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An Inconvenient Past: Post-Communist Holocaust Memorializationl

Jeffrey Blutinger California State University at Long Beach This article examines the difficulties faced by three Eastern European countries in commemorating the Holocaust in the post-Communist era. Since 1989, many of these countries have sought to fashion new national identities by looking to their pre-Communist past. In the case of Slovakia and Hungary however, their pre-Communist predecessors were Nazi allies, and while Poland never collaborated with Nazi Germany, the Home Army had a difficult and complicated relationship with Jews and Jewish underground organizations. I identify three basic approaches taken by these countries' memorials regarding the fate of their Jewish communities during the war: aphasia (an unwillingness to speak about the Holocaust),"deflective negationism" (shifting blame to others), and finally, an open examination of the Holocaust. In February 1999, just months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, members of the local Association of Home Army Soldiers in Krakow decided to liberate their own past. They entered what had been the Lenin Museum, removed all the displays on Lenin and the October Revolution, and set up their own exhibit on the Armia Krajova,the Home Army. Forty-five years after their heroic struggle for Polish independence was crushed by the combined forces of Hitler and Stalin, and after decades of official propaganda describing the Home

'An early and abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the WesternJewish Studies Association conference at Loyola Marymount University inLos Angeles in April 2008. Vol. 29, No. I * 2010

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Army as a reactionary and oppressive force, a museum dedicated to the leading Polish World War II resistance movement was finally opened in Poland. "Theformer soldiers who created these exhibits were not trained in historiography or theories of commemoration; they simply wanted to recover a past that had been officially forgotten and to celebrate a national rebirth by remembering their great struggle. The question they faced was which parts of the national past should be remembered and which should be forgotten. Specifically: to what extent should the Holocaust, and the role of Poles and the Home Army in the Holocaust, be included in the museum's exhibits? The problems faced by these former Polish Home Army soldiers were not unique; across Eastern Europe, the new governments that emerged in the years following 1989 faced the difficult task of creating new post-Communist national identities. As with the creators of the Home Army Museum in Krakow, many countries looked back to the pre-Communist states that existed before Soviet occupation as a potential source of a renewed national identity. But as with the Krakow museum, this attempt to restore a national self through identification with the historical past raised serious problems regarding memorialization of the Holocaust. This is because any discussion of the Holocaust often raises difficult questions of how the pre-Communist state treated their Jewish citizens before, durin& and even after the war years. In many cases, the pre-Communist predecessors were Nazi allies who actively collaborated in the spoliation, enslavement, deportation, and murder of their Jewish population. Thus, attempts to memorialize the Holocaust call into serious question the moral fitness of these pre-Communist states to serve as models for their new post-Communist successors. As a result, how a country chooses to memorialize (or forget) the Holocaust says as much, if not more, about how the organizers of the museum or memorial see their national present as it does about how they remember their national past. One of the reasons that this problem has only emerged since 1989 is that under Communist rule, the Soviet Union was typically depicted as the primary victim of Nazi aggression, and those imprisoned, tortured, and murdered in the concentration camp system were usually described as opponents of fascism, and rarely, if ever, as Jews. Two examples, one from Poland, the other from East Germany, should suffice. In 1964, the Polish government erected a memorial on the site of the Plaszow Slave Labor Camp. The camp had been placed on top of the Krakow Jewish cemetery, and while some Polish Catholics were imprisoned there, most of the inmates were Jews. The monument has five enormous abstract figures carved from stone, their heads bowed from the burdens of enslavement, and a large horizontal crack partially severing their Journalof Jewish Studies Shofar * An Interdisciplinary

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upper bodies. The text on the reverse side refers to the 'martyrs murdered in the Hitlerite genocide in the years 1943-45, eliding the fact that most of those murdered there were Jewish. The omission or minimalization of the Jewish victims was typical of Polish Communist-era memorials; one can find similar examples at other Holocaust sites, such as the original memorials set up at Auschwitz-Birkenau and BeIzec.' Since 1989, many of these Communist-era monuments in Poland have been amended or replaced. In Plaszow, however, the original memorial stilf stands but has now been supplemented by a smaller, tombstone-shaped plinth, set up by the local Krakow Jewish community. In Polish on one side and Hebrew on the other, its text states
Here in this place, in the years 1943-1945, several tens of thousands of Jews were brought from Poland and Hungary, and were tortured, exterminated, and incinerated. We do not know the names of the murdered. We shall name them with one word:JEWS. Here in this place, an exceedingly horrible crime was committed. The human tongue does not know the words to describe the hideousness of this crime, its incredible bestiality, ruthlessness, and cruelty. We shall name it with one word: HITLERISM. In memory of the murdered, whose final scream of despair is the silence of this Plaszow cemetery, we pay homage, the survivors of this fascist pogrom, the JEWS.3

The use of large, all-caps lettering for the word "Jews" constitutes an angry rejoinder to the enforced silence embodied in its larger, but more ambiguous neighbor.

