Elhallgatott holocaust [antikvár]

JÚLIA FABÉNYI FOREWORD "Capital and Fascism are betrothed. And this your only intimation." ATTILA JÓZSEF, 1931 Who needs the 20th century? Would anyone buy a hundred years, even at a discount, if they had to be taken as a whole? Or maybe they would be bought and the clever owner would make sure only the best periods get back onto the markét, those of beauty, carefreeness and prosperity - would these in turn find their circuitous ways to evil, wars, a hundred shoas, necessarily generated by their own happiness, sanctified by the law of dialectic? I think they would, unavoidably. The 20th century is on sale, but only as a whole, with Ady, Thomas Mann, Stephan George and Attila József. And you would alsó get Trianon, the Great Depression, Hitler, Stalin, Rákosi, the British and the Dutch crown, Swiss banks and terrorism, two world wars and Serbia. And bonus accessories, penicillin and eugenics, the atomic bomb and space research. Or has it been sold yet, and nothing is what it seems? The intellectual edifice of the 20th century is to last, just as we cannot forget its greatest madness, the dream of perfecting man, which in the workshop of demagogy was turnéd into a lethal weapon. Almost six millión people were killed because their skulls failed to conform to a 14-point mock-scientific system. And that was sixty years ago, the time of a generation. Science readily assisted, as did capital, and war, a sure formula to generate capital. We are now remembering - but will it last a day, a month or a year? Is remembering or forgetting our goal? There is no real forgetting, memories merely transform. And the question, Christ or Barabbas, will not even be asked now? Barabbas has fixed it, the ignorant crowd need not clamour. The high audience of the audience are a single-minded lot. There aren't too many of them, but they are efficient. They should not be underestimated. Is the 20th century on sale? No, unfortunately it isn't, you must bear it and be aware of it, because we will run out of good and evil, and even the guy will be missing from the brink of the ravine, who would dangle his feet and snicker over the current joke on raciai cleanliness, with his fourteen points of perfection. The aim of the exhibition is to remember an unmistakable, complex event, which seems a condensation of the horrors of the 20th century, the Holocaust. Sixty years after the event we have patterns which have grown out of the past in organic ways, and if we remove the historical fact, what cannot be amended, and what lead to and from it, we see these patterns are nightmarish memories congealed into metaphors. We invited contemporary artists to reveal all these living patterns, which give out the edifice of the Holocaust, we asked them to stir the audience and make them conscious of the mentái and spiritual processes of the victims and the murderers, to unear+h the still valid subjects ofthe past. Our voice is loud enough, our language simple, intelligible and modern, our diction varied and multifarious. We can assume the position of the involved, that of the victim and the murderer, try it on with minimai risk, should our everyday existence or history fail to offer opportunities for the experience. Inspired by the whole community's need to take responsibility for all the victims of the Holocaust, this exhibition sought to collect documents and works of art which can represent and convey to a contemporary audience what it is to understand what happened, to place the memory of a long-past genocide into a contemporary context, to initiate a dialogue. The message ofthe exhibition includes as an imperative the need to feel responsible for all victims. Anniversaries never ask what age it is, while the ages interpret the anniversaries according to their own taste, now tolerantly, now remorselessly. The Splintering into intellectual parties does not absolve us from the obligation of engaging in group dialogues, from the intellectual acknowledgement of the Holocaust. The exhibition is the result of teamwork, the close cooperation of curators and artists. The major organizing ideas constantly altered during work, new content was added all the time. This organic mode of development, we are confident, has contributed to the authenticity of the exhibition. It speaks to the contemporary audience honestly, agitates them, raises a consciousness of danger in them, involves the present as its subject. All individuals and institutions we approached were greatly helpful, lending documents, works of art and good advice. Our special thanks are due to Ágnes Bakos, Dr. Gyöngyi Erdei, Peter Breuer, (BTM - Budapest Historical Museum), Julianna Gál (OSZK - National Library), Tamás Kieselbach, Éva Román and Tibor Sándor (FSZEK - Metropolitan Library) and József Schweizer Chief Rabbi of Hungary. We must thank our supporters for the special support, and every visitor and commentator for bringing the exhibition to life.