Accepted Abstracts

Panel Proposal: Book discussion of Ernő Munkácsi, How it Happened: Documenting the Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The proposed book panel will address some of the key questions raised by Ernő Munkácsi’s How it Happened: Documenting the Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry, a seminal book on the Holocaust which has recently been released in English for the first time. Originally published in Hungarian as Hogyan történt? in 1947, Munkácsi’s book is an important document on the history of the Holocaust in Hungary written by a key witness from among the persecuted. The panel will begin by introducing Ernő Munkácsi, a member of the Budapest-based Neolog elite who, in 1944, served as secretary for the Hungarian Central Jewish Council. The panelists will aim to draw the immediate contexts of his seminal early postwar publication Hogyan történt?, including the controversy surrounding the activities of the Central Jewish Council in Budapest. More generally, the panelists will discuss the major dilemmas Munkácsi confronted when developing an interpretation of the Holocaust in Hungary and how he sought to resolve them. As well, the panelists, contributors to the new English-language edition of Munkácsi’s volume, will share their observations on how and with what exact aims their extensive scholarly contributions (two introductions, a biography, annotations, glossary, maps, and archival photos) were created.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ferenc Laczó is assistant professor in modern and contemporary European history at Maastricht University. He is the author of three books, including Hungarian Jews in the Age of Genocide. An Intellectual History, 1929-1948 (Brill, 2016). His main research interests lie in political and intellectual history, Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Many of his writings are accessible via https://unimaas.academia.edu/FerencLaczó

Susan Papp is pursuing a Ph.D. in Modern European History at the University of Toronto. She has taught in the Hungarian Studies Program in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Ms. Papp has published widely in the fields of Hungarian immigration to and settlement in North America @and, more recently, about the Politics of Exclusion in the film industry in Hungary during the inter-war period. In 2015, she was awarded a Fellowship at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Ms. Papp spent fifteen years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a journalist and producer where she was awarded the prestigious Michener Award. One of her recent books, Outcasts: A Love Story, published by Dundurn Press, is based on a true story of a Christian man who tries to save a Jewish woman in Hungary in 1944. This book has been translated into Hungarian and Hebrew and has been made into a documentary film that is regularly shown on Canadian television. Email: susan.papp@utoronto.ca

Chair: Louise O. Vasvári (Ph.D., UC Berkeley) is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and of Linguistics at Stony Brook University. Currently she teaches in the Linguistics Department at NYU and is also Affiliated Professor at the University of Szeged. She works in medieval studies, diachronic and socio-linguistics, Holocaust studies, and Hungarian Studies, all informed by gender theory within a broader framework of comparative cultural studies. In relation to Hungarian Cultural Studies she has published with Steven Tötösy, Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature (2005), Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies (2009), and Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies (2011). Email: lvasvari@icloud.com

---