"The original text at Auschwitz-Birkenau stated, "Four million people suffered and died here at the hands of the Nazi murderers between the years 1940 and 1945* (James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: HolocaustMemorials and Meaning [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993], p. 141). The original text at Belzec stated,"In memory of the victims of Hitler's terror murdered from 1942 to 1943* (Susanne Bleiberg Seperson,'Institutionalization of Memory: From BeIzec to a Paradigm' paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 10 August 2006, online PDF, 2008-06-27 ht://www.allacademic.com/meta/pl04540 index.html). 3 Observed by the author in July 2006. It is not dear when the smaller, more Jewishly specific monument was first erected. Sam Offen, a survivor of Ptasz6w, described what appears to be an earlier version of the text of the monument when he visited the site in 1985. The version standing at that time does not appear to have included the large, all-cap lettering for "Jews" and"Hitlerism" (Sam Offen, Wben Hope Prevails:71e PersonalTriumph of a Holocaust Survivor (Livonia: First Page Publications, 2005], p. 94).
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T"he monument erected by the East German government in 1961 at the Sachsenhausen Concentration camp represents a slightly different way memory of the Holocaust was suppressed under Communism. The Nazis opened Sachsenhausen in 1936, and at the beginning&most of the inmates were either political opponents of the regime, gay men, the 'asocial" or JehovahVs witnesses. After the November pogrom of 1938, large numbers of Jews were also sent to the camp, and during the war, tens of thousands of Russian POWs were imprisoned there. In 1961, the East German government erected a monument at the camp that celebrated the role of the Soviet army in liberating the camps and defeating Nazism. As on many other memorials from this period, victim groups were listed, not according to the reasons for their imprisonment, but rather by their countries of origin, thereby omitting Jews from the ist.4 In front of the memorial, the government placed a statue of a Soviet soldier liberating imprisoned freedom fighters, depicting "the victory over fascism." In fact, the original design of the statue was rejected because it depicted the liberated prisoners too realistically-1as some sort of wretched figures"-instead of the resistance fighters the commitree requested, and the artist was asked to make the prisoners not appear so weak and helpless.' As of 2007, the original Communist-era memorial still stands unchanged, but the audio tour provided by the museum counters its silences by analyzing its history and omissions. With the end of Communism, the new states that emerged were free to create more inclusive memorials and museums. But the ability to create new, more historically accurate accounts did not mean that such memorials were actually built An examination of memorial sites in Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary reveals three basic approaches taken by governments since 1989 to address their war-time Jewish pasts: aphasia (either a total or partial unwill-

For other examples of what has been referred to as"organized forgettingj by Commu-

nist governments, see Michael Shafir, "Between Denial and 'Comparative Trivializatiori:

Holocaust Negation in Post-Communist East Central Europe,' in Randolph L. Braham,

ed., 7be Treatmentof the Hoocaustin Hungaryand Romania Duringthe Post.CommunistEra

(New YorkL Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 4 5- 54 .

5 Letter from Rudi Wunderlich (1958), one of the organizers of the Sachsenhausen Memorial committee, quoted in Uhrike Kopp, "Die Projektierung der Gedenksatte

Sachsenhausen und die Diskussionen im Wissenschafrlich-Krinstlerischen Beirat beim

Ministerium ffir Kulur," in Gainter Morsch, ed., Von der Erinnerung zum Monument: Die

Enstebungsga d)ick der Nationaken Malm- und Gedenkstftte Sacbsenbausen (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1996), p. 225. 6Kopp,'Die Projektierung der Gedenkstirte Sachsenhausen," p.22 5.
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ingness to speak about the Holocaust); deflective negationism77 (Le., negating the Holocaust, either by shifting blame to others or by trivializing it); and finally, an open examination of the Holocaust and the role that the local population played in it. As we shall see, in many Eastern European countries there has been a shift over time from the aphasic approach to a greater willingness to confront the past directly. 1.Aphasia After the events of the fall of 1989, few Eastern European countries were prepared to face the difficult parts of their national pasts. Instead, memories that had been deeply repressed by Communist rule finally f6und their voice. For example, in Poland, despite its valiant role in fighting Nazi occupation, there were no official monuments, memorials, or museums to the Home Army. For decades, Polish textbooks had derided the Home Army in favor of the much smaller, and more pro-Soviet, People's Army (the Armia Ludoua). The first museum to the Home Army was rather ad boc- in February 1990, members of the local Association of Home Army soldiers entered what was then the Lenin Museum in Krakow, removed all the displays of Lenin and the October Revolution, and set up their own exhibits on the Home Army. In 1992, after the building housing this collection was returned to its original owners, the museum was moved to the former staff quarters of the Austrian army where it remains to this day, becoming a municipal museum of the city of Krakow in 1997.8 As one might expect, the museum is totally devoted to the history, structure, achievements, and fate of the Home Army, with exhibits on weaponry training, leadership, and publications. There are large displays on the organization of the Home Army, its resistance work, and its efforts to rally the Polish people against Nazi occupation. Yet despite its complete focus on the Second World War in Poland and the struggle against Nazism, there is virtually no mention ofJews in the entire museum. Not only does the museum not deal with the relationship between the Polish underground and the Jewish underground during the war, the museum even ignores the positive work of the Home Army. In fact, even the presence ofJews in Poland during the war is only hinted at twice in the museum. The first is a display containing a diagram of the vari-

7Shafir,'Between "

Denial and 'Comparative TrivializationrC pp. 63-94. 'Observed by the author on a visit to the museum inJuly 2007.
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ous badges worn by prisoners in Nazi concentration camps that includes the Star of David. The second are the various maps showing the stages of the Warsaw 'Rising of 1944," which indicate the 'ruins of the ghetto," by blanking out streets destroyed in the ghetto uprising of 1943.V Other than these two oblique references, the museum displays complete aphasia regarding the genocide of the Jews that the Nazis carried out in Poland. Instead, the museum focuses particularly on the Soviet role in Polish suffering during the war. For example, there is a special exhibit on the KatyA massacres of 1940, when thousands of Polish Army POWs were killed by Soviet forces. It also contains a special exhibit on the Warsaw'Rising of 1944, where Soviet forces stood by and allowed the Germans to raze Warsaw to the ground. Both events, so critical to the Polish experience of the Second World War, were either completely or partially suppressed by the Polish Communist government. This museum constitutes one of the first efforts to counter these decades of silence, so one should not be surprised that it omits discussion of difficult topics, such as the role of some Polish partisan groups in killing Polish Jews. If the Home Army Museum in Krakow is an example of complete aphasia, the Museum of Jewish Culture in Bratislava, Slovakia, displays partial aphasia. Located in the former Jewish district, it is the frequent destination both for school groups and for foreign tourists who visit Slovakiais capital. It includes material on the history of the Jews of Slovakia, various Jewish religious and cultural items returned to Slovakia from the Jewish Museum in Prague, a display on Jewish publishin& and exhibits on both the Jewish life cycle and the yearly holiday cycle. In addition to the interior of a synagogue, the museum also has a small Holocaust memorial, featuring prominent Slovakian rabbis who were murdered. The museum's description of the Holocaust, however, is extremely brief. According to the text displayed in the museum, the antisemitism that swept through the region in the 1930s was the result of 'national tensions between Czechs and Slovaks: After the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939, 'the Slovak state emerged under the tutelage of Berlin," and this led to the destruction ofJewish life in Slovakia. The next sentence indicates that most of the few Jews who survived left the country by 1949.1' The aphasia

'The revolt of 1944 is referred to as the'Warsaw 'Rising' to avoid confusion with the

more well-known Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.

