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1Introduction

In 2003 Iheld apubliclecture in on the of the women’smovement.Atthe end of the lecture an elderlygrey-haired man ap- proached me with aquestion: “Have youheard about PiroskaDely?”“Of course – Ianswered self-assuredly –,the literatureonthe people’stribunals mention her name. She was the bloodthirsty Arrow Cross woman who was executed after her people’stribunal trial.” My colleagues in never exhibited much enthusiasm when Itold them about my research on women in the .¹ Still, everyone knew Dely’sname, because every volume on post-Second World Warjusticelisted the namesofthosefemalewar crimi- nals, among them Piroska Dely, who weresentenced to and executed.² The elderlyman with impeccable silverhair nodded and said: “Imet her.” This is how Imet agroup of the Csengery Street massacre’ssurvivors who for decades fought for adignified remembrance of the bloodyevents. János Kun’s sentencegaveanentirelynew dimension to my research, which led to my Hun- garian AcademyofSciences doctoral dissertation and to the writing of this book. Ithank them for helping in my researchand Idedicate this book to them. During the Second World WarHungary was ’sloyal foreign ally. From 1938 four Anti-Jewish Laws were put in effect,that is laws that limited the employment,, and property rights of JewishHungarian citizens. On April 11, 1941Hungary’sarmed forces participated in the German invasion of with the aim of returning territories lost at the end of the First . Forthese territorial gains Hungary paid ahugeprice: the Hungarian economywas sacrificed to Germany’swar goals. In the meantime, Hungarian machinery emphasized the Hungarian government’sindependence and its nationalcommitment,but the country’sterritorial demands and geopol- itical realities tied Hungary to ,while Germanyincreasinglyexpect- ed commitment and support from its allies. In popularmemory it seems as though Hungaryonlyentered the Second World Warin1944.Newspapers and newsreels werefull of military propaganda and, due to effective censorship, the military success of Germanyand of course Hungary.The strategy of the Hungarian political elite was framed by the devas- tating experience of the First World Warwhen Hungarywas expectedtosign a peace treatywithout afunctioningarmy. That explains the reluctanceofHungary

 Andrea Pető, Invisible Women in the Arrow CrossParty (: PalgraveMacmillan, 2020).  Ákos , Népbíráskodás,forradalmi törvényesség [People’sTribunals,revolutionary justice] (Budapest: Minerva, 1988), 123. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110687552-003 2 1Introduction as an allyofNazi Germanytosend troops to Yugoslavia in 1941and to the . The fact that hundreds of thousands of soldiers were on the front did not have an impact on the ‘business as usual’ attitude of civilian life back in Hun- gary.Somehow that was also the case with Jewishcitizens of the country,as the fact that the increasing deprivation of theirrights by Anti-Jewish legislation, with Jewishmen drafted in to do labour,was considered the ‘new normal’ by the gentile population. In oral history interviews,however,the starting point of the Second World Warisusuallyonly1944,when moved inside the territory of the . Aware of Hungary’sfaltering loyalty,Germanyoccupied Hungary on ,1944.This date marked the beginning of the Second World Warfor Hungarian Jewry because soon after,and without direct Germanorders,Hungary commenced the massdeportation of Hungarian basedonthe April 4, 1944 6136/1944 No. VII decree of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Between April 28 and July 8, 1944 more than 435,000 Jewish Hungarian citizens weredeported to Ger- man concentration and annihiliation camps with the Hungarian administration’s active participation. Fornon-Jewish onlythe threat of the approach- ing Armyand the Allied bombingsmarked the beginning of the war.OnOc- tober 15,1944 the Hungarian far-right seized power and thus began the shortbut bloodyand chaotic rule of the Arrow Cross Party. After the mass of Jewishpeople from the Hungarian country- side the fate of the largest Hungarian Jewishcommunity,the Budapest Jewry was increasinglyunpredictable. On June 16,1944 amayoral decree was issued for the forcible relocation of the Jewish citizens of Budapest into approximately 2,600 designated houses. The deadline for the movewas midnight June 24,1944.About 12,000 Christians remained in the yellow star houses, among them the Strucky-Szamocseta familyofthe janitors of Csengery Street 64,the siteofthe events central to this book.³ October 15,1944 was anice sunnyday.People listened to Regent Horthy’s radio speech in which he proclaimed thatGermanyhad lost the war and Hun- gary was readytosign an armistice with the Allied Powers. In Budapest’sCsen- gery Street,64yellow star-wearingpeople gathered on the courtyard to listen to Horthy’shistoric declaration. This radioearlier belonged to one of the Jewish ten- ants of the house,but as the Anti-Jewish Laws came in effect,which prohibited Jews from owningaradio, it came into the possessionofthe onlyChristian fam-

