When the Danube Ran Red, by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth

Abstract

This memoir of a childhood disrupted by the Nazi German invasion of Hungary in 1944 represents a sub-genre of Holocaust memoirs written by scholars working in Holocaust studies. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth is best known for her criticism and translation of Hungarian poetry, in particular the work of Miklós Radnóti, who was killed during a forced march of labour battalion men in late 1944. Ozsváth’s father, like Radnóti, also fell into the age group of Jewish men mobilised for labour service. However, unlike Radnóti, he survived. It is the story of one Jewish family’s desperate attempts to survive during the final year of the war that dominates this beautifully written memoir. That focus makes it of particular interest, given that, as Steve Paulsson has rightly noted (writing of another European capital, Warsaw, and Jewish attempts to survive there), the history of evasion during the Holocaust remains a relatively unwritten part of the story. Memoirs such as Ozsváth’s are a crucial source for understanding how European Jews sought to survive during the Second World War.