0 " Observed by the author on a visit to the museum in 2007.

"Observed by the author on a visit to the museum in 2007. Journalof Jewish Studies Shofar * An Interdisciplinary

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here is the complete omission of any discussion of bow and why Slovakian Jews died. In fact, the war-time Slovakian state was led Father Jozef Tiso, his fascist Slovak Peoplis Party, and his paramilitary Hlinka Guards. The Slovak People's Party was strongly fascist and antisemitic. Upon coming to power, Tiso stated that he looked forward to the day when 'Jewishness is finally excluded from our national ife, since it has always been a corrupting element in Slovakia and the most important vehicle of Marxist and liberalistic ideas." 2 Tiso6s policy of 'Slovakia for the Slovaks" ultimately led to the expulsion of Czechs, 3 Roma, and Jews from Slovak territory." The Slovakian legislature adopted anti-Jewish laws modeled on Nazi legislation; in 1942, it passed a law requiring the deportation ofJews from Slovakia and paid the Nazis 500 RM for each Jew to cover their expenses in shipping them to the death camps. Out of the 89,000 Jews in Slovakia in 1942, fewer than 17,000 survived to liberation. What is striking is that despite the omission of this history from its exhibits, the museum's director, Dr. Pavol Meg&n, has been one of the leading figures in Slovakia fighting for a more open discussion of Slovakiads past and its role in the Holocaust. In 2000, he wrote a comprehensive study of antisemitism in Slovakian politics since the end of Communism, which he published with the financial support of the Slovak Ministry of Culture.' 4 In 2004, he reorganized the exhibit in Auschwitz on Slovakia's Jews, and in 2006, he sponsored a special month-long exhibit on the Slovakian anti-Jewish laws in the Museum of Jewish Culture in Bratislava." In September 2005, the Museum ofJewish Culture opened a new museum in a restored synagogue in the town of Nitra, focusing specifically on the Holocaust in Slovakia.16 Given Megian's strong activism against Holocaust denial in Slovakia, the partial aphasia displayed in his museum is even more curious. The forerunner of the museum was founded in 1991 in what was still Czechoslovakia, as a

2 1Quoted in Pavol Melfan, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics (1989-1999), trans. Martin R. Ward and Jo Eliot (Bratislava: Museum ofJewish Culture and Tel-Aviv University, 2000), p. 30. "Melian, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics,p. 31. "MMelan, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics.

"sSrephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, "Slovakda 2001-2: in Annual Report (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, 2003);"Around Slovakia,* The Slovak Spectator,VoL 15 (September 2006). "6"Slovaida Gets its First Permanent Holocaust Exhibition: AP Worldwide, 9 September 2005.

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Department of Jewish Culture within the Historical Museum of the Slovak National Museum. The current museum opened in 1993, the year Slovakia separated from the Czech Republic, and,the following year it became an independent specialized museum affiliated with the Slovak National Museum."7 In response to my query if there had been any political pressure on the museum not to go into detail about how and why Slovakian Jews died in the Holocaust, Mei&ran's assistant wrote the following: I asked Dr. Meftan whether there was a political pressure on our museum in this regard. He answered that our permanent exhibition in Bratislava regarding Tisols government is limited to Jewish laws (signed by (President Jozef] Tiso, (Prime Minister Vojtech] Tuka, and [Hlinka Guard Commander Alexander] Mach) due to an intention to describe history of SlovakJewry in general (including every important part such as Jewish life, religion and the memory of holocaust), not to go in details on each specific chapter. However, the holocaust has

an important place in our museum, and it isbeing described in detail (including

Tiso's role and criticism ofhis politics towards Jews) in our exhibition in Nitra

synagogue dedicated specifically to holocaust.'s While this is a clear denial from Melin of any political pressure on him to suppress references to Tiso and his fascist state, the argument that it does not matter that the Bratislava museum omits these details since they are covered in the Nitra museum is rather problematic. The Nitra museum was only opened eleven years (and a change of government) after the Bratislava museum. While the Nitra museum represents a welcome supplement, it is hard to believe that when the Bratislava museum was opened, the museumds designers could have expected that visitors would be able to get the missing information there. Even today, the aphasic display is located in the capital city and is often visited by tourists, while the new Holocaust museum is in Nitra, a small city located an hour and a half away by train, and much less seen by visitors to Slovakia. The key factor here appears to be the change in the political situation in Slovakia between the time when the Bratislava museum opened and when the Nitra museum opened, with the turning point being 1998, when the rightwing government that came to power in 1993 was replaced with a more moderate government.

'VE-mail from Michal Vanek, Museum of Jewish Culture to Dr. Jeffrey Blutinger, dated 17 March 2008.
"E-mail from Michal Vanek, Museum of Jewish Culture to Dr. Jeffrey Blutinger,

dated 7 April 2008. Journalof Jewish Studies Shofar * An Interdisciplinary

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At the time when the Bratislava museum exhibit was prepared, there was a concerted campaign in Slovakia to rehabilitate Father Tiso and the first Slovakian Republic. In July 1990, members of the far right-wing Slovak People's Party (which took its name from the same fascist party that had governed war-time Slovakia), along with the support of the leadership council of the Christian Democratic Movement, put up a plaque honoring Tiso on the walls of the teachersd college he had founded. However, after widespread protests, the plaque was first covered and then removed. 1 The following year, support" ers of Tiso installed a commemorative plaque on the home in which he was born. The inscription compared him to Svatopluk, a ninth-century prince who established a small empire in what would eventually become Slovakia, and who is seen by some Slovak nationalists as the putative father of the country.20 Although Vaclav Havel, the president of what was still Czechoslovakia, objected to the honoring of a war criminal, the Slovak prime minister thought that Tiso's war-time actions required"further study," daiming that Tiso"served as a brake against greater Germanization."2' In April 1997, CardinalJan Chryzostom Korec led a memorial service for Tiso on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, and a few months later a statue of Tiso was unveiled in Cajakovce.22 This whitewashing of the war-time past was not limited to a few plaques; several Slovak scholars tried to repackage Slovakian history to dear Tiso and the Slovak state. At a conference on Tiso in 1992, several participants argued, contrary to the historical evidence, that Tiso was not guilty of organizing the mass murder of Slovakian Jews through deportation to the death camps, that in fact he tried to rescue Slovakian Jews, and that the main guilt for the extermination should fall on the Nazis and Tisols prime minister, Vojtech Tuka.2 One of the participants in this conference, Milan Stanislav 1burica, later wrote the textbook on Slovakian history for use in elementary schools. Entitled Sloyak Historyfor Slovaks, the book idealized the Tiso state and was published with the support of the Slovak Education Ministry in late 1996.24 The book