 Dezső Laky, “Aháztulajdon alakulása Budapesten” [StateofHousehold Ownership in Buda- pest]. Statisztikai Közlemények 66.1 (1932): 89–99. 1Introduction 3 ilythat remained in the house, the janitors.⁴ The janitor put it on the windowsill so the Jewishtenants could also listentothe news while standing in the court- yard. Horthy’sradio proclamation had avery different effect on the tenants and the janitors.The Jews thought that the warwas indeedoverand they took the yellow star off the gate.⁵ At the same time the janitors felt rather sorry at losing their lucrative position: since June 1944 they had had full authority over the building’sJewish tenants includingthe building’sformer owner,which helped them secure considerable financial gains.The janitors requested money for all their otherwise freeservices,thus the yellow star houseswereturned into “pri- vateprisons” wherethe tenants livedaccordingtorules set by the Christian jan- itors. Afew hours laterthe radio announced that the Arrow Cross Party had come to power.The janitors celebratedtheir regaining of authority,while the elderly men and youngboys who gathered on the courtyard decided to keep guard at the gateway. The that followed the coup by Ferenc Szálasi, leader of the Arrow Corss Party,marked the livesofseveral dozen families in Csengery 64. This book is about them and about thatnight. During that night of October 15,1944 armed people intruded into the yellow star house and after abloodymassacreleft 19 dead behind. Whythis house?Per- haps they were there to break down alleged Jewishresistance, or maybethey weretheretorob the jeweler living on the first floor; there is no waytoknow. The final restingplace of the tenants is alsounknown. It is certain though that the intruders, with the active collaboration of the Christian janitor family, robbed the tenants,murdered probably18of them although the numbers, as Iwill argueinthe book, are uncertain. The armed intruders also forciblytook away all the other Jews hoping thatthey would never return from and so their crime would remainunnoticed. However, of the tenants re- turned duringthe next few days because the deportationsweretemporarilyhalt- ed. There was another wave of deportationsinNovember this time organized by the Arrow Cross Party,but some tenants returned after , and with that the battle for justiceand the dignified remembrance of the Csengery 64 victims began. PiroskaDely’scase wasamong the first trials of the newlyestablished peo- ple’stribunals in Budapest.The massacrewas also covered extensively by a

 Formoreonthe janitors,see Ádám Pál István, Budapest Building Managers and the in Hungary (London: Palgrave,2017).  On yellow star houses,see Randolph L. Braham, AMagyar Holocaust (Budapest: Gondolat, 1988), 124–129. 4 1Introduction press hungry for new stories of the first atrocity committed by the Arrow Cross after the takeover.Inthe dailypress,PiroskaDelywas portrayedasthe “Beast” of the Arrow Cross,awoman responsible for the gravest wartime mas- sacre of civilians in Budapest.The people’stribunalexposed the imageofHun- garian women, alleged members of the Arrow Cross Party,who had used vio- lence while .This was the first time femaleperpetrators were portrayed in public, and explains why, even today, the name PiroskaDelyisassociated with the “Women of the Arrow Cross”–even though, as Ishow below,she was never amember of the Arrow Cross Party. The survivors’ testimonies werecentral to the trial process duringthe Dely case in 1945aswellasduringthe people’stribunaltrial of the Strucky–Szamo- cseta janitor family in 1947. On March 23,1946 PiroskaDelywas executed, al- though as this book shows the people’stribunaltrial could not quite confirm whether she participated or that she was at all present at the massacre.Still she became “the” PiroskaDely, the embodiment of the bloodthirsty Arrow Cross woman. Based on the story of the armed robbery in Csengery 64,Iwill examine the so far neglected intersection of perpetrator research,political radicalism, mem- ory and gender studies to reveal whysome female perpetrators of the Hungarian Holocaust became overlyvisible while others remained invisible. Acertain version of PiroskaDely‘sstory has become the part of the historical canon about in Hungary.But,asIwill arguehere, exactlyhow this integration into official historiographyhappened made the most important elements of this story invisible. Unlikemainstream Holocaust research on Hun- gary,which until recentlyhas focused on political history,this book shows the disturbingly human dimension of collaborators and perpetrators that wereso far “invisible” to history,and alsoexamines the factors which contributed to their invisibility. After the Second World Wartheir battle for remembrance took place on dif- ferent levels. The book uses several sources to map those levels. The transcripts of the people’strubunals have been usedbefore. Thisbook willshow the process of how testimonies in the people’stribunals shaped multicolored and multilay- ered memories, or using Assmann’swords, movedfrom communicative memory into collective memory.⁶ Based on records of police hearings, people’stribunal documents, and the contemporarypress,Iwill analyze how the testimonies changed over time and also reflect on the phenomenon thatthey weredifferent

