Painful Beginnings: Reconstruction of Jewish Communities after the Holocaust - Prof.András Kovács
The keynote address explores the enduring trauma faced by Holocaust survivors, reflecting on the paradox of remembering and transmitting the irreproducible and incommunicable experience of the concentration camps to future generations.
Survivors of concentration camps in Central Europe faced unique and compounding challenges. Upon returning home, they often discovered that their entire families had been annihilated. They encountered devastated communities, looted properties, and pervasive hostility.
Despite the abolition of anti-Jewish laws and initial promises of restitution, the political and social systems in post-war Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia failed to deliver meaningful justice. In Czechoslovakia, government decrees labeled a significant portion of surviving Jews as ‘nationally unreliable,’ classifying them as ‘German’ on linguistic grounds and denying them property and citizenship rights. In Poland, societal resistance to returning confiscated Jewish property culminated in anti-Jewish violence. Similarly, in Hungary, restitution laws were inconsistently enforced, and fear of societal backlash discouraged many survivors from reclaiming their property. The lecture underscores how antisemitism, both latent and explicit, shaped post-war policies and social attitudes.
Ultimately, the lecture illustrates the enduring legacy of Holocaust trauma, as survivors carried the physical and emotional scars for the rest of their lives. It concludes with the haunting observation of Primo Levi: ‘I am back in the camp again, and nothing outside the camp holds any truth.’
