Suppressed

This book that accompanied the exhibition of National Széchényi Library Suppressed. The Era of Persecution and National Széchényi Library is more than a simple catalogue of the 2014 event, as it is shown by the subtitle Studies on the Holocaust and its historical antecedents. The preface by the editor of the volume historian Gábor Ujváry is followed by three studies that help us understand the historical period between the two world wars: the causes and events that led to growing anti-Semitism, the anti-Jewish laws and their consequences in the Hungarian intellectual life, including the ban of newspapers and the destruction of books of Jewish authors. The essay by academic Ignác Romsics (Jewry and Anti-Semitism in the Horthy Era) analyses the situation of Jews in Hungary between the two world wars, and the anti-Semitic sentiments of that time with their internal and external causes. Gábor Ujváry’s article „Curse upon all the brains that had it planned.” Memoirs of the political and intellectual elite and the Holocaust presents mainly the opinions exposed in the memoirs written after World War II about Jews and the Holocaust. The third writing by Ferenc Földesi, director of the Manuscript Collection at NSZL is about the life of one of the author’s predecessors in his work, Gábor Halász, his bond to our Library and his tragic fate.