Screening of a new documentary film exploring the Holocaust memory in Hungary’s context, followed by a discussion with the author, Richárd Papp

Eighty years have passed since the tragedy of the Holocaust. The living, communicative memory of a generation of victims and witnesses is slowly being transformed into patterns of cultural memory. Meanwhile, in the recent decades in East-Central Europe, there has been no collective confrontation and public and comprehensive open social discourse on the memory of the tragedy. The problems of forgetting and silence range from the persistence of anti-Semitism, hatred of ethnic, cultural, and sexual minorities, political hatred of refugees, to Holocaust denial, that are still present in East-Central European societies today.

In the three decades since the fall of communism, more detailed Holocaust education has been introduced into schools’ curricula in Hungary. Furthermore, memorials, museums, books, and films have been made to commemorate the Holocaust. However, the question arises as to how all this contributes to the perpetuation of Holocaust memory? What does the memory of the Holocaust mean today among different generations and between different localities? The documentary presented at this event tries to reflect on this question.

The research, supported by the Visegrad Fund, which is the basis of the documentary, uses qualitative social science methods to explore and interpret the current meanings of Holocaust memory in Hungary. The documentary film by Anikó Sükösd, György Csepeli, Richárd Kiss, András Surányi, and Richárd Papp is research based on a focus group interview in a home for the elderly in Budapest. Thus, the narratives presented in the documentary include the memories of survivors and eyewitnesses. Furthermore, as the interviewees come from different localities in Hungary, we can gain a more comprehensive knowledge of the local differences and similarities of Holocaust memory in Hungary. On the one hand, the film screening and the subsequent discussion may make us reflect on the recent problems of social memory in Eastern-Central Europe. On the other hand, the discussion can also contribute to an interpretative rethinking of Holocaust memory.

Richárd Papp is an associate professor of cultural anthropology and sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. His fields of teaching and research embrace cultural significances of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism. His particular research interests are socio-cultural memory and Jewish cultural identity. He has conducted fieldworks in Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Israel, and Hungary. Recently, he is leading a research project supported by the Visegrad Fund “Research on Transgenerational Holocaust memory in Central Europe”. The aim of this research is to process and interpret recent meanings of Holocaust memory using qualitative social science methods in Eastern and Central Europe.