The 'Jewish Question' in Europe: The Case of Hungary by Tam�s s> Ungv�ri Maskerado: Dancing around Death in Nazi Hungary by Tivadar Soros Humphrey Tonkin (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I63 There are some significantflaws in Haynes's work as well. Incomprehensibly , she appears to ignore entirely the published Documents diplomatiques franfais. More surprisingly, she ignores one of the significant volumes of memoirsof ForeignMinisterNicolae Petrescu-Comnen,Lucieombre sull'Europa, I9I4-50 (Milan, I957), whichwould have informedher, contraryto her assertion (p. 53), that the Soviets were notpressurizing the Romanians for rights of Red Army passage to Czechoslovakia in September I938. She overlooksthe importantworkof Gabriel Gorodetsky,Grand Delusion. Stalinand the German Invasionof Russia (New Haven, CT, I999), which cites much important evidence on Soviet policy in southeasternEurope. She avoids any assessmentof the role in the German alliance of the intrinsicallyinterestingand Anglophile Marshall Ion Antonescu as the controversy over his reputation grows ever more acute nowadays in Bucharest (of course, his archive remains inaccessible in Moscow). Finally, she misses the important point thatwhile thepost-Titulescuforeignministrynevercountenanced rights of passage of the Red Army in transitto Czechoslovakia,the Romanian army explicitly did so, as is plainly apparent in its annual plans of operations (in Archivele militare romane, I936ff. and in the work of LarryWatts) and in reports of the Polish military attache in Bucharest (the work of Henryk Bulhak). Charlottesville, VA HUGH RAGSDALE Ungvari, Tamias. The Jewish Question' in Europe:The Caseof Hungagy. Social Science Monographs, Boulder, CO; AtlanticResearch and Publications, Highland Lakes, NJ, 2000. viii + 358 pp. Notes. Biographies of key personalities.Selected bibliography.Index. $42.50: f27.oo. Soros, Tivadar. Maskerado: Dancingaround DeathinNazi Hungagy. Edited and translatedfromEsperantoby HumphreyTonkin. Forewordsby Pauland George Soros. Canongate Books, Edinburgh, 2000. 226 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. fI4.99. GENERAL interest in the fate of HungarianJewry was recently piqued by the film Sunshine(dir. Istv.an Szabo), in which Ralph Fiennes played three charactersrepresentinggenerationsof aJewish family. Given the intensityof Jewish assimilation in nineteenth century Hungary, the explosion of antisemitismfollowingthe failedCommunist insurrection,HungarianJews' fierce persecution by the Arrow Cross and belated decimation in the Holocaust, as well as the persistence of a notable Jewish minority in both Communist and post-Communist Hungary, it is not surprisingthat the travailsof Hungarian Jewry is grist for dramatic entertainment. Two films by Szabo (Colonel Reidl was his first)and effortsby historians, novelists, and memoiristshave helped shed light on Jews in Hungary. Yetwe await a comprehensive, single-volume work devoted to Hungary's Jews which does justice to the community's complexity and often contradictoryroles and perceptionswithin the country. The strengthof Tamas Ungvary's study, TheJewishQuestion' inEurope: The Case of Hungary,is his explication of Jews and 'the Jewish question' in Hungarian political and cultural debates, particularly in literary circles, I64 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 around I900 and between the WorldWars. The firstfifty-somepages of the book, a generaldiscussionof EuropeanJewish history,probablywas necessary forthe book'soriginalHungarian audience. But it will not impressitsEnglishreading public. For instance, Ungv'ary'sclaim that 'in today's Europe the largestJewishcommunityisHungarian'(p. 5)ispatentlyabsurd.A reasonable estimate of Hungary'sJewish population in the early Iggos was 56,ooo, while France had 530,ooo, and the former USSR, 780,ooo. It is, to be sure, extremely significantthat in East Central Europe, Hungary has had the most continuity between its pre- and post-Second WorldWarJewish populations. This fact, however, mustbe put into context. Overall, the author displays great familiaritywith Hungarian history and politics, and there are moments of prescient observation. Nevertheless, his view of Hungarian Jewry, aside from detailed positions of selected intellectuals , is spotty and even stereotypical.Take, for example, Ungvari's assertion that 'There have been basically two types of assimilated Jews in modern Europe, the pariahand the parvenu' (p. 292) However much these concepts popularized by Hannah Arendt are helpful, they do not always provide the best or exclusive frameworkfor analysis. What is one to do, then, with the small but important number of Hungarian ultra-orthodox, as explored by Michael K. Silber, who were economically well-integrated but socially separate from Hungarian non-Jews -such as the milieu of the illustrious Reichmann family?The criticaldistinctionsbetween segments of Hungarian Jewry -including Neologs versus Orthodox, Hasidim versus Mitnagdim, and Zionistsversusanti-Zionists seem lost on Ungvari, who treatsJewry as a population that changed over time, but exemplifiesnearly a unitaryhyperassimilatedtype for any given period. Ungvari's book would be better had he...