Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

Introduction: Special Issueon Eastern European AntisemitismAndrás Kovács*Guest EditorMore than four million Jewish victims of the Holocaust came fromfour countries: Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia (an independentstate from 1939), most of whose inhabitants had either passively observedor actively supported the ghettoization of the Jews and their deportation tothe death camps. The scars left by the Shoa seemed to be deep and enduring.For a long time after World War II, it was thought that the mass murderof the Jews led to catharsis: it had rendered all forms of antisemitism illegitimateforever in the countries of the genocide. “The antisemite was a latentkiller before Auschwitz, but a manifest killer after Auschwitz,” wrote theBuchenwald survivor and Nobel Prize-winner author Imre Kertész. 1 AfterAuschwitz, there seemed to be a moral consensus that there was no “innocent”antisemitism, and not only legal and social discrimination of Jews butthe public expression of everyday stereotypes and prejudices became intolerable—notleast because people had seen how quickly “moderate”antisemites could become active participants in, or passive observers of, thepersecution of Jews. This explains why so many were shocked by the suddenreappearance of antisemitism in Poland, Hungary, Romania, andSlovakia (an independent state once again from 1993) in the aftermath ofthe collapse of the communist regimes.As a series of memoirs, oral history documents, and recollections indicate,the antisemitic schemata that had been part of the prewar public discourseremained alive in many niches of the private sphere and in personalcommunications. Indeed, antisemitism survived even in the sphere of politics.Despite their total control over Jewish institutions and Jewish communitylife, the Communist parties of East Central Europe considered theconflicting historical memories about Jews as well as the Jewish presence intheir societies to be disturbing factors. They kept the problem permanentlyon the political agenda, either by using the barely coded antisemitic languageof “anti-Zionism” in political campaigns, as in Poland or Czechoslovakia,or in debates of the leading party organs behind the scenes, where theJewish origin of politicians and public figures had been a permanent subject,as in Hungary. This way they (re)constructed their own “Jewish ques-1. See Imre Kertész, “Nem t″uröm, hogy kirekesszenek” (I will not let themmarginalize me), Magyar Hirlap, September 25, 1990.357