupied with the impact of the Holocaust. Katalin Fenyves characterizes the publications that appeared on the sixtieth anniversary of the Holocaust. Klara Szarka reviews the arts exhibition of the Hungarian Jewish Museum. The artist Andras Borocz presents his plans for a Budapest Holocaust memorial that he wishes to execute together with the architect Laszlo Rajk. Gyorgy Feheri's essay summarizes decades of debates about the Berlin Holocaust Memorial to be opened on 10 May 2005. Feheri also presents a Berlin railway station from where Jews were deported and where today stands a memorial for the victims. Zsoka Lendvai's report describes another deportation point, the Auspang railway station of Vienna, where the Viennese plan to erect a memorial. Our cover page shows the Budapest Jozsefvaros Railway Station. This was the true gate to Auschwitz, suggests Kobanyai, and adds that the museum of the Hungarian Holocaust should be located here rather than in the unsuitable Pava Street. Andrea Dunai's study deals with German compensation and Communist authorities and how the latter began the falsification of Holocaust history and the devaluation of compensation.

The literary contributions to our Holocaust anniversary volume are provided by Agnes Gergely and Itamar Jaosz Keszt's poems, the short stories of the Ida Fink, who writes in Polish but lives in Israel, and Judit Mezei, in whom we can welcome a new translator and critic of Paul Celan's works.

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Content

Ágnes Gergely: Elegy to a Mirror Image

Randolph L. Braham: The Photographer as Historian (About an Album)

György Válas: 26 Days

József Koczó: The Jewry of Vámosmikola

Lajs Erdélyi: Sármás, Arad, September 1944.

Norbert Kerényi: Gyuri Bihari

Ágnes Gergely: Mahler in the Temple; Hard Days in Florence

Ágnes Horváth: Remembering Béla Nagy Fekete, Who Saved Jews

Klára Szarka: The Deciphering of an Exhibition

Iátámár Jáoz-Keszt: Season in the Sand

András Böröcz: Transport

Zsóka Lendvai: Debate About A Viennese Holocaust Memorial

György Fehéri: The Seventeenth Track; A Memorial at the Berlin Grunewald Railway Station

György Fehéri: The Berlin Holocaust Memorial

János Kőbányai: On the Land of Accomplices Part 2.

Attila Veszelka: Why Ms Klein is so angry for the Hungarian Holocaust Museum?

Judit Mezei: The Motifs of Time and Place in Three Paul Celan Poems

Katalin Fenyves: The "Usefulness" of History

János Kőbányai: The Gates of Auschwitz; Hungarian Holocaust Narratives

Judit Gera: Judit Fenákel and Ágnes Gergely's The Reiterator

Ferenc Borsányi Schmidt: The Litteraria hebraica-judaica Exhibition at the University Library

Ida Fink: Ida Fink1s Short Stories: End, Zygmund, The Swept Away Garden. Jean-Christophe

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