A Female Adolescent Bystander's Diary and the Jewish Hungarian Holocaust

Abstract

In his article A Female Adolescent Bystander's Diary and the Jewish Hungarian Holocaust Gergely Kunt analyzes the unpublished diary manuscript of Margit Molnar, a Hungarian Roman Catholic adolescent girl born in 1927 who kept a diary between 1941 and 1949. Kunt's analysis shows how Molnar viewed Jews, the persecution of Jews, and the anti-Jewish terror in Budapest. As the diary documents, Molnar's views of the Jews temporarily changed during the Arrow Cross's reign of terror in October 1944 when she received news of the Arrow Cross murdering Jews en masse in Budapest. However, once the war was over, Molnar's deep-seated anti-Semitic prejudices resurfaced and she felt that despite the previously justified measures against Jews, the oppressive wealthy Jewish Hungarian elite had once again returned.