Hungarian_Holocaust_2014.doc (original) (raw)
In this paper, I examine the trial of Adolf Eichmann, its presentation in the contemporaneous Hungarian press, and its effects on the formation of Holocaust memory in communist Hungary. The trial presented a problem for communist propaganda because it highlighted the destruction of Jews as the worst crime of the Nazi regime. While communist ideology’s anti-fascism defined its stance as “anti-antisemitic,” the Marxist-Leninist interpretational framework of World War II—as a conflict between two opposing, ideologically defined camps (fascists and anti-fascists)—made it difficult to accommodate the idea of non-political victimhood, e.g. the destruction of Jews based on racist ideas and not because of their political commitments. Moreover, because of Eichmann’s wartime mission in Hungary, it was clear that the trial would feature a lot of discussion about his activities there. Therefore, the Hungarian Kádár regime devoted much attention to the event both within the Party and in the press. The analysis concentrates on two aspects: what the highest echelons of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party intended to emphasize in the Hungarian interpretation of the trial, and what kind of interpretation actually appeared in the press. In the end, the party’s political goals were only partially achieved. Control over newspapers simply guaranteed that certain key propaganda themes were included, rather than ensuring that other narratives would be excluded. I argue that, while the Kádár regime in Hungary did not intend to emphasize the Jewish catastrophe and certainly not to draw attention to its Hungarian chapter of 1944, there nevertheless emerged, as a consequence of the Eichmann trial, a narrative of the Hungarian Holocaust. Through the various organs of the press, this narrative found public expression. Though this Holocaust narrative can be considered ideologically loaded and distorted, some of its elements continue to preoccupy historians who study the period today.