""Plaque to Fascist Unnerves Slovaks, New York Times, 22 July 1990, p. L9. "2'Henry Kamm,'War Criminal Gets Slovak Memorial,' New York Times, 3 December 1991, p. A5. 21 Kamm,"War Criminal Gets Slovak Memorial," p.A5. n'Jews Criticize Cardinal For Serving Mass For World War 11 Criminal" CTK News Agency, Prague, 25 April 1997 (BBC Summary of World Broadcasts). 2Meian, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics,pp. 80-89. 'Jews Angry at Ruling Movement's Approval of Book Idealizing Pro-Nazi War
State," CTK News Agency, Prague, 19 June 1997 (BBC Summary of World Broadcasts).

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blamed the deportation and massacre of SlovakianJews on Tisds deputies and 5 emphasized the positive aspects of the fascist state.25 According to b urica, "Dr.JozefTiso decided to solve the Jewish question in conformity with Christian moral principles," and claimed that conditions in Jewish labor camps were "dose to the normal living conditions of the Slovak people."2 In May 1995, members of the Slovak parliament debated whether the war-time state was actually fascist. Jozef Prokes, a member of the Slovak National Party, which was one of the three parties that made up the governing coalition, argued that "a state cannot be fascist. It is the same as a house; a house cannot be fascist." Several Slovakian Catholic officials supported the effort to rehabilitate Tiso and the Slovak state, arguing that Tiso only did what he did because he was pressured. In 1997, the Slovak National Party appealed to Slovaks to'honor the memory" ofTiso, and described him asla great son of the church and the nation:2 MAs official support for the rehabilitation of Tiso only came to an end after the elections of 1998. While far-right groups continue to agitate on behalf of Tiso and his fascist state, the political situation has significantly changed. b)urica's textbook was withdrawn from'Slovakian schools, and the Education Ministry strongly supported teaching about the Holocaust in Slovakia."' In 2000, the new Slovakian president, Rudolf Shuster, participated in the Stockholm Forum on the Holocaust and then later traveled to Israel and visited Yad Vashem, partly in response to the efforts by fascist groups to put up plaques in Tis's honor. Shuster also helped enact a law declaring September 9, the day in 1941 when war-time Slovakia adopted its anti-Jewish laws, to be a memorial day to victims of the Holocaust and racist violence." In 2005, Slovakia be-

"sPeter Smith, "Disputes Over How to Treat Nazi Regime Still Haunt Slovak Schools: Prague Past, 10 February 1999. 2Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, "Slovakia: Annual Report (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, 1998). -'7imeaSpickova,"Father Tisds Rehabilitation Sparks Slovak Dispute,' Prague Post, 10 May 1995. 2'Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, "Slovakia," Ann,ua Report (1998). "2Smith, "Disputes Over How to Teach Nazi Regime Still Haunt Slovak Schools," PraguePost, 10 February 1999. "3StephenRoth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, "Slovakia 2000-1" Annual Report (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, 2001).

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came a member of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. 1 Similarly, after the elections of the 1998, Meiian became much more active in combating antisemitism and Holocaust denial in Slovakia. With government support, Me1tan not only published his book on antisemitism in post-Communist Slovakia, but as mentioned above, organized a series of new museum exhibits on the Holocaust in Slovakia, including the new Holocaust museum in Nitra, as well as reorganizing the Slovakian pavilion in Auschwitz. Thus, it appears that the partial aphasia displayed in Museum of Jewish Culture in Bratislava is simply a vestige from the difficult political climate that existed in Slovakia in the early 1990s when the museum opened. 2. Deflecting Negationism If the early response of many post-Communist governments was aphasic, the next one was to deflect blame away from the war-era government on to others, either the Germans or a"fringe,' or to trivialize the Holocaust. We already saw an example of this type of deflection in lburica's Slovakian textbook mentioned earlier. The House of Terror Museum in Budapest, however, displays all three of these techniques. Opened in early 2002, on the site of first the headquarters of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross party and then the headquarters of the Communist government's secret police, the museum at first seems to give equal weight to both. The entry way features identically sized symbols of the Arrow Cross and the Hungarian Communist Party and the promotional materials for the museum feature both images equally. In fact, the Holocaust is only mentioned in two and a half rooms in the four-story museum, and then only in passing. The opening room, labeled "Double Occupation, recounts the various calamities that befell Hungary after the end of the First World War: the"tragedy of Trianon7 the 1920 treaty under which Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory; the heavy losses suffered on Hungarian soldiers during their participation in the invasion of the Soviet Union (which was sparked, the museum alleges, by bombings by the Soviet air force); the murder of the Jews of Hungary; and the occupation of Hungary by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1944.32 Admiral Mild6s Horthy, the leader of Hungary from 1919 Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, "Slovakia 2006,7 Annual Report (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, 2007). 3 1Ahile almost all the museum's displays are in Hungarian only, the House of Terror Museum provides a handout with an English translation of the principal text at the enVol. 29, No.I * 2010
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until October 1944, is presented as a noble figure who sought to safeguard Hungary from the twin threats of Hider and Stalin and recover the territories it had lost at Versailles. Blame for the persecution and murder of Hungarian Jews is deflected away from Horthy and the Hungarian state and on to the Germans and a local"fringe" element: the Arrow Cross fascist party. "Themuseumns description of the Holocaust in Hungary is limited to a few paragraphs. The most complete is in the first room of the museum:
After the Germans occupied Hungary the National Socialist'regulation of the Jewish question, the "final solution' took its course with the active co-operation of the Hungarian authorities. The Jews, who had already suffered from the restrictions of the Jewish Laws enacted in 1938, 1939, and 1941, were now in direct peril of their lives. Measure after measure-time-tested all over Europe by"experts, members of the infamous Judenkommando-succeeded each other with lightening speed. The decree ordering Jews to wear the yellow star was followed by the worst possible scenario: on May 15, 1944 the dreaded deportation trains began to roll. Within two months 437,402 Jews from country regions were transported to Labour-iLe. death-camps under the jurisdiction of the Third Reich."

