Memory in Hungarian Fascism: A Cultural History argues that fascist memory had a key role in the historical formation and later return of fascism. Tracing the trajectory of a perennial figure of fascist memory, the cult of Eszter Sólymosi, from interwar Hungary through the Cold War West to contemporary Hungary, the book covers a century of fascism and offers a unique combination of fascism studies and memory studies.
How did fascists challenge liberal memory after the First World War? How did the memory culture they created come to frame and feed the Second World War and the genocide? In what ways did fascist memory transform as they navigated the challenges of exile in a profoundly changed political landscape and tried to counter the postwar order? And what role did their legacy, carefully crafted for a post-Communist future, play as later neo-fascists rejected democratic transformation? Eventually, as fascist memory traveled across time and space, the book argues, it contributed to the political challenges that we face today.
Based on a variety of unpublished sources, the book offers new insights for students of memory, Holocaust, fascism, and antisemitism studies, Jewish studies, Central and Eastern European history, and Hungarian studies.
Introduction: Fascist Memory on the Move
Part I: Initiation
Chapter 1: The Birth of an Image: Early Antisemitism and the Challenge to the Liberal Age
Part II: Resurrection
Chapter 2: Fascism on the Rise: Class Politics and Anti-Liberal Memory
Chapter 3: The Bleeding Icon: Rural Migration and Fascist Poetry
Chapter 4: Transcending Babel: Memory in the Era of Fascist Transformation
Chapter 5: Resurrection, Now: Fascist Memory during the Holocaust
Part III: Transmigration
Chapter 6: Fascist Memory in Transition: The Early Postwar Years
Chapter 7: Fascist Memory in the Cold War Era: Writing in Exile
Part IV: Repatriation
Chapter 8: New Alliances: Fascist Legacy in the Era of Transition
Chapter 9: Sonic Memories: A Neofascist Cult in the MakingEpilogue
Biography
Zoltán Kékesi is a cultural historian of Central and Eastern Europe. His publications include Agents of Liberation.Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Art and Documentary Film (2015). He works as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University College London.
