The Historiography of the Holocaust

The Holocaust under Communism 431
three former officials of the Ministry of the Interior who were largely responsible
for the deportation of Hungarian Jews. As in other eastern European countries,
a number of memoirs and autobiographies appeared during this transitional
period, as well as the first historical accounts, which were based primarily on
the trials and which compiled documentary and statistical evidence. Istvan
Bibo’s essay on the Hungarian Jewish Question, published in 1948, analysed in
trenchant form the involvement of the Hungarian people and government in the
Holocaust, and also suggested that one reason for the post-war violence directed
at Jews resulted from the latter’s support for the communists.
In the autumn of 1948, a government-sponsored antisemitic campaign
began, and the government persecuted Hungarian Jews on the basis of politics
and religion. The communists placed the Jewish communities under strict
controls and severed their foreign contacts. The police arrested ‘bourgeois’ Jews
and deported them to penal colonies. In an attempt to distract attention from
Soviet involvement in the disappearance and murder of Raoul Wallenberg, the
government arrested the leaders of the Hungarian Jewish community and
accused them of having conspired against Wallenberg. The state particularly
penalized Zionists, and it arrested the director of the American Joint Distribution
committee and expelled him from the country. As Randolph L. Braham notes,
‘within a relatively short time, Judaism and Jewish culture [in Hungary] were
severely restricted, if not obliterated’. 25 The Holocaust became sidelined,
distorted or ignored in public discourse and in textbooks, which ignored the
Hungarians’ role as collaborators as well.
This situation began to change in the later 1950s. History writing remained
perilous, but an increasing number of memoirs, fiction and documentaries
began to appear again. In 1958 the first comprehensive bibliography on Holocaust
materials related to Hungary could appear. 26 Although strictly controlled by
the government, the Hungarian Jewish community continued a slow but steady
growth and eventually became the largest in the Soviet Bloc outside the Soviet
Union.
None the less, the anti-Zionist campaign that began after 1967 and reached
a crescendo in 1975 with the UN resolution, supported by Hungary, equating
Zionism with racism, brought continuing difficulties to Hungarian Jews. Many
Jews who, for pragmatic or ideological reasons, had historically supported the
communist government lost faith in the system and began to develop a separate
and competing interest in Jewish identity and history.
One should not underestimate the negative influence of the anti-Zionist
campaign on Hungarian Jews or on Holocaust discourse in Hungary. At the
same time, in the 1970s Hungary proved a leader within the Eastern Bloc in
establishing reform-oriented or ‘goulash’ communism, instituting measures
that liberalized the political and economic spheres and resulted in a relaxation
of censorship. Relative to other Soviet Bloc countries, there was a considerable