Tangled Threads, Blind Spots
Hungarian Jews in the Horthy-Era
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The history of Jews in Hungary during the interwar period is often interpreted by its fatal end. This teleological view does not do justice to the era of Miklós Horthy (1919–1944). Right up until 1944, many Hungarian Jews continued to believe in the Hungarian state despite the gradual disfranchisement of the Jews and anti-Semitism. Hungary seemed to provide a sense of security when the genocide against the Jews was already under way in many other places in Europe. Only the realisation that the Horthy regime was not fascist, as the anti-fascist interpretation would have it, leads to the explosive question how could the Hungarian conservatives, manoeuvring between competition and collaboration with the anti-Semites, come to be involved in in the Holocaust.
(Osteuropa 9/2012, pp. 73–86)