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3 books match the query 'Kunt, Gergely'

cover of Diaries by Jewish and Christian Adolescents: Reconstructing the Social Reality of Pre- and Post-Holocaust Hungary

Diaries by Jewish and Christian Adolescents

Reconstructing the Social Reality of Pre- and Post-Holocaust Hungary

Gergely Kunt

Central European University Press, 2027

Based on twenty published and manuscript diaries written by Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents during wartime Hungary, this book provides an unprecedented microhistorical perspective on how young people observed, interpreted, and internalized the profound social and political upheavals of the late 1930s through the 1950s. These diaries—often discovered by chance and preserved against all odds—reveal not only personal struggles with identity, belief and belonging, but also troubling reflections of prevailing social attitudes, including complicity, silence and, at times, approval toward the persecution of their peers. Through intimate narrative details and marginalia—from doodles to worn pages—the text reconstructs the emotional and intellectual worlds of teenagers who witnessed history unfolding around them. An unsettling yet essential contribution to Holocaust studies, social history and memory research, it challenges contemporary readers to confront the disquieting mirror held up by youth living through one of Hungary’s darkest eras.
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cover of Diaries by Jewish and Christian Adolescents: Reconstructing the Social Reality of Pre- and Post-Holocaust Hungary

Diaries by Jewish and Christian Adolescents

Reconstructing the Social Reality of Pre- and Post-Holocaust Hungary

Gergely Kunt

Central European University Press, 2027

Based on twenty published and manuscript diaries written by Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents during wartime Hungary, this book provides an unprecedented microhistorical perspective on how young people observed, interpreted, and internalized the profound social and political upheavals of the late 1930s through the 1950s. These diaries—often discovered by chance and preserved against all odds—reveal not only personal struggles with identity, belief and belonging, but also troubling reflections of prevailing social attitudes, including complicity, silence and, at times, approval toward the persecution of their peers. Through intimate narrative details and marginalia—from doodles to worn pages—the text reconstructs the emotional and intellectual worlds of teenagers who witnessed history unfolding around them. An unsettling yet essential contribution to Holocaust studies, social history and memory research, it challenges contemporary readers to confront the disquieting mirror held up by youth living through one of Hungary’s darkest eras.
[more]
cover of The Children’s Republic of Gaudiopolis: The History and Memory of a Children’s Home for Holocaust and War Orphans (1945–1950)

The Children’s Republic of Gaudiopolis

The History and Memory of a Children’s Home for Holocaust and War Orphans (1945–1950)

Gergely Kunt

Central European University Press, 2022

Gaudiopolis (The City of Joy) was a pedagogical experiment that operated in a post–World War II orphanage in Budapest. This book tells the story of this children’s republic that sought to heal the wounds of wartime trauma, address prejudice and expose the children to a firsthand experience of democracy. The children were educated in freely voicing their opinions, questioning authority, and debating ideas.

The account begins with the saving of hundreds of Jewish children during the Siege of Budapest by the Lutheran minister Gábor Sztehlo together with the International Red Cross. After describing the everyday life and practices of self-rule in the orphanage that emerged from this rescue operation, the book tells how the operation of the independent children’s home was stifled after the communist takeover and how Gaudiopolis was disbanded in 1950.

The book then discusses how this attempt of democratization was erased from collective memory. The erasure began with the banning of a film inspired by Gaudiopolis. The Communist Party financed Somewhere in Europe in 1947 as propaganda about the construction of a new society, but the film’s director conveyed a message of democracy and tolerance instead of adhering to the tenets of socialist realism. The book breaks the subsequent silence on “The City of Joy,” which lasted until the fall of the Iron Curtain and beyond.

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