 JanAssmann, Das KulturelleGedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und Politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Münich: C.H. Beck, 1992). 1Introduction 5 depending on the audiences,because the witnesses appropriated the language that seemed the most effective in agiven situation to achievethe aims of punish- ing the perpetrators. Ialsoconducted interviews with the survivors and with the perpetrator fam- ily. The interviewingprocess with the survivors was another space wheremem- ory was shaped.Myresearch was primarilyinspired by my conversations with the survivors. They honored me with their trust.They shared with me their family stories and the story of the battle they have been fighting with various institu- tions including the people’stribunals and with the Jewishcongregation to keep the memory of the massacre alive.Csengery Street 64 is the setting of what was probablythe very first privatelyerected Hungarian Holocaust memori- al. One of the survivors had enough of waiting for unresponsive institutions and made amemorial plaque from his marble kitchen counter.The plaque was instal- led on the first anniversary of the massacre, October 15,1945, still, it never be- came the space for official commemorations, although it adapted the anti- terminologyand never mentioned thatthe victims wereJews. Then after 1989, another fight beganasthe survivors had to protect the plaque from those tenants who, in fear of rekindled anti-Semitism, wanted to remove it.The survivors also hoped that the municipal district would protect this commemorative plaque. The complicated story of the plaque demonstrates how the framework within which the Holocaust could be discussed in inner city Budapest has changed with time. Ialsoconducted an interview with the familyofperpetrators,the Strucky- Szamocseta family who resided as janitors in the house. It is aspecificityofHun- garian memory politics that it has developed in aparallel, unconnected and po- larized manner.The interviews with the survivors required different methodolog- ical preparation than the interview with the perpetrators’ relative.For the survivors, the story that they told me multiple times duringour meetingsrepre- sented the genuine truth, the onlypossible narrative of the events. Ihad to be exceptionallycareful so that they would not feel as if the analytical methods Iused, such as sourcecriticism and discourse analysis,inany ways questioned their authenticity and as witnesses and survivors. During the perpe- trator interview the challengewas to not judge the interviewee’snarrative, which was handed down in his family through and had obviously nothing to do with the real events. The historiographyofHolocaust is defined by the dynamics of closures and openings: monuments, schoolbooks and commemorations ritualize and thereby provide aclosure for happenings,while the survivors’ remembrance as well as the newlydiscovered private open new possibilities for interpretation.The Csen- gery Street story demonstrates how the story of amurder gets ritualized through aprocess duringwhich various institutions (such as the people’stribunal), 6 1Introduction media (photographs, movies), the survivors, the perpetrators and the historians’ works transform communicative memory into collective memory. Hungarian Holocaust research has mainlyfocused on deportation and the descriptions of concentration and death camps.⁷ Hungarian perpetrator research started onlyrecentlyand thus far it has focused solelyonthe stories of politically importantmen. The Delycase is an atypical Holocaust story as it does not cover a history of deportations. This is an example of intimate violence when in inner city Budapest armed Hungarians killed Hungarians in their own apartments, when the Hungarian state still attributed to German or Hungarian occupied ter- ritories.Furthermore, the people‘stribunal sentenced awoman to death as the main culprit,which is again not typicalinthe history of the Hungarian Holo- caust.The figure of the far-right’s “new man” has onlyrecentlybecome the sub- ject of scientific research and thus far researchers have not had much more to sayabout the “new woman” other than she was the “new man’s” companion.⁸ That the Csengery case is not onlyanatypical event but has contributed to its own selective forgetting is acentral concept of this book. The analysis of the sources unwrapped the history of emotions – resentment, hatred, violence, envy,greed – in avery challenging historicalperiod. Thisbook will not discuss whether the operation of the people’stribunals fell within the existing legal framework or not,orhow the trials constructed the remembrance of the Shoah (although Iwill necessarilytouch upon these). Rather this book fo- cuses on the ways survivors and perpetrators constructed memoryofthe events to create legal meaningand emotional content.Italso shows how the perpetra- tors’ stories became simplified and untellable due to the people’stribunals, which necessarilyled to apolarized memory cultureofthe Second World War. Iaim at amultifocal reconstruction of the events in order to explore the various perspectiveswhich led to forgetting,invisibility and divided memory in relation to this event,but also in relation to our current battleswithin memory politics. In the past decade Hungary has made headlines with its historical revision- ism actively supported by the government.⁹ This revisionism has not come out of thin air but,asthis book argues, it has along and often forgotten history.

