Shaping the Memory of the Role Played by the Catholic Church in Hungary during the Holocaust

• In Event: Remains of the Past: The Catholic Church in the Communist Regimes of East Central Europe I

Abstract

In the period of political and social reconstruction that followed World War II, the Hungarian Catholic Church placed a high priority on maintaining and demonstrating its credibility, both domestically and internationally. In response to various attacks and accusations of collaboration and complicity that emerged as early as 1945-1947, the Church sought to shape a more appropriate memory of its attitude during the Second World War and the Holocaust. Drawing on documents from the Vatican archives and the archives of the Primate of Esztergom, the presentation will explore the history of this activity aimed at shaping the memory of the Church's recent past. It will focus on the process of producing an English-language publication in 1946 of relevant speeches by the Hungarian Primate Justinian Serédi, who died in the spring of 1945, and a volume edited by Antal Meszlényi in 1947 on "The Hungarian Catholic Church and the Protection of Human Rights".
The paper contributes to ongoing debates on the Catholic Church/Pius XII and the Holocaust. The paper's central argument is that the dominant narratives of the politics of memory that have subsequently characterised historiographical debates emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Critics of the Church sought primarily to highlight its failures to act on behalf of the persecuted, while the Church emphasised its role in saving lives and condemning racist ideology.

Author

• András Tamás Fejérdy, ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities (Hungary)