Paul Hanebrink

I come away from this book with clinched teeth, as Hanebrink examines the process by which traditional religious and social elites in Hungary tried to exploit upset with the evolution of a modern society and anger with the outcome of World War I by calling for a "Christian" Hungary that would secure traditional social privileges. Over time, this blazed a path that led from the marginalization of the Jewish population of Hungary to enabling the genocide of Hungary's Jews. What makes this book such hard reading is not just the selfishness of those who laid the foundations for disaster, but that current political leaders in Hungary seem to be flirting with comparable concepts. Speaking as a man whose grandfather came from Budapest, save me from Hungarian victimhood; like all other victimhoods nothing good came of it.

A particular virtue of the book is that Hanebrink does a fine job of examining the policy and philosophical distinctions between the Catholic and the Calvinist intelligentsia of Hungary, as they tried to come up with a concept of "Christian" Hungary where the one would have predominance over the other in the process of marginalizing Jews, progressives, unionists and the like.… (más)