 Andrea Pető, “‘Non-Remembering’ and ,” in Polin: Studies in PolishJewry. Poland and HungaryJewishRealities Compared,volume 31, ed. Francois Guesnet, Howard Lupovitch, AntonyPolonsky,471–480 (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization/ Liver- pool University Press, 2019).  JorgeDagnino, Matthew Feldman, Paul Stocke, eds. The “New Man” in Radical Right Ideology and Practice, 1919-1945 (London: Bloomsbury,2018), 2.  Andrea Pető, “Revisionist , ‘FutureMemories’:Far-Right Memorialization Practices in Hungary,” European Politics and Society 1.18 (2017): 41–51. 1.1 The reasons forforgetting 7

In pre-1989 anti-fascist rhetoric, the perpetrators were labelled as social out- casts and criminal, successfullyhiding the structural continuity of racist discrim- ination in Hungary.After 1989,along with the revision of progressive political traditions, anti-, fuelled by the which took place dur- ing the Soviet occupation, became the foundation of the emerging political dis- courses within the former countries and in Hungary. In 2011,the Hungarian Parliament accepted the Fundamental LawofHungary replacing the Constitution. The Preamble (the National Avowal, in the English translation) states: “We date the restoration of our country’sself-determination, lost on the nineteenth dayofMarch 1944,from the second dayofMay 1990,when the first freelyelected organ of popularrepresentation was formed.”¹⁰ With this, Hungary caught up with other former communist states that after the end of the ColdWar had startedtopromotethe memory of a “double occupation,” and to increasinglyrelyonthe concept of victimhood in their memory politics.¹¹ The Hungarian Holocaust memorialization is challenged by two thornypo- litical issues. The first one is the chronology:when did the of Jews start?Beforethe German occupation with the lawin1920 and the anti-Jewishlegislation of 1938,¹² or just after the German occupation of 19 March, 1944?And when did the persecution end?In1945, as the anti-fascist narratives states,orin1948 as the revisionist rhetoric claims, when the commu- nist Hungarian state persecuted Jews while fightingagainst religion?The ques- tion of chronologyisalsorelated to the second question about the responsibility of the Hungarian state in the persecutions. The massacreanalysed in this book contributes to along overdue discussion about the responsibilityofHungarian citizensinthe Holocaust in Hungary.

