Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACT
World War II Soviet photojournalist Evgenii Khaldei gained fame in the West when his photographs of war victims were exhibited there in the 1990s. Among his Holocaust-related images are two iconic photos that he claimed were taken upon the January 18, 1945 liberation of the Budapest ghetto. One represents the wanton murder of Jews, the other their survival. Exhibited or published, these photos were accompanied by Khaldei's brief stories about their subjects. The following examination proves that they were not taken in the ghetto, that they were staged, and that the stories Khaldei attached to them were false.

This book is a compilation of essays by authors who were previously published elsewhere. Its main focus is on Ferenc Koszorús, a wartime colonel of the Hungarian army fighting as an ally of Germany who ostensibly was responsible for saving the Jews of Budapest with the so-called Koszorús Action during the German occupation of Hungary. Some of the articles also examine the roles of Regent Miklós Horthy and the Hungarian government in the destruction of close to one half million of its Jewish citizens, mostly in German death camps. The reviewer marshals facts, documentation, and works by prominent historians to demonstrate that Koszorús had little to do with the survival of the Budapest Jews in July 1944. The myth of Koszorús as a wartime champion of the Jews was invented by the colonel himself in his postwar memoirs. In the volume, the editor Géza Jeszenszky points out that most non-Jewish Hungarians were either active supporters of the deportations or were passive bystanders. It may be this sad fact that prompted him to mythologize and create a hero who allegedly saved the life of three hundred-thousand Jews.

The Hungarian populist writers Gyula Illyés and Lajos Nagy visited the Soviet Union together during the summer of 1934 as guests of the Union of Soviet Writers. Upon their return to Hungary, Illyés and Nagy published their impressions in separate travelogues.Although they both stressed that they strived for objectivity in their travel reports, they did not fully succeed in their efforts. Their perspectives were colored by a feeling of cultural superiority carried over from their experiences in the Hungary of the 1930s. Their writing was also tainted with anti-Semitism, as evidenced by their reflections on the life of Jews in Russia and Ukraine. Although their hosts took them to model institutions on a government-designed grand tour, they were not won over to the communist cause and failed to become fellow travelers.

In a recent letter to the editor of Slavic Review, I took issue with the identification and interpretation of two photographs that appeared in an article titled "Heroes, Victims, Role Models: Representing the Child Soldiers of the Warsaw Uprising." The scenes were mistakenly identified as taking place in wartime Warsaw. While various perspectives may be taken on how one uses and interprets photographs in other disciplines, as an historian, I believe it to be essential that a strict review of the photographs' origin be examined since they may force us to come to different conclusions about the reality of historical events, and possibly perpetrators of crimes. The crux of my argument follows.

Hajdu, Tibor and Ferenc Pollmann. 2014: A régi Magyarország utolsó háborúja 1914–1918 ('The Last War of Old Hungary 1914–1918'). Budapest: Osiris. 415 pp. With maps and photographs.

In the wake of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, close to two hundred thousand Hungarians crossed into Austria. About thirty thousand of these refugees were allowed to enter the United States. Their common experience of living under totalitarian communism and participating or being a witness to the exhilarating thirteen days of the revolution and their sudden, previously unplanned, departure from the homeland gave them a collective identity that was different from the one shared by the people of previous waves of Hungarian influx to the United States. The high educational level of the refugees attained before and after their arrival made their absorption into the mainstream relatively easy. The integration process was facilitated by the shaping of a positive image of the 1956 refugees by the US government and the media. The reestablishment of the communist system in post-1956 Hungary contributed to the perception that, for the refugees in the United States, there was no hope for return to the homeland. This assumption strengthened the attitudes of those who wished to embrace the American melting pot model. Many of the 1956-ers in the United Sates, however, were also comfortable with the notion of ethnic pride and believed in the shaping of a dual national identity.

Vörös, Boldizsár 2014: Történelemhamisítás és politikai propaganda. Illés Béla elmeszüleményei a magyar szabadságküzdelmek orosz támogatásáról ('Falsification of History and Political Propaganda - The Brainchildren of Béla Illés about the Russian Support of Hungarian Struggles for Freedom'). Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (MTA) Bölcsészetudományi Kutatóközpont. Történettudományi Intézet, 2014. 335 pp.Reviewed by Peter Pastor, Montclair State University

This article questions the validity of Deborah S. Cornelius's claims which she presents in her recently published book on interwar and World War II Hungary. These exonerate the revisionist, anti-Semitic and war-time policies of the Horthy regime. The monograph also presents the Hungarian leaders in an undeservedly positive light. The author of the review demonstrates that Cornelius's representation of the past was accomplished by the selective reading of primary and secondary sources. Cornelius also commits too many factual errors in order to justify some of her assertions.