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Since we will visit two cities and learn about two very different Jewish cultures and histories, we have chosen two short books for required reading for the 2025 Centropa Summer Academy: "A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life", by György (George) Konrad and "Götz and Meyer", by David Albahari.
To the extent that you can, we request you purchase from independent bookstores.
A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life, by György (George) Konrad—novelist, dissident, activist.
Published as two separate books in Europe (Departure and Return in 2001, and Up on a Hill During a Solar Eclipse in 2003), this book won the National Jewish Book Award in memoir/autobiography in 2007.
The English language version contains both and is titled A Guest in my Own Country.
Departure and Return covers one year of his early life in Hungary (1944-1945, the time of Nazi occupation). Up on a Hill During a Solar Eclipse and the second are reflections on his life in Hungary for 50 years after the war.
We ask everyone to read the first, Departure and Return (for the Americans, that means you need to purchase A Guest in My Own Country and read Departure and Return. Of course, you're welcome to read Up on a Hill During a Solar Eclipse, as well.
You can read more about György Konrad in this obituary written in 2019 by Centropa's director, Edward Serotta.
Götz and Meyer, by David Albahari.
In this short (168 page) stream of consciousness work of fiction, a school teacher in Belgrade muses—and practically hallucinates—as he wonders just what the two SS men who drove the infamous gas van in Belgrade talked about all day.
The father and grandmother of Centropa interviewees, Matilda and Breda Kalef, were murdered in one of those vans. An unforgettable read.
Each participant will sign up for an elective topic they will delve into and create a lesson about to bring to their students next year. Participants will be asked to read and watch materials relevant to their elective subjects prior to the Summer Academy. This could include article or book excerpts, Centropa interview excerpts, Centropa films and podcasts.
Below we have a list of recommended books, films, and podcasts, that participants might find additionally useful. While not required reading, these materials provide useful background to the history and locations you'll visit during the summer academy.
The masterwork on the Holocaust in Hungary, The Politics of Genocide, was written by Randolph Braham. The book is more than 1,200 pages and is divided into two volumes. You will be relieved that it is not required reading. This is a link to the abbreviated edition.
Although not a required reading, Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz is a remarkable novella, both wise and cynical.
Review by The Guardian (scroll down to third review)
Although not a required reading, The Circumcision by György Dalos is a remarkable novella, both wise and cynical, which we hope you will all read.
Review by The Guardian (scroll down to fourth review)
A fine history of Hungary was written by the Hungarian-born, Vienna-based broadcaster Paul Lendvai. The Hungarian novelist Tibor Fischer wrote this entertaining review of Lendvai’s The Hungarians for The Guardian (click on link below):
Review by The Guardian
If you find the time, Kati Marton wrote this entertaining book, The Great Escape: Nine Hungarians Who Escaped Hitler and Changed the World, which is an easy read through the careers of some remarkably talented Hungarian Jews, who didn’t just film the world (Michael Curtisz gave us Casablanca, Alexander Korda produced scores of films), but through Leo Szilard and Edward Teller, they could have destroyed the world through their work on the atom and hydrogen bombs)
Review by Kirkus Reviews
The remarkable story of how one Jewish boy and 400 others were protected in a "yellow star house” in Budapest during the Holocaust. The house was converted into a hospital run by Jewish doctors designed to treat everyone—even wounded enemies—free of charge. The Jewish residents were saved by a man who posed as an Arrow Cross officer and risked his own life countless times while over 70,000 Jews were being murdered at the Danube or dying in ghettos. The Yellow Star House is a story of courage, family, hope, rescue and luck.
If you have some extra time, we suggest Chernobyl Strawberries, by Vesna Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy describes growing up in Belgrade then marrying a Brit and settling into a foreign culture and language. Even though English is her third language, she’s an exquisite writer. Available in English and Serbian.
Review by The Guardian
This book is also available in English and Serbian but is long out-of-print in the US. Ernst Pawel wrote Life in Dark Ages while he was dying of cancer in the early 1990s. A German-born Jew, he fled as a teenager to Belgrade with his parents in the 1930s. The first half of this book makes for fascinating reading, and he lived in a world where German refugees sat in their Serbian hotel, “inhaling nostalgia for all they had lost and exhaling disgust thinking of their current state.”
Review by the LA Times
Kirkus Review called Götz and Meyer “brilliantly disturbing” and The Guardian called it “unimprovable.” In this short (168 page) stream of consciousness work of fiction, a school teacher in Belgrade muses—and practically hallucinates—as he wonders just what the two SS men who drove the infamous gas van talked about all day. The fact that both Breda and Matilda Kalef watched their father and grandmother being loaded into this van makes it all the more harrowing.
Gotz and Meyer is available in Serbian, English and German, and please check online bookstores in your language to see if it is available. Here is Nicholas Lezard’s stellar review in The Guardian and here is the link to the English version of the book on Amazon.
On Hungary 1956: Cry Hungary: A Revolution Remembered. This 48 minute documentary was produced by Jeremy Bennett in 1996 for BBC’s Time Watch. Highly recommended
Sunshine, by Istvan Szabo. This chronical of a Hungarian Jewish family over four generations that covers assimilation, antisemitism, and Communism. Some have praised the film. Others not. Here is an insightful review of the film by Roger Ebert http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sunshine-2000
Perhaps one of the finest documentary series made in the past half century, The Death of Yugoslavia was produced by Norma Percy for BBC in the late 1990s and covers the rise of Slobodan Milosevic, the break-up of the country and the wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia (1991-1995).
All the political players, who assumed that when they gave these interviews they’d escaped prosecution, tell the story in their own words. Which were, in time, used against many of them in the Hague war crimes trials. Click here to access each of the six parts of this series.
Bridget Kendall’s 13:00 minute podcast, Cold War: Stories from the Big Freeze, about three participants in the Budapest uprising of 1956
On the Holocaust in Hungary, we recommend Yad Vashem’s short summary
The US Holocaust Museum provides a more detailed online study and is very much worth reading
The US Holocaust Museum provides an in depth online study on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and is very much worth reading.
https://perspectives.ushmm.org/collection/the-holocaust-in-yugoslavia