1.1 The reasonsfor forgetting

This volume aims to analyze the memory of Hungarian Holocaust through the concept of forgetting. This is especiallyexciting since my casestudy, the Csen-

 Https://www.kormany.hu/download/f/3e/61000/TheFundamentalLawofHungary_20180629_ FIN.pdf, accessed 26 August,2019.  Lim Jie-Hyun, “Afterword: EntangledMemories of the Second World War,” in Remembering the Second WorldWar,ed. Patrick Finney (London, New York: Routledge,2018), 249-256.  Mária M. Kovács, “The Numerus Clausus in Hungary,1920-1945,” in Alma mater antisemitica: Akademisches Milieu, Juden und Antisemitismus an den Universitäten Europas zwischen 1918 und 1939,ed. Regina Fritz, Grzegorz Rossolin´ ski-Liebe, Jana Starek, 85-112 (: New Academic Press, 2016). 8 1Introduction gery Street massacre has been listed in most of the relevant scholarlyworks about the people’stribunals and Arrow Cross rule in Hungary as the most prom- inent example of women of the Arrow Cross committingviolent crimes. The way it is rememberedhas contributed to the forgetting and, Iargue, to pollarized memory cultures about the Second World War. In this volume, memory and forgetting are not used as descriptive categories for mapping, rather as processes created by thosewho remember.Those who re- memberselect, cover up, silence, invisibilize,change, exaggerate, simplify,glo- rify and demonize duringthe process of remembrance. This volume belongswith the genre of “intimate history” and through the analysis of an atypical Holocaust story it aims to show how remembrance is shaped by thosewho remember,i.e. how memory grants agency to the protagonists of this story.Iuse the concept of agency accordingtoSabaMahmood, for whom agency is “acapacity for action that historicallyspecific relations of subordination enable and create.”¹³ Memory is often criticized from the perspective of objective,factual history. In this book,Icontrastthe processes through which the witnesses filtered, left out and invisibilized certain events and actors with every accessibledocument. Lack of acknowledgement means forgetting.The Jewishvictims of the Csen- gery Street massacre first failed to secure their rightfulplace in the anti-fascist memory canon, before the post-1989 turn in memorypolitics with its emphasis on Hungarian losses and the myth of the “double occupation” invisibilized Hun- garian perpetrators.Women perpetrators have not been the focus of Hungarian perpetrator research, while in recent years several bookswerepublished about this new field of studyinternationally. Recent researchonwomen in the Ukrainian underground movement,togeth- er with research on women workinginthe occupyingNazi administration there have dismantled anumber of taboos includingasimple dichotomyofvictim and perpetrator.¹⁴ Studies of women‘sparticipation in the different far right move-

 Saba Mahmood: “Feminist Theory,Agency, and the Liberatory Subject: Some Reflections on the Islamic Revival in Egypt,” Temenos 42.1 (2006): 34.  Oksana Kis, “National Femininity Used and Contested: Women’sParticipationinthe Nation- alist Underground in Western during the –50s,” East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 2.2(2015): 53–82;Olena Petrenko, “Frauen als ‘Verräterinnen.’ Ukrainische Nationalistin- nen im Konflikt mit den kommunistischen Sicherheitsorganen und dem eigenen Geheimdienst” [Women as Perpetrators.Ukrainian Nationalist in Conflict with the Communist Security Organ- izations and their own Security Services], in “Frauen im Kommunismus.” Jahrbuch fürHistorische Kommunismusforschung, [Women in Communism.Yearbook of Research on Communism], ed. Ul- rich Mählert, JörgBaberowski, BernhardH.Bayerlein et al, 57–74 (: Metropol Verlag,2015); WendyLower, Hitler’sFuries.German Women at the Nazi Killing Fields (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). 1.1 The reasons for forgetting 9 ments in ,¹⁵ in the in ,¹⁶ in ,¹⁷ in ,¹⁸ in Italian of Salò’s¹⁹ contributed to amorecomplex understanding of gender relations in perpetrator research. As part of research in women’shistory,this work focuses on exemplary women and shunnedmassmurderers.Firstly, the main protagonist of this book is, in ’sterm, an “ordinary perpetrator.”²⁰ Secondly, the perpetrator is awoman, which enables the examination of the gendered as- pect of the story. Forgetting is also connected to the conscious destruction of relevant docu- ments. Lichter,one of the main protagonists of the story after October 23, 1956,onthe first dayofthe Hungarian against communism, called his relativeswho had atile stoveintheir apartments and asked them to burn his entire correspondence concerning the Delycase. His relativescarried the cor- respondence in briefcases through the city and burned them – to the great regret of the historian.²¹ Twobooks werethe primary inspiration for this volume. ’s Eichmann in Jerusalem offers astill valid analysis of the banality of and how legal process frames the ways in which past events can be retold.²² Thelit-

