History/Political Science paper by Deák, George
The Esztergár Cult in Pécs in the Context of Hungarian and U.S. Memory Politics (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
Lajos Esztergár (1897 – 1978) is memorialized in Pécs in a number of ways. A street bears his name, as do an old age home, an annual prize for social work, a plaque at city hall, and the house where he lived. All these (except the street) are marked to remind us of Esztergár's contribution to the development of social welfare in Hungary. As a professor at the University of Pécs in the 1930s and as member of the city's administration, including being its mayor, Esztergár was the prime mover for the development of a system of poor relief, known as the Pécsi Norma (The Pécs System) during the Great Depression of the early 1930s. What is usually not mentioned on the prizes or plaques commemorating his career is that Esztergár was mayor of Pécs during the months in which the Jewish residents of the city and its surroundings were deported in 1944. Esztergár and the administration that he appointed played a major role in the ghettoization, deportation and material expropriation of the Jews of Pécs. This paper would explore Esztergár's role in both of these areas, try to understand the forces behind his current memorialization, place these into a national and internation context, and explore the question of whether his memory should be publicly preserved, and if so, how.
I should note that my mother and seven year old brother were deported to Auschwitz under Esztergár's administration. Only my mother returned.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
George Deák was born in Pécs, Hungary and emigrated to the U.S. in 1957. He earned his PhD in History from Columbia University in 1980. Having worked in the field of IT for thirty years, he returned to the history as an independent scholar in 2011. Most recently, he has translated and edited Ervin Sinkó's The Novel of a Novel, Abridged Diary Entries from Moscow, 1935-1937, Lexington Books, 2018. He taught at UMASS, Lowell, and is an Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard.