The Lost and Found Library

How could one possibly chance upon a big library of tens of thousands of volumes in a functioning scientific institution? The Budapest University of Jewish Studies managed to complete this improbable task when on September 16, 2014 they “found” a library of tens of thousands of volumes in their basement. This collection consists of nothing else but the books of Holocaust victims, who had deposited their personal libraries here before they were forcedly moved to yellow-star houses or deported. The leaders of the University of Jewish Studies assumed that the wide media coverage of the “find” would help them securing government resources to finally start organizing and structuring the library. They were wrong. The fate of this scattered library illustrates the political dilemmas Hungarian Jewish organizations had to counter during the “Holocaust Memorial Year” in 2014: the government organized commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Shoah. Furthermore, it illustrates the most recent paradigm change in the memory of the Holocaust in Hungary arguing that international compliance with Holocaust remembrance can be at the same time an effective way of initiating paradigm change on the national level. It also proves that memory laws complying with the international standards can be easily hijacked. Unlike in Poland when a new law was passed denying any Polish collaboration in the Nazi occupation causing international protest in 2017, in Hungary the paradigm change has started earlier and within the already existing memory laws.