Plan To Open Another Holocaust Museum in Budapest Faces Criticism—From Jews
Many worry it will be window-dressing for politicians
who want to be seen remembering the Shoah but ignore today’s anti-Semitism
Holokauszt
Gyermekáldozatainak Emlékközpontja—Emlékhely. (F. Kovács Attila)
The Hungarian author György Konrád is
arguably one of the best-known child survivors of the Holocaust. By a stroke of
luck he narrowly avoided being deported to Auschwitz in 1944 along with the Jews of his
hometown, Berettyóújfalu, in eastern Hungary. He, his sister, and two cousins
survived the war in a Swiss-protected Budapest safe house. His parents, who had
been deported to Austria, also survived and were reunited with their children
in Berettyóújfalu after the war—the only Jewish family from the town to survive
intact.
Yet in mid-December, Konrád, now 81,
pointedly declined an invitation to take part in an advisory session for a new
$22 million state-sponsored Holocaust memorial museum and education center
focusing on child victims that is slated to open next spring. “It would be hard
to shake the feeling that the hasty organization of this exhibition is not
about the hundreds of thousands of children murdered 70 years ago, but rather
about the Hungarian government of today,” Konrád wrote in anopen letter to the museum’s director. “If the government wanted to devote such
a large sum to the memory of these children, then in the spirit of the
children’s spiritual heritage I would suggest they turn this amount over to
feeding the badly nourished, living Hungarian children of today.”
Konrád’s words reflected the powerful mix
of political, emotional, and ideological passions that the plans for the new
complex have ignited in this sharply polarized country since they were
announced in September by the nationalist Fidesz party government, headed by
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The new institution is to center mainly on the
experience of children during the Holocaust—but also on Hungarians who rescued
Jews. It will be located in the disused Józsefváros train station in Budapest’s
rundown Eighth District, once a teeming Jewish neighborhood, and will be called
“House of Fates,” a name that harks back to Nobel Prize-winning author Imre
Kertész’s novel Fatelessness, which narrates the experiences of a teenaged boy during the
Shoah.
Construction work began Dec. 17, and the
facility, which is to combine a permanent exhibit with an interactive learning
center and other services, is supposed to open in April 2014. It will be the
centerpiece of a nationwide effort to mark the 70th
anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary. Nearly 450,000 Hungarian Jews were
deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the spring of 1944. Later, after the
Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross seized power in October 1944, thousands of
Budapest Jews were shot dead into the Danube River, and tens of thousands more
were deported to other camps or sent on forced marches toward Austria.
The memorial year events, which include
hundreds of commemorations, synagogue restorations, and other projects around
the country are the latest in several steps taken by Orbán’s government aimed,
at least in part, to counter what it says is an unfair image of Hungary as a
racist, anti-Semitic country. In early October, for example, Deputy Prime
Minister Tibor Navracsics told an international conference on anti-Semitism and
Jewish life held at Hungary’s parliament building that Hungarians had to
recognize their country’s own culpability in the Shoah. “We know that we were
responsible for the Holocaust in Hungary,” he said. “We know that Hungarian
state interests were responsible.”
Fidesz, which has a two-thirds majority in
parliament, is not overtly anti-Semitic. But the government has angered Jews by
doing little to curb a growing cult of memory around Fascist-allied figures
such as Adm. Miklós Horthy, the nationalist regent who led Hungary into World
War Two as an ally of Nazi Germany. Recent surveys have documented a rise in
open anti-Semitism in Hungary, and the extremist Jobbik party, with an openly
anti-Semitic and anti-Roma platform, is the third largest party in parliament,
holding 43 of 386 seats.
Not surprisingly, almost all facets of the
House of Fates project have come under fire—from its name, to its location, to
its overall concept, which some fear could lend itself to a skewed
interpretation of the Shoah. Critics of Orbán’s government, including many
Jews, have dismissed the initiative as a cynical move aimed primarily at
outsiders to prove that Hungary is not an anti-Semitic country while at the same
time it fails to take concrete action at home. “There is no trust,” said
Anna-Mária Bíró, the president and CEO of the Tom Lantos Institute, a public
human-rights foundation whose executive committee is chaired by the daughter of
the late Budapest-born U.S. congressman, who himself survived the Holocaust as
a teen. “On projects like this you need trust.”
***
Budapest already has a Holocaust memorial center and museum, which was
established by the government and opened to great fanfare in April 2004, on the
60th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary—and two weeks before Hungary
joined the European Union. It was a first-of-its-kind institution in Hungary,
and at the time, the then-director told me that its aim was to present the
Holocaust “as a Hungarian national tragedy” and “an integral part of Hungarian
history.”
The museum, located on Páva Street just
outside the city center, comprises a modernistic building centered on a
restored synagogue. It draws relatively few visitors, however. And when I
visited in December, I found many of its exhibit’s interactive screens were not
working. Wires were falling out of some of the headphones, and some of the
lettering on signage was peeling off.
When the Páva Street center was built,
critics—including prominent members of Hungary’s Jewish community—took issue
with its goals, its concept, and even its location—not to mention with local
political maneuvers involved in its establishment. As I wrote in an article at the time, they also faulted organizers for
building the center too hastily, without first working out details of its scope
and without public debate. The center in fact opened without its permanent
exhibition installed.
Those arguments are echoed today in the
debates about the House of Fates. So far, few details of the new museum’s
exhibition content and education program have been made public. The historian
Mária Schmidt, who is overseeing the project, told me in an interview at her
Budapest office that these are still under development. But she said the target
audience would be school groups and young people, and much of the exhibit, as
well as the learning center, will be interactive. The aim, she said, would be to
engage youngsters by telling the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of
people their own age.
BY: http://www.tabletmag.com/
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