From the museum's text, one might mistakenly conclude that the murder of
Hungarian Jews began only with the Nazi occupation of 1944. In fact, over

40,000 Hungarian Jews had already died at the hands of the Hungarian government as members of slave labor battalions sent to the Eastern front. In addition to the anti-Jewish measures referred to in the text but never defined (they were modeled on the Nazi Nuremberg Laws), the Horthy government stripped Jews of their rights and seized Jewish men for slave labor. As we shall see in greater detail below, the deportation of Hungarian Jews to AuschwitzBirkenau was coordinated and managed by the Hungarian government. The second room, reallyjust a short corridor connecting two larger rooms, is called "Passage of Hungarian Nazis,: which simply states that the new government that came to power in March 1944 "handed over the countryside's Jewish population to the Nazi's murderous racial hatred. The majority was deported to Auschwitz. Almost all of them perished"M The bulk of the text in

trance to almost every room in the museum. The texts quoted here are from the handouts distributed by the museum to visitors in June 2007. ""Double Occupation:" handout provided by the House of Terror Museum, Terror HzL, Budapest, June 2007. 'Passage of Hungarian Nazis," handout provided by the House of Terror Museum, Terror HIA, Budapest, June 2007.

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this room is devoted to the struggle for control of Hungary in the summer and fall of 1944, and the Nazi-instigated coup by the Arrow Cross that deposed Horthy in October 1944. The last reference to the Holocaust is in the third room, labeled'Hungarian Nazis:. This is the only room of the museum devoted to the four-month reign of the Arrow Cross. The room itself designed to look like a conference room and a speech given by Ferenc Szilasi, the head of the Arrow Cross, plays in the background. As SzAlasi's speech is in Hungarian only and no translation is provided, one might think it is an example of his antisemitic or fascist beliefs. In fact, in the speech he is calling for a patriotic defense of Budapest against Soviet forces. 35 Most of the text provided to museum visitors concerns the government and actions of the Arrow Cross, but one paragraph describes Eichmann's activities in Budapest after the Arrow Cross takeover in October 1944, as well as the establishment of the Budapest ghetto and vague references to shootings and lootings prior to the defeat of the Arrow Cross by Soviet forces (pointedly not using the term "liberation7). The remaining sixteen rooms of the museum are devoted to the sufferings of Hungary under Communist rule, this despite the fact that at a minimum, twice as many Hungarians were killed by the Arrow Cross than by Hungarian Communists or Soviet forces between 1949 and 1956.36 In fact, in the fifth room of the museum,"Changing Clothes," the museum shows videos of actors changing out of their"Arrow Cross" uniforms and putting on the clothes of the Hungarian Communist Party essentially arguing that the former was merely prequel to the latter.

"NMichael Shafir,"Hungarian Politics and the Post-1989 Legacy ofthe Holocaust," in Randolph L. Braham and Brewster S. Chamberlin, eds., The Holocaust in Hungary: Sixty Years Later(New York: Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center of the
City University of New York, 2006), p. 277. 36 "An estimated 45,000 to 60,000 Jews were killed in Hungary prior to the German

occupation of 1944. Between April and July 1944, some 437,000 Jews were deported to
Auschwitz-Birkenau. Another 20,000 Jews, in addition to many Hungarian Christians,

were killed by the Arrow Cross between October 1944 and January 1945. By contrast, the Hungarian Communists killed about 3,000 people, with perhaps another 9,000 to 10,000 who died indirectly because of Communist rule (Braham, "Hungary and the Holocaust. The Nationalist Drive to Whitewash the Past," in Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Treatment of the Holocaustin Hungaryand Romania Duringthe Post-CommunistEra (New York. Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2004), pp. 27-28, n 3, p. 31, n. 31). Vol. 29, No. 1 * 2010

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And this is perhaps, one of the most troubling aspects of the museum: its comparative trivialization of the Holocaust. This trivialization was not accidental; it underlay the history of this museum and its leadership. In 1998, the center-right FIDESZ party won the parliamentary elections, and its leader, Viktor Orbin, became prime minister. According to Orbin, his model for how to lead Hungary was Pil Teleki, who had been prime minister during the interwar period.17 In addition to pursuing a policy of trying to recover Hungarian territory lost at the Trianon, Teleki also introduced the first numerus clauses in post-war Europe in 1920, helped draft the First Anti-Jewish Law of 1938-39, and then significantly tightened the definition of Jew during his second stint as prime minister between 1939 and 1941. As in Slovakia, there has been a concerted effort in Hungary to rehabilitate the country's war-time leadership. The reburial of Imrte Nagy in 1989 was followed by the reburial of Admirial Horthy in 1993.' Upon becoming prime minister in 1998, Orbin began a policy of reconstructing Hungary's historical past. He began with the Hungarian pavilion at Auschwitz, which dated from the Communist era. The existing plans to update the pavilion were scrapped in favor of a more radical reworking. Outside experts brought in to review the proposed changes, however, unanimously rejected them on the grounds that the text of the new pavilion
(a) basically falsified the history of the Jews in Hungary in general and the Holocaust era in particular and (b) appeared to have a political objective: the rehabilitation of the Horthy era by transferring almost all responsibility for whatever crimes were committed in Hungary almost exclusively to the Nazis."

