Making Hungary Great Again: The Ironies of Global Holocaust Memory and the Assault on Refugees

A lecture by Raz Segal (Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Stockton University, New Jersey), in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History organized by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, CEFRES and the Prague Center for Jewish Studies.

Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: from 4 pm to 5:30 pm
Language: English

Abstract

This lecture will focus on the paradoxical connection between global Holocaust memory and the current attack on the ultimate “other” of the nation state: refugees. It will explore specifically the use in Hungary today of central elements of the global memory culture about the Holocaust in order to continue propagating the idea of an ethno-national “Greater Hungary”; that is, the vision that drove the genocidal assault of the Hungarian state during World War II against Jews, Roma, and other groups perceived by the state as dangerous, foreign, or otherwise “non-Hungarian.” This vision now also targets refugees.

The Hungarian government claims that the Holocaust was solely a Nazi project, so that anti-Jewish violence and destruction in wartime Hungary in no way stemmed from Hungarian nation- and state-building. This erasure of state violence ironically mirrors a central idea of the global memory culture about the Holocaust: that it was a unique event, because Nazism and Nazi antisemitism were unique phenomena, in no way related to the modern state. Thus, the Hungarian government today cynically portrays the Jews who had lived in the wartime borderlands of Hungary—who the state had declared foreign and dangerous and launched a genocidal attack against them—as Hungarian Jews annihilated by Nazi Germany alone. This historical distortion, then, strengthens the Hungarian claim for these territories — the lost territories of “Greater Hungary” — which are today parts of Ukraine, Romania, and Serbia. The erasure of state violence from the history of wartime Hungary thus allows the Hungarian government to use global Holocaust memory in the service of the very political vision that excluded Jews and targeted them for destruction. It also blurs a virulent antisemitic political discourse in Hungary in the last few years, linking Jews to refugees by depicting Jews as threatening for their alleged attempt to destroy Hungary by supporting the entry of refugees into the state. The lecture will unpack this paradoxical situation.

Jewish pioneer youth in interwar Czechoslovakia – crafting the chosen body – ONLINE

A lecture by Daniela Bartáková (Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Science), in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History organized by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Charles University,  CEFRES and the Prague Center for Jewish Studies.

Where: The session will be conducted over a videoconferencing platform. Registration: bartakova@mua.cas.cz
When: Wednesday 19 May 2020, from 5:30 pm to 7 pm

Language: English

Abstract

Jewish pioneer youth movements played a crucial role in the practical realization of socialist Zionism. Their activities focused on the achievement of social, national, political, and cultural goals, and last but not least, members of these movements were actively involved in the concept of building the new chosen body on the individual and collective level.
The talk will focus on the discursive understanding of the Zionist movement, its dynamic processes, and practices of social and national community shaping, which utilized the methods of bio-power on the level of individuals as well as the whole nation. Both anatomo-politics and biopolitics have become part of Zionist discursive practices. Through the adoption of these practices, Jewish pioneers contributed actively to the formation of the founding myths of the Zionist movement and the negation of the diaspora allegedly discredited through effeminacy and degeneration. Thus, they helped to reproduce the myth of returning to Palestine as the only possible way of regenerating the Jewish nation, its “normalization” and returning to history. Members of pioneer youth movements promoted a synthesis between socialism and nationalism in Palestine, which was to provide an alternative to the passive bourgeois, orthodox life of the paternal generation. The idea of equality has become one of the mobilizing motives for joining both movements. The “red assimilation” became a competitor to the Zionist movement and an alternative for pioneer Jewish youth.

The days of future past. Thinking about the jewish life to come from the Warsaw Guetto – CANCELLED

A lecture by Justyna Majewska (Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw), in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History organized by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Charles University CEFRES and the Prague Center for Jewish Studies.

Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: from 5:30 pm to 7 pm
Language: English

Abstract

Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto pondered not only how to survive the present but also in the days to come. The day of liberation was calculated on the basis of rumours, interpretations of wartime developments and Kabbalistic prophecies. In this paper, among different notions of the future expressed by the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto, I especially focus on the perspective of Jews active in various parties and youth movements. I approach the question of what Jews thought about the future, when it would start and what would lead to it within the broader context of the sociology of time. The primary source used in this paper is the Jewish underground press published in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jewish responses to persecution, 1933-1946 – VIRTUAL SEMINAR

A lecture by Emil Kerenji (Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington), in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History organized by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Charles University, CEFRES and the Prague Center for Jewish Studies.

