The New Past and Future

Short summary of articles
Summary 2005/3

³In remembrance of the victims shot into the Danube by the Hungarian
Arrow-Cross gunmen. Erected on 16. April, 2005.² This is the ³narrative²
next to the Holocaust memorial, unveiled for first time in a public place in
Hungary on the Day of the Holocaust. At last on an authentic place and in
authentic representation (iron shoes) the lean inscription next to the group
of statues (mutilated and desecrated since) might as well be true yet in
its context is a lie. If there were other Holocaust memorials in Hungary, if
one could remember the homicide that went on under the Arrow-Cross regime,
so this one may be suitable to the concrete way of events. But since there
is no such thing, this being the Holocaust memorial is either true or false.
The narrative of the group of statues narrows and names exactly the circle
of perpetrators (Arrow-Cross gunmen) but speaks of the victims only in
tautologies: martyrs, naming their place of origin as if it had anything to
do with the case. (We know of innumerable people not from the capital who
met their ends here.) If they did not try to violate Hungarian language by
tautology, but would pronounce who the victims were namely Jewish people
than the truth-content of the language would tell the real narrativeS that
it was the Hungarians who killed the Jews in the battle-line against the
Jews during the 2nd World War. When the Arrow-Cross had a chance to kill
Jewish people, the Hungarian Jews excepting those who lived in Budapest
were already deported to Auschwitz.
If only in this ³samizdat² publicity, yet it is our obligation to protest
against this distraction of history and of remembrance. The backbone of this
edition of ours gives an account of the catharsis of honest remembrance and
its being built into the culture from more fortunate areas of the world,
where the memory of Hungarian Jews is still kept alive. György Fehéri
converses with a man from Szilágysomlyó where no one ever heard of the
existence of the Auschwitz Album, on the occasion of the Berlin Holocaust
Memorial being built into the city and into memory as well. Rudolf Klein
analyses the new Yad Vashem Museum in the context of Israeli, Jewish history
and the history of architecture.
In his study entitled The Jewish Question of the Literary World Mihály
Hamburger discusses the non-acceptance of Jewish writers in the literary
arguments of the first third of the 20th century. This, unfortunately, is a
posthumous publication. This extraordinary person and intellect, whose
masterpiece unknown to us all dealt with the literary role of Jewish people
and their reception, died tragically young.
Other writings born in our native land and history give an account of the
early stages leading us Hungarian Jews and with it Hungarian history later
on to the Golgotha of the embankment of the Danube. A study of Miklós Konrád
under the title of Jewish Perception of Anti-Semitism in Hungary Before the
1st World War makes an end of the historical illusion according to which
there was an era when Hungarian Jews were accepted in Hungary.
Ernô Csekô comes to the same conclusion while analyzing a concrete case.
Adam János who arrived to Hungary in order to acquire Hungarian language and
suffered anti-semitic insults today faced similar bitter experiences. This
is what we learn from his excellent thesis.
The essay of György Konrád is dwelling on the subject of the problems of
Jewish identity after the political transformation of the regime, when the
problem strained again our world turned upside down.
The same topic is the subject of the interview with A. B. Yehoshua who
visited Múlt és Jövô a couple of weeks ago, when his newest novel The
Mission of the Personnel was published in Hungarian. The laudatory essay of
Ágnes Heller advanced a confidence to the warm friendship that was formed
between us while Yehoshua¹s visit. (All this was faithfully recorded for us
by the camera of András Mayer.)
The literary material of this issue has in store a brilliant satire for the
reader. The short story Reb Shmelke from 1862 was presumably written by
Adolf Ágai. Beside the short story of Zsolt Láng the issue contains the
poems of Géza Röhrig written in New York.
This year we are saying farewell to two great authors of Jewish literature.
Tom Teicholz remembers Arthur Miller while Alan Lelchuk writes of his
personal meetings with Saul Bellow.

Qty

Content

Géza Röhrig: 2, 12, 26, 38, 98

György Konrád: Diaspora

György Fehéri: I Owe my Life to Seven Miracles – One Photo of the Auschwitz-album Comes Alive

Rudolf Klein: The New Building of Yad Vashem. From the First Plan of 1942 to the Museum of 2005

János Adam: May 9, 2005 Anti-Semitism in Hungary

György Bence: In Memoriam Mihály Hamburger

Mihály Hamburger: The Jewish Question in the Literary World

Ernő Csekő: The Survival of the Irrational Forms of Anti-Jewishness in Connection with an Election Turned into Tragedy

Miklós Konrád: Jewish Perception of Anti-Semitism in Hungary Before the 1st World War

Adolf Ágai: Reb Smelke

Ágnes Heller: The Mission of the Personnel and Other Yehoshua-stories

János Kőbányai - A. B. Jehosua: On Way of Sentiments – out of the Mire

Tom Teicholz: Death of a Moralist

Zsolt Láng: Illegal Entry

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