 Rory Yeomans, “Militant Women, Warrior Men and Revolutionary Personae: The New Usta- sha Man and Woman,” The Slavonic and East European Review 4.83 (2005):720–721; Martina Bi- tunjac, Verwicklung.Beteiligung.Unrecht. Frauen und die Ustaša-Bewegung [Involvement,Partic- ipation, Injustice.Women in the Ustasha Movement] (Berlin: Duncker&Humblot,2018).  Marína Zavacká, “CrossingSisters: Patterns of Protest in the Journal of the Catholic Union of Slovak Women during the Second World War,” Social History 4.37 (2012): 425–451, DOI: 10.1080/ 03071022.2012.733509.  Andres Kasekamp, “Radical Right-Wing Movements in the North-East Baltic,” Journal of Con- temporaryHistory 4.34 (1999): 587–600.  Valentin Sandulescu, “ and its Quest for the ‘New Man.’ The Case of the Romanian Legionary Movement,” Studia Hebraica 4(2004): 349–361.  Gianluca Schiavo, “The Italian Civil Warinthe of Female Fascist Soldiers,” in Gen- dered Wars, Gendered Memories.Feminist Conversations on War, and Political Violence, ed. AyşeGül Altınayand AndreaPető,135–145(London: Routledge,2016).  Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men. ReservePolice Battalion 101 and the in Poland (New York: HarperCollins,1992).  Interview,(April 1, 2005). (See list of interviews).  Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. AReport on the Banality of Evil (London/NewYork: /VikingPress, 1994). On the debateabout the book, see Shoshana Felman, The- ater of Justice,201–238; RichardJ.Bernstein, HannahArendtand the JewishQuestion (Cambridge, Polity Press,1996); Devin O. Pendas, “EichmanninJerusalem, Arendt in .The Eich- Trial, the , and the Banality of Justice,” New German Critique Winter 34.1 (2007): 77–109. 10 1Introduction erature analyzingthe emphasizes the paradigm changeinhow the role of the witness has changed. Arendt’sstatement that Eichmann did not hate Jews and thathewas – together with his companions – a “normal” human being was one that stirred passionate debates backinthe day. My other inspiration was Erzsébet Balla’snovel, József körút 79. ²³ (József Boulevard79). The novel takes place in aBudapest apartment building in 1944,and showshow anyone can turn into aperpetrator and how ahouse’sJew- ish community experiencedthe effects of the Jewish Acts and the battle of Buda- pest.Inthe introduction of the novel the author says:

Istrivedfor truth. Iwanted to face the past without bias. This is whyIput anon-Jewish person in the focus of the story,toshow the happenings from the other side that is filtered through their anti-Semitic sentiment.Most novels on their first pageemphasize that it is all the author’simagination and anyresemblancetoreality is purelycoincidental. However, my novel is not the work of imagination, it is reality.More accurately, it is afragment of reality in anutshell. Characters are actual people,orthey were actual people.²⁴

This book is about acase that also represents “afragment of reality in anut- shell.” But,asIhave alreadystated, this caseisnot a “typical” Holocaust story:the site is not aconcentration camp and the perpetrators are not Ger- mans.²⁵ Hungarians killed Hungarian citizens in the middle of Budapest during peacetime but on the dayofthe Arrow Cross takeover.The volume tries to resolve the debate on whetherthe Holocaust is apart of JewishorEuropean history by claiming that it is part of both, and thatthe two are inseparable.²⁶ My aim was to map various biases and silences within ahistoricalframe- work. My method relied on acritical analysis and contrast of accessiblesources. As ahistorian and as aprivileged narrator,Icertainlydonot consider that my

