The New Past and Future

Short summary of articles
The cover of our journal will carry the number 20, signifying our age, but we’ll leave the evaluation of our accomplishments during these years to others. We do not stand alone because everywhere that new traditions were initiated in Hungary the same anniversary is being celebrated, quietly and privately, not because that turning point was not irrevocably correct and legal, but because it did not bring changes that could fill us with hope. Although the Holocaust has begun to be studied seriously, we have not yet reached a catharsis of its almost hundred-year long seething volcano-like apocalypsis. We cannot yet take satisfaction in the feeling that our fate and that of the world has reached a comfortable stage, not for our generation nor for the coming one.
In this issue we commemorate our journal’s existence during these twenty years by once again placing emphasis on the work of those authors who have during these years reached the status of classics. We commemorate the memory of Mária Ember, who passed away ten years ago, along with the eightieth birthday of Imre Kertész. The works of these authors have become classic because they were able to gain their material– both in the poetic and ethical sense – from facing the apocalypsis that was the Holocaust.
Let this commemorative issue serve as witness to the passing of these twenty years, until the next round anniversary, or until another happier future turning point.
I have often heard that according to scholars of Polish Imre Kertész has had a far more serious reception in Poland than in Hungary. Perhaps the question is difficult to investigate but Maria Janion in her essay entitled „Even if I seem to be talking of something else entirely I am still talking about Auschwitz“ seems to support this view, as Imre Kertész himself agreed, much touched by reading the translation of Janion’s article in manuscript.
József Krupp’s review of Lászlo Földényi‘s „About Imre Kertész’s Dictionary“ introduces one of the most interesting Hungarian books about Kertész.
We remember here our unforgettable friend and author, Mária Ember, who passed away ten years ago, by publishing our last mutual e-mail correspondence. She used to say that at least one article in each issue of Múlt és Jövő should concern itself with the Holocaust. At that time we didn’t agree with her, but today we do all the more, when all over the world Holocaust denial is widespread and some would build a new world order on this lie.
In this issue we also present an author new to this journal. Louise O. Vasvári, as her name indicates, along with our other authors during these twenty years, was born in Hungary, although she was educated in emigration in other countries and languages. Today she is a professor in the United States but has taught in a number of universities, including at CEU and ELTE. This fall she will be a Fulbright Professor in ELTE and in Szeged. Her article, Translated Traumas, Translated Lives: Hungarian Women Holocaust Survivors in Emigration, deals with women’s experiences as distinct from those of men in the Holocaust, a topic which has only began to receive scholarly attention relatively recently. In this article Vasvari studies life writing texts by survivor women who, although they are Hungarian, wrote in emigration in a new language, the psychological significance of which Vasvári studies in some detail through both linguistic and literary analysis. These are authors who should be known to the Hungarian reading public, but unfortunately very few have been published in Hungarian (and this includes those who actually wrote in Hungarian but were only published in their host country’s language) and these few available memoirs are as yet without critical commentary.
Tamás Csapody has garnered considerable attention of late. It is, for example, his careful research that has brought to light that Miklós Radnóti’s murderer lies to this day in a decorated grave. It was on the basis of this important publication that we invited Csapody to write for Múlt és Jövő about Bor. In his monograph he investigates the fate of forced laborers in Bor through the portraits of now deceased survivors, thereby providing a very special Hungarian contribution to the history and character of the Holocaust.
Pál Várnai returns to his recurring theme: the history of the Jewry of Kiskunhalas and within it of that of his own family’s history. András László, who is a filmmaker in New York, presents the pre-Holocaust life in another Hungarian town, Pápa. Szilvia Peremiczky writes a critique of György Spiró’s very successful historical novel, Imprisoned.
András Szécsényi, who is employed at the Hungarian Holocaust Documentation Center, is also appearing for the first time in the pages of our journal with his article about the rescue of Jews in the film industry, entitled A gallant deed, an episode from the history of anti-Semitism from the 1930s.
With the title Family portraits we begin in this issue a new column, with the admission that the title was influenced by – but not copied from -- the column Family Affair in the weekend section of Haaretz. Our column, by Sara Zorándy, will deal in each issue with the history and the present of one Hungarian family. (The editors seek appropriate stories for this column.)
We open this issue with verses from two extraordinary but unjustly neglected poets whose work has appeared previously in the pages of this journal, Arnold Kiss and László Bródy. We also present two poets for the first time, the Turkish Ayhan Gökhan and Gusztáv Báger, as well as two poems by Paul Celan to Nelly Sachs in Judit Mezei’s translation.

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Content

Bródy, László: Moving House

Kiss, Arnold: By the Wailing Wall

Imre Kertész: A Muselman

Janion, Maria: “Even if I seem to be talking about something totally different, I am talking about Auschwitz”

József Krupp: “I don’t know how I know“

Mária Ember: Immortal conversation (last e-mail correspondence with Mária Ember)

Vasvári, Louise: Translated Traumas, Translated Lives: Hungarian Holocaust Women Survivors in Emigration

Celan, Paul: Two Poems

Csapody, Tamás: The Recollections of Istvan Morvay, Holocaust survivor. From Hódmezôvásárhely via Bor to Nordhausen

Gökhan, Ayhan: Poems by Ayhan Gökhan

Pál Várnai: Jews of Halas

László, András: Footnotes to History. An Autobiographical Episode

Ágnes Rapai: Poems by Rapai Ágnes

Báger, Gusztáv: Poems by Báger Gusztáv

Zorándy, Sára: Family Portrait

Peremiczky, Szilvia: György Spiro: Imprisoned

Szécsényi, András: A gallant deed. An episode in the history of antisemitism in the 1930s

Eszter Dallos: Observer

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