In addition, the exhibit downplayed Hungarian antisemitism in favor of more positive depictions of cultural symbiosis, and it referred to the antisemitic laws of the interwar period as part of the European "Zeitgeist."The Ministry of Cultural Heritage was forced to shelve these plans after the criticism of them became public.' One member of the Auschwitz planning committee who continued to work on this subject was Miria Schmidt, Orbln1s chief counselor. After the scandal broke about the proposed revisions to the Auschwitz pavilion, Schmidt gave a speech to a right-wing political party in which she said that

37

Shafir,"Hungarian Politics," p. 259.

"Shaflr,'Hungarian Politics," p. 264. 3 "Randolph L. Braham,"Hungary and the Holocaust:' p. 11. 4OYehuda Lahav,"Weeks End: In the Spirit of the Zeitgeist," Ha'arez,7 January 2000.

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"World War II was not about the Jews or genocide" and said that the extermination or rescue of the Jews"was a secondary issue-we may even call it a marginal one-which did not feature among the war aims of either side in the conflict:' 4' Schmidt also argued that the term "holocaust" should apply not only to the extermination of the Jews during World War II, but also to the genocide committed by the Communists. 42 While the Orbin government had agreed to fund the creation of a Holocaust museum to be part of a reconstructed synagogue in Budapest, it instead focused its efforts on creating the House of Terror museum, Schmidt was made its general director, and it opened in February 2002, just prior to the parliamentary elections scheduled for April. The House of Terror museum is the fruition of the work that began on the Auschwitz pavilion project. Not only does this museum absolve the Hungarian state for the crimes of the Horthy regime, it even subtly whitewashes the Szilasi government as well Although the museum describes the Arrow Cross as Hungarian Nazis, the photographs of Ferenc SzAlasi, his deputy, and two other Arrow Cross officials, all of whom were executed for their involvement in the deportations and murder of Hungarian Jews, appear later in the museum as victims of Communist atrocities (this despite the fact that they were put to death prior to the 3 4
Communist takeover).

The House of Terror museum has been controversial from the beginning. In response to charges that the museum puts too much emphasis on the crimes of Communism and not enough on the Holocaust, Schmidt argued that in many countries, Communism claimed more victims than the Holocaust, and she condemned the lack of focus on Communist crimes.44 This was not a new position for her. At a conference in London, Schmidt was'shouted down" after she tried to prove that the post-war Communist government was more oppressive than the pro-Nazi government that oversaw the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 45 After the museum opened, Schmidt gave an interview to the InternationalHerald Tribune where

41 Lahav,"Week's

End: In the Spirit of the Zeitgeist," Ha4aretz; see also Stephen Roth

Annual Report (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University 2001); Shafir,'Hungarian Politics," p.27 5. 42 Shafir,'Hungarian Politics," p. 275. 43 Shafir,"Hungarian Politics," p. 277. "44Braham,"Hungaryand the Holocaust,' p.33, n. 40. 4 'Braham,'Hungary and the Holocaust," p.33, n. 39.
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she explained that the focus of the museum was accountability, but then only singled out the Communists for examination: "Finally, we can say this out loud: The Communist regime was inhuman. Finally we can teach children the truth."46 One of the reasons given by Schmidt for the lack of material on the Holocaust in the House of Terror museum was that"this will be the task of the future Holocaust museum.47 While the Orbin government originally agreed to open such a museum by early 2002, most of the funding for it was shifted to the House of Terror museum instead.4 As noted above, the House of Terror was part of the reelection strategy of the Orbin government. The construction of a new museum concerning the Holocaust in Hungary was taken up by the Socialist government that won the April 2002 elections. Unlike the House of Terror, which systematically negates the Holocaust through deflection and trivialization, this new museum confronts Hungary's difficult past directly. 3. Open Examination The new Holocaust Memorial Center, opened in Budapest in 2004,' marks a shift to a much more open examination of the persecution ofJews and Roma in Hungary before and during World War II, and seems designed as a conscious rebuttal to the House of Terror Museum across town. However, unlike the House of Terror, where signs are in Hungarian only, the Holocaust Memorial Center anticipates an international audience with signs in both Hungarian and English. The opening room of the museum describes the history of the Jews and Roma in Hungary. According to the museum, "the underlying theme of the exhibition is the relationship between the state and the citizen."50 This theme

6 "4Mhomas Fuller.'Stark History: Some See a Stunt: Memory Becomes Battleground in Budapestes House of Terror, International Herald Tribune, 2 August 2002. "Braham,'Hungary and the Holocaust" p. 13. "4Braham,"Hungary and the Holocaust, p. 12. 4 'While the memorial opened in April 2004, on the 60' anniversary of the ghettoization of Hungarian Jewry, the permanent exhibition did not open until February 2006 (Adam LeBor,"Holocaust Memorial Opens as Hungary Faces Up to Past: 7e Times [London], 13 April 2004; Liz Szabo,*Budapest's Holocaust Museum Offers Ethereal Journey; Experience is Moving and Haunting" USA Today, 21 April 2006, p. 8D). wLiszl6 Karsai, Gdbor K&UAr. and ZokAn Vigi, "Forward," in From Deprivation of Rbs to Genocide,Gy6rgy NovAi, trans. (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum-Holocaust Memorial Center, 2006), p. 5 .This book is a collection of the main texts and images displayed in the museum.