Due to the new coronavirus travel restrictions, Emil Kerenji is unable to come to Prague as planned. We will offer the presentation by Emil Kerenji as a virtual seminar, taking place over the Internet with the help of a videoconferencing software. It will, however, only take place if enough of you express your interest. Please email Daniela Bartáková at bartakova@mua.cas.cz by March 20.

When: 26 March 2020, from 3 pm – VIRTUAL SEMINAR
Language: English

Abstract

This lecture will discuss the long-term project at the Mandel Center at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, to document Jewish perceptions of, and responses to, the series of events between 1933 and 1946 that today we understand as one unified event, the Holocaust. What were the forms of Jewish persecution as it extended beyond Nazi Germany, and eventually descended into genocide? How were they perceived on the ground, and how did geographical, political, cultural, economic, and class circumstances effect these perceptions? What were the options available to Jewish individuals, groups, institutions, and organizations in extremis, and what were some of the typical reactions? Finally, how does this history and understanding of the Jewish experience influence our understanding of the Holocaust? The lecture will also introduce a digital resource that grew out of this project, Experiencing History

“And they were not even curious about my religion” – The first Czechoslovak Republic and incoming foreign Jewish students

A lecture by Agnes Kelemen (Research Fellow in ERC Consolidator grant UnRef: Unlikely refuge?, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague) in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History organized by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences,  Charles University, CEFRES and the Prague Center for Jewish Studies.

Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: from 5:30 pm to 7 pm
Language: English

Abstract

Interwar Czechoslovakia’s universities and colleges where German was the language of instruction attracted numerous Jewish students who escaped official and unofficial Jewish quotas and antisemitic campus violence in their home countries (f. ex. Hungary, Poland, Romania). They met antisemitism in Czechoslovakia as well, in addition to xenophobia. Yet, when looking back at the Czechoslovak Republic with the knowledge that it became a victim of Nazi Germany, Hungarian Jews marginalized their experiences of anti-Jewish hostility such as the Steinherz-affair (1922-23) and demonstrations for the introduction of a numerus clausus (1929) to the point of ignoring them in their memoirs and praising Czechoslovak amicability. This talk is going to present the curious interplay of Czech nationalism, German institutions of higher education, academic antisemitism, xenophobia and foreign Jewish students through the case study of Hungarian “numerus clausus refugees” who studied in Prague, Brno and Liberec between 1920 and 1938.

Return Home: Holocaust Survivors Reestablishing Lives in Postwar Vienna 

A lecture by Elizabeth Anthony (US Holocaust Memorial Museum) in the frame of the seminar on Modern Jewish History organized by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, CEFRES and the Prague Center for Jewish Studies.

Where: CEFRES Library, Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: from 5:30 pm to 7 pm
Language: English

Abstract

Of the pre-Anschluss total of more than 200,000 Austrian Jews – both self-identified and those categorized as such by National Socialist “racial” policy – more than 90 percent lived in Vienna. Some 130,000 managed to escape but the Nazis murdered no less than 65,000, and by 8 May 1945, fewer than 6,000 remained alive in the capital city. Some survivors reemerged from hiding immediately upon the Soviets’ conquest of the city and those who had endured internment in concentration camps joined them there shortly thereafter. The majority of Austrian Jews who survived in exile remained abroad, but a few thousand also returned to reestablish lives in Vienna.

Why lay down roots anew in a homeland from which they had been deported or expelled, and why choose to live among former compatriots who neither expected nor desired their return? What did survivors expect to find in Vienna? What reality did they encounter? And why did they stay? This presentation elucidates the different concepts of familial home, political home, and professional home that inspired a handful of Viennese Jews to go back to their hometown. It analyzes the first opportunities survivors took to exert personal agency for their futures in the immediate postwar period with their emotional, political, and professional reconnection to Viennese society.