Home  / HUN75

Staging Traumatic Memory: Competing Narratives of State Violence in Post-Communist Hungarian Museums

Author(s)

Publication Name

Publication Date

Abstract

The article examines the way three contemporary Hungarian museums–the House of Terror Museum, the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial and Documentation Center–represent the history of the Holocaust and the history of Jewish/non-Jewish relations. Reflecting different political agendas, each of the three museums offers a different interpretation of how the Holocaust fits into the larger narrative of Hungary's 20th century history. The article argues that post-communist public memory has been constructed through debates about these histories. By analyzing the three museums' displays, narratives and the debates surrounding them, the article argues that Hungarian public discourse has yet to come to terms with the meaning and place of “Jewishness” (and the way it has informed “Hungarianness”) in modern Hungarian history. Despite the centrality of Jews and Jewish-non-Jewish relations to the museums' narratives, none are able to offer a clear definition of what “Jewishness” means and how it functioned at different times throughout the 20th century.

Topics

Genre

Geographic Coverage

Original Language

Volume/Issue

45(2-3)

Page Number

236-251

Related

Reportage: Beyond Prague's “Precious Legacy”: post-communist Jewish exhibits and synagogue restorations in the Czech Republic (Part of same volume)
Introduction: New Jewish museums in post-communist Europe (Part of same volume)
From Restored Past to Unsettled Present: New Challenges for Jewish Museums in East Central Europe (Part of same volume)
Reportage: Small exhibits, major steps: four post-Soviet Jewish museums (Part of same volume)
Staging Traumatic Memory: Competing Narratives of State Violence in Post-Communist Hungarian Museums (Part of same volume)
Inside the Museum: The Jewish Museum of Chisinău (Kishinev) (Part of same volume)
The Square of Polish Innocence: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and its symbolic topography (Part of same volume)
Inside the Museum: Curating between hope and despair: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Part of same volume)
Inside the Museum: Nothing is going to change? Adaptation of the Jewish Pre-Burial House in Gliwice (Part of same volume)
Inside the Museum: Galicia Jewish Museum: Re-defining the role of the Jewish museum in a post-communist Poland (Part of same volume)
Reportage: Romania and its Jewish museums (Part of same volume)
The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow: Judaism for the masses (Part of same volume)
The shtetl in the museum: representing Jews in the eras of Stalin and Putin (Part of same volume)
Inside the Museum: Torahs, Tanks, and Tech: Moscow's Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center (Part of same volume)
Inside the Museum: The Museum of Jewish History in Russia, Moscow (Part of same volume)
Inside the Museum: A Museum in a museum—the experience of exhibiting Jewish collections in the Russian Museum of Ethnography, St. Petersburg (Part of same volume)
Inside the Museum: When Orthodox synagogue meets museum: the New Jewish Community Museum in Bratislava (Part of same volume)
In search of a liberal polity: the Rukh Council of Nationalities, the Jewish question, and Ukrainian independence (Part of same volume)
Reportage: The Bukharan-Jewish Museum in Samarkand: memory preservation of a rapidly-diminishing community (Part of same volume)

DOI

Link

Link to article (paywalled), Staging Traumatic Memory: Competing Narratives of State Violence in Post-Communist Hungarian Museums

Bibliographic Information

Manchin, Anna Staging Traumatic Memory: Competing Narratives of State Violence in Post-Communist Hungarian Museums. East European Jewish Affairs. 2015: 236-251.  https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1080/13501674.2015.1070636