 Balla Erzsébet, József körút 79 (Tel Aviv,ÚjKelet Kiadás,1964). Iamgrateful to VasváriLujza for this recommendation.  Ibid., 1.  Forasynthesis,see , TheDestruction of the European Jewry (,Quadran- gle Books, 1961). Another atypical featureofthe Hungarian case is that the executed German women were concentration camp guardsordoctors.See Insa Eschebach, “Gespaltene Frauen- bilder.Geschlechterdramaturgien im juristischen Diskurs ostdeutscherGerichte,” in “Bestien” und “Befehlsempfänger”.Frauen und Männer in NS-Prozessen nach 1945,ed., Ulrike Weckel, Edgar Wolfrum (Göttingen: Vandedhoeck &Ruprecht,2003), 96;WendyLower, “Male and Fe- male Holocaust Perpetrators and the East German Approach to Justice1949–1963,” Holocaust and GenocideStudies 24.1 (2010): 56–84.  See David Engel, Historians of the Jews and the Holocaust (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2010). 1.1 The reasonsfor forgetting 11 interpretation is the only “right” interpretation of the events, and thatiswhy Itry to show the events from all angles. The title of the book claims thatthe massacre was forgotten. This forgetting marks the historiographyaswell as our collective and individual remembrance. The Delycase’sanalysis offers aperspective to map blind spots of post-war po- litical justiceand the consequences of this legal framing. Both in the case of my Hungarian Academy of Science dissertation and the Hungarian edition of this book, Iwas drivenbyasincerehope that the analysis of the Csengery Street casewould contributetothe reevaluation and nuancing of Hungary’sSecond World Warhistory,aswell as to anecessary dialogue about the past.²⁷ The books’ Hungarian edition sold manycopies, and due to the wayitpresents alittle known case in acrime fiction-like framework it was apro- fessional and public success with wider audiencestoo. It proved thatwritingina different,accessible languagewithout hiding behind professional lingo can reach awider audience on difficult and painful topics.Myprofessional credo is that historians should moveout from the ivory tower of scholarship while keepingall professional standards and requirements and communicatewith the largeraudience. While writing,myaim was to tell astory that is interesting, inviting and important.Therefore, the author reached her goal. However,some reviews and social media platforms celebratedthe book as one that showed that the people’stribunals werepoliticallycontrolled, and relatedlythat Piroska Delywas sentenced to death for acrime thatshe did not commit.Both argu- ments fit the current revisionist tendencies of Hungarian historiographythat in- visibilizes, in other words it does not acknowledge crimes committed during Sec- ond World Warinharmonywith the government endorsedcult of “double occupation” set out in the Preamble of the Hungarian National Avowal (Nemzeti Hitvallás).²⁸ This new narrative framework acts as atool of “repressive erasure”²⁹

 The seminal volumes of Hungarian Holocaust research include the following: Randolph L. Braham: AMagyarHolocaust (Budapest: Gondolat,1988); Randolph L. Braham, ThePolitics of Genocide. TheHolocaust in Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press,1981); David Ce- sarini, ed., Genocide and Rescue. TheHolocaust in Hungary (London/New York: Berg,1997); Ran- dolph L. Braham, Pók Attila, ed., TheHolocaust in Hungary.Fifty Years Later (New York: Colum- bia University Press,1997); Tim Cole, “Constructingthe ‘Jew.’ Writingthe Holocaust.Hungary 1920–1945,” Patterns of Prejudice 33.3 (1999): 19–27;Horváth Cecília, Amagyarzsidóság és aho- lokauszt (Budapest: Új Palatinus,2004); Karsai László, Holocaust (Budapest: Pannonica, 2001); Nathaniel Katzburg, Zsidópolitika Magyarországon, 1919–1943 (Budapest: Bábel, 2002); Stark Tamás, Zsidóság avészkorszakban és afelszabadulás után (1935–1955) (Budapest: MTATörténet- tudományi Intézet – História Alapítvány, 1995).  Https://www.keh.hu/the_fundamental_law/1536-The_fundamental_law_of_Hungary*&pnr=1.  Paul Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Memory Studies 1.1(2008): 60–61. 12 1Introduction and provides the theoretical and ideological foundation for the defensive re- membrance strategyofcontemporary Hungarian populist politics, which blames the and the Soviets for all traumas of the twentieth century,completely dismissing Hungarian responsibility.³⁰ Whether this book,which looks at past events through the dynamics and politics of forgetting,contributes to the revisionist process or,asthe author hopes, to abattle against forgetting,time will show.

 Andrea Pető, “The Lost and Found Library,” MemoryatStake 9(2019): 72–82.