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is developed over the course of the exhibition through stories of nine diverse families and individuals. Some are Orthodox, others are assimilated; some live in the countryside, others in the city; and while most are Jewish, one is Roma. Various cultural items associated with Jews and Roma are displayed while 1 music from a wedding plays in the background." The second room, labeled "Deprived of Rights," chronicles the violence and persecution inflicted on Jews and Roma between 1920 and 1942 by the "right-wing, anti-Semitic, nationalist and anticommunist regime ... established under the leadership of Mikl6s Horthy:'" To reach the second room, the visitor walks down a darkly lit corridor, with the sound of marching soldiers. Just as one enters the second room and without any warning, the floor slants suddenly downward, throwing the visitor off balance, as if to illustrate the way Jews and Roma were thrown off balance by various discriminatory decrees enacted during the interwar period. The museum lays out the various anti-Jewish and anti-Roma laws adopted in the 1920s and'30s, including the forced military labor service adopted in 1939, that took Jewish men out of the Hungarian armed forces and sent them to forced labor companies, where over 40,000 died. From there, one moves to the third room, labeled"Deprived of Property." Here, the museum text explicitly describes the Hungarian government as "an accomplice in the greatest act of robbery in Hungarian history."3 After reviewing the early economic restrictions imposed by the Horthy regime, the museum focuses on the spoliation of Hungarian Jews after March 1944, and, in particular, on the role of individual Hungarians in robbing their fellow citizens."Gendarmes often plundered Jews at the railway station.... Hundreds of thousands of people applied forJewish property, while some simply broke into and ransacked the sealed homes of deportees:54 The museum expressly states that large segments of Hungarian society realized the benefits of economic discrimination and expropriation of the Hungarian Jewish community, even 5 before the German occupation." The fourth room, "Deprived of Freedom,"

1 "5 Based on the author's visits to the museum inJune 2006 and June 2007.
2

U LWszl6 Karsai, et aL,"Deprived

of Rights," in From Deprivation of Rights to Geno-

cide, p.11. "ULszl6 Karsai, et aL,"Deprived of Property" in From Deprivation of Rights to Genocide, p. 16. 4LWszl6 "U Karsai, et aL.,"Deprived of Property, p.20. S5 Liszl6 Karsai, et aL,"Deprived of Property," p. 18.
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examines the various policies that stripped Hungarian Jews and Roma of their dignity, and states unequivocally that"the collaboration of the [Hungarian] civil administration and law enforcement agencies was the engine of the Hungarian Holocaust."5 Simply put, the Germans could not have organized the ghettoization, expropriation, and deportation of Hungarian Jews without the active assistance of the Hungarian government. "During the spring and summer of 1944, the entire state apparatus of wartime Hungary, save the army-that is, from cabinet members down to the lowliest clerk of the smallest village-was actively engaged in organizing the despoliation and expulsion of Jews:s7 All this stands in direct contrast to the approach of the House of Terror, in which the economic persecution of Hungarian Jews is only hinted at, and all blame for their ghettoization and deportation is deflected to the Germans and their Arrow Cross supporters. Before covering the murder of Hungarian Jews and Roma, the museum's fifth room deals with their loss of dignity. This includes a discussion of the popular antisemitism of the 1930s, as well as the efforts of both national and local administrations to hunmiliareJews and Roma. For example, in one county, "the local branches of the Red Cross were forbidden to accept blood given by Jews since deputy prefect Liszl6 Endre considered Jewish blood as 'infected' and'filthy" Again, this museum takes pains to counter the effort to deflect blame onto the Germans or only a fringe element. The museum exhibition reaches its nadir in the sixth room, "Deprived of Life," which covers the murder of the Jews and Roma. In contrast to the House of Terror, the Holocaust Memorial Center describes how the murder of HungarianJews began well befiare 1944. This includes the killing of tens of thousands ofjewish men in Hungarian forced labor battalions and the deportation in 1941 of some 18,000 Jews from territories annexed by Hungary,who were sent to the Ukraine where they were shot on arrival. But the main phase of killing took place in a two-month span in the spring of 1944, when most of the Jews of Hungary were sent to Auschwitz. Unlike the House of Terror Museum, here the blame is shared by both the Germans and the Hungarians, with the text stating that"thanks to the effident collaboration of the Hungarian authorities, more than 437,000 Jews from the countryside were deported

"ULszI6 Karsai, et aL,"Deprived of Freedom: in From Deprivation of Rights to Genocide. p. 30. '7LIszI6 Karsai, et aV.oDeprived of Freedom:"p. 31.

"ULiszl6 Karsai, et aL,"Deprived of Human Dignity* in From Deprivation of Rights to

Genoide, p. 38.

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between May 15 and July 9 in the fastest deportation operation in the history of the Holocaust... ."9 This sort of open examination of Hungary's role in the Holocaust is a rebuttal to the deflecting negationism of the more popular

House of Terror Museum. The final two rooms of the museum, "Responses," and "Liberation and Calling to Account," continue the focus on the responsibility of the wider Hungarian society for the suffering ofJews and Roma during the Holocaust.
While"most of the majority society looked upon the sufferings of their compatriots with indifference,' the museum notes, "there were thousands who risked their lives trying to help."76 The text of the museum makes dear, how-

ever, that any rescue by individuals cannot be imputed to the wider society. So
while, for example,*there were many individuals within public administration,

law enforcement agencies and the army who stood up against inhumanity the
museum text first notes that'the public administrative apparatus as well as the gendarmerie and police did their best, often exceeding what was required of them, in the efforts first to deprive Jews of their rights and property, and then 6 to deport them." ' While standing in this last room, the visitor hears three sets of sounds. The first is the video of the liberation of inmates from the camps-the surviving remnant. The second is the sound of a Jewish wedding, which comes from the opening room of the museum (which is next to the final room), reminding the visitor of all that was lost during the Holocaust. The third is the distant echo of the melody of prayer, coming from the memorial room: the restored Pava street synagogue. There, above the ark, one can read the synagogue's original Hebrew inscription,"You will hear the plea of your servant and your people Israel," words that ring hollow in this context. Taken as a whole, the museum is designed to disturb and unsettle the visitor, from its uneven flooring to its discordant sounds, and particularly in its texts.62 Instead of comforting the visitor by shifting blame and guilt for the

'9Usz16 Karsai. et aL,"Deprived of LW" in From Deprivation offtbis to Genocde, p.46.

"61L1szl6Karsai, et aL,"Responses, in From Deprivation of Rigts to Genocide,p. 54.

