In the Shadow of Two Monuments: Local Battlefields of Politics of History in Hungary and Poland

Abstract

ABSTRACT The politics of history occupies an important place on the agenda of the current right-wing populist governments of Hungary and Poland. These countries have a lot in common in terms of state-level Holocaust distortion and whitewashing of difficult historical issues. This paper aims at investigating these national tendencies through a local ‘lens’ by studying the controversies around the Turul statue in the 12th district of Budapest (2005) and the monument of Jan Maletka erected at the Treblinka railway station (2021). Both monuments were established in places directly related to the local history of Jewish suffering during World War II and are symbolic of the various aspects of the Holocaust. Furthermore, both can be seen and interpreted as specific examples of the ‘de-Judaization of the Holocaust,’ manifestations of competitive victimhood, and a way of hiding the problem of complicity in the Holocaust.