Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

an explanation. I told him that I expected that the bishops wanted
to thank the Turks for the protection they gave them in the 16 th century
during the Habsburgs’ Counter Reformation. However unbelievable
it may sound to you, my explanation turned out to be right.
I do not understand why some countries find it so hard to apologise.
If I step on your foot, I will say ‘I beg your pardon‘. It does not
hurt to apologise. The Hungarians should also apologise for having
stood on the wrong side in the war and for invading Ukraine.”
With this last remark Konrád touched a raw nerve, touching upon
a hotly debated issue in Hungary. Many Hungarians, especially on
the right of the political spectrum, still seem to have a problem with
the consequences of the Treaty of Trianon (1920) in which the victors
of the Great War carved up Hungary. Many ethnic Hungarians
ended up in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and Serbia. Whilst the
human rights of the descendants of these people must be properly
respected, suggesting changes to existing borders is both illusory
and dangerous. Konrád does not advocate a return to a Greater
Hungary but he does ask for understanding of the position of ethnic
Hungarians living in the neighbouring countries.
“In the little town where I grew up as a child, the house of my father
was nationalised; now it has been bought by a bank. I have no
warm feelings towards this house. At least when it was still a hardware
shop, the smell was familiar to me, now my old bedroom will
be an office. A teacher wanted the synagogue, annexed to this
house and used as a depot, to become a music hall with a small
room dedicated to the memory of the Jews who had lived in the little
town. When I was made president of the Academy of Arts in
Berlin, I called up György Ligeti, the now sadly deceased Hungarian-Jewish
composer, arguably one of the most outstanding
composers of the entire post-war era. Ligeti had been living in Germany
since the early Fifties. I was told he was hard to reach. A
minute later he phoned back, beginning the conversation with: “I
bet you can’t guess where I was in early October 1944?” I had to
confess I had no idea. “In the synagogue behind your family’s
house, then a stable, I had to shovel up the horse manure onto a
handcart.” Ligeti spoke about a Hungarian army officer who, on
entering the temple and seeing what was to be seen, shed a tear
and asked: “Have we come to this?” He was the only one who
wept. There is a marble plaque on the wall of my father’s house in
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