6'LAszl6 Karsai, dt al.,"Liberadon and Calling to Account' From Deprivationof Rigbts to Genocide, p. 67. 2 6Balint Molnar, the Holocaust Memorial Center spokesman, said in an interview that the museum was designed in a way to be intentionallyjarring to the visitor: The Holocaust was an event with no reason, so we wanted the space to be discordant and uneasy" (Adam LeBor,"Holocaust Memorial Opens As Hungary Faces Up to Past, The Times [London], 13 April 2004). Vol. 29, No. 1 * 2010

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Holocaust onto either the Germans or a fringe, and then trivializing it through comparison with later oppression of the Communist period, the Holocaust Memorial Center openly examines the Hungarian past, stripping away the veneer left by those who would whitewash it. Another example of open examination is the new Museum of the Warsaw 'Rising. Opened in 2006, this museum commemorates the heroic fight of the Home Army to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany in August 1944, before Soviet forces could take over and impose a pro-Soviet government. After the Poles successfully pushed out German forces, an enraged Hider ordered Warsaw to be wiped off the map, and while the Soviet army sat and watched across the river, the Germans leveled Warsaw to the ground, killing as many as 200,000 civilians, and deporting another 700,000 from the city, many to camps. It took sixty years and the fall of Communism for a memorial to the city's destruction to be erected in Warsaw. Unlike the Home Army Museum in Krakow discussed earlier, the new Museum of the Warsaw 'Rising does not ignore the Holocaust; the persecution of Polish Jews, their ghettoization, the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto and the annihilation of Polish Jews in Nazi death camps are all covered in detail, with both texts and images.63 More significantly, however, the museum does not shy away from some of the more difficwlt aspects of Poland's war-time history regarding Jews. In contrast to the situation in Slovakia or Hungary, the Polish government and the Home Army did not collaborate with the Germans. Poland was under an extremely harsh military occupation, and Poles were subjected to a slow-moving genocide designed to reduce them to enslavement. However, the interactions between Jews and non-Jews in Poland during
the war has been the subject of intense and emotional debate, particularly the

charge of antisemitism in the Home Army. It is this very difficult subject that the museum addresses openly. In a section on Jews in the Warsaw 'Rising, a monitor displays an interview with Marek Edelman, the last surviving member of the Warsaw Ghetto's Jewish Fighting Organization, who describes (in Polish with English subtides) what happened when he and other Jews sought to join the Home Army during the 'Rising:

3 "'In its discussion of conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto, the museum states that the

Nazis executed anyone helpingJews, but despite this, "many brave Poles try to save Jews by offering them food and shelter." But the text then goes on to add that"unfortunately, there
are others who blackmailJews or hand them over to the Germanse (observed by the author

on visits to the museum in June 2006 and July 2007).

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On the first day, Jurek went outside and was stopped. What was he doing, a civilian with a gun, with forged ID papers, with black hair of a Jew? So they shot him in the courtyard. On the second day, Kaminski came and said"you're still here? Do you want to join the Rising?" and we said"yes."No,* he said,"you should go where you are welcome and not where you are not welcome. You should join a group that will take you.7 Where should we go? So we went to the People!s Army. They were small and weak, but the Communists welcomed us."

Edelman then described how Jews liberated from the camps in Warsaw were weak and frail, and were used to dear away unexploded shells, but no one would give them weapons."s In a pull-out drawer beneath the monitor with Edelman's account, the museum provides information on him for the visitor. It not only describes his combat in both the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and the Warsaw'Rising of 1944, it also recounts his experience in Poland after the war, noting that [h]e got persecuted under pressure from the waves of anti-Semitic purges 19671968. In spite of dismissal from work he continued his scientific activity. Since 1976 he is connected with the Workersi Reform Committee (KOR). Since 1980 he is a member of the board of the L6d&region'Solidarity." He is interned during the Martial Law.% The museum here is creating a series of interesting connections. On the one hand, the persecution of Edelman by the Polish government after the war parallels the persecution of Home Army members after the war. At the same time, through his continuing activism, Edelman's story links the Polish wartime resistance to the rise of the Solidarity movement. Most important, though, the inclusion of Edelmanrs critical testimony, in a museum organized around celebrating the Home Army and commemorating the terrible sacrifices of Poles in the destruction of Warsaw, is a sign of Polish self-confidence in being willing to examine unpleasant aspects of their own past. This museum is not afraid to admit that some Home Army members disliked Jews and opposed their participation in the'Rising&and that in at least in the case discussed by Edelman, Jews were killed by Polish participants in the'Rising, a remarkable inclusion in such a museum. Furthermore, unlike

"4Observed by the author on visits to the museum inJune 2006 and July 2007.
"An adjacent wall plaque, however, states that"Polish Jews who were saved from exter-

mination and hid in Warsaw join [sic) the Rising. A large number-among them insurgents
from the Warsaw Ghetto-join the Home Army" (observed by the author in July 2007).

"66Observedby the author in July 2007. All grammatical errors are in the original
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the Krakow Home Army Museum, which implicitly distinguishes the Jewish experience of the war in Poland as something foreign, other, and outside Polish history the Museum of the Warsaw'Rising presents the Polish Jewish past as an inextricable part of the wider Polish past.

"The former Home Army soldiers who set up the first museum in 1999 exemplify an early approach to how post-Communist societies have confronted or avoided the treatment ofJews in their countries during the Holocaust. Many Poles, Slovaks, and Hungarians looked back to pre-Communist national leaders and institutions as a source of a renewed national identity. As a result, in all three countries we find that early memorials and museums either avoid discussing the Holocaust or negate it by deflecting blame onto either the Germans or a 'fringe element, or through comparative trivialization with Communist oppression. Yet over time, there has been a marked movement towards greater openness and willingness to examine the war-time behavior of the preCommunist states. Whether it is in the new permanent Holocaust exhibition in Nitra, Siovakia, the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest, Hungary, or the Museum of the Warsaw 'Rising in Warsaw, Poland, these countries are beginning the process of confronting their difficult pasts. While this move is also, in part, tied to the relative decline in influence of right-wing nationalist parties (at least in Slovakia and Hungary), it does bode well for the future of Holocaust memorialization in Central Eastern Europe.

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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Author: Blutinger, Jeffrey Title: An Inconvenient Past: Post-Communist Holocaust Memorialization Source: Shofar 29 no1 Fall 2010 p. 73-94 ISSN: 0882-8539 Publisher: Purdue University Press 504 West State Street, Stewart Center, Room 370, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907

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