Those Absent on the Great Hungarian Plain – #Memoir #History #Hungary

 

By Jill Culiner (Guest Blogger)

In 1999, I was in Budapest, preparing a photographic exhibition about the vanished Jews of Eastern Europe, when I heard about the Kunmadaras pogrom: In May 1946, Holocaust survivors were accused of kidnapping Christian children and using their blood for kosher sausage. Grabbing iron bars, garden tools, any weapon they could find, the town's residents went on a rampage, murdering Jews and pillaging their homes and businesses

How could such an absurd accusation have been levelled after the war? I was determined to discover the answer.

When I arrived in Kunmadaras, I was accepted by a group of friendly locals who hung around the local watering hole run by blowsy Ildikó — Tarzan, the black marketer and corrupt night watchman; Udo, the Austrian who preferred Hungarian women to his wife; Kata, the eternal party girl; hard-drinking Karcsi; and the brutal Ibolya. And although no one seemed to resent my questioning, all denied having any knowledge of the pogrom.

Settling in the neighbouring village of Tiszaörs, I soon discovered that village society was a unique but uneasy mix of former communists, dispossessed nobles, expropriated peasants, German retirees, black marketers, former members of the Hitler Youth Movement, and Hungarians who had returned after communism ended.

I began looking for traces of the vanished local Jewish community. And I discovered that, although Jews had lived here for hundreds of years and had arrived in the country alongside the Magyar tribes in the 9^th century, the villagers denied their existence. Therefore, I became more determined to question, listen, observe, to ferret out the truth about the pogrom and the Jews who were so strikingly absent.

Living on the Hungarian Great Plain was a remarkable experience, and carrying out an investigation, much as an amateur detective would, allowed me to step into the country’s history. Therefore, Those Absent on the Great Hungarian Plain is a blend of history, traditions, local happenings, rumour, love stories, and prejudices. And I hope I have portrayed, with empathy, people who, often caught in political conflicts, are pawns in a global one.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xa1aiVkiT4

Purchase links: https://books2read.com/GreatPlain

Those Absent on the Great Hungarian Plain

A Hungarian village on the Great Plain: a microcosm reflecting this country’s history from early tribal invasion, to Soviet subordination, to European Community membership. Here, peasants, herders, party girls, former nazis and lapsed communists share gossip as well as love stories; and unscrupulous leaders, totalitarian or freely elected, decide behaviour. And while fully embracing the new consumer society, there remains one constant: hatred of the long-vanished rural Jew.

Reviews

Those Absent is a fascinating literary journey, exposing anecdotes of rural life and anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century to modern days. An intriguing and frank investigation of the region’s daily life, its common beliefs and rarely mentioned truths. Highly recommended.

~ Mel Cederbaum, Executive Director, Toronto Workmen’s Circle

An incredibly evocative book about the lost Jews of Hungary, part history, part detective story, part personal memoir, it brings to life a cast of characters fitting for a Dickensian novel, deals with the fallibility of memory, with the nature of prejudice and persecution, and with the past as both history and fiction.

~ Dr Michael Talalay, Writer, Lecturer, Regents University London

Jill Culiner recounts her relentless six year search for the truth about the fate of the Jews who returned from the Nazi death camps. Part memoir, part travelogue, part history, part elegy, this multi-layered homage to the Great Hungarian Plain embraces its majesty and tragedy at virtually the last possible moment.

~ Robin Roger, Psychotherapist, Writer, Reviewer

The long history of hatred toward the Jews combined with the exploitation and misery of the peasants have forged Hungarian identity. Jill Culiner’s Central Europe is plagued by the same demons that led to the tragedies of the past century.

~ Dr Marcel Calvez, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Rennes, France

In a narrative of village life, coarse xenophobia and cruelty contrast with acceptance, friendship and laughter. The horror of the past is concealed, yet Culiner finds compassion in human failure.

~ Penny-Lynn Cookson, Art Historian, Writer

Listen to sample chapters

https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner/2-those-absent-on-the-great-hungarian-plain-tarzan-udo-and-the-russians

https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner/those-absent-on-the-great-hungarian-plain-the-hungarian-count

About the Author

Born in New York, raised in Toronto, Jill Culiner, writer, social critical artist, and photographer has spent most of her life in France, England, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, Holland, and North Africa. Her photographic exhibition about the First and Second World Wars, La Mémoire Effacée, toured France, Canada, and Hungary under the auspices of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and UNESCO. Her non-fiction, Finding Home in the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers won the Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum Prize for Canadian Jewish History and was shortlisted for the ForeWord Magazine Award. Her biography of a nineteenth-century rebel Yiddish poet and singer, A Contrary Journey with Velvel Zbarzher, Bard, was published by Claret Press in 2022.

She presently lives in a 400-year-old inn in France that is so chaotic and strange, it has been classified as a museum. (http://www.jill-culiner.com)

Author links: https://linktr.ee/jillculiner

Web site: https://www.jillculiner-writer.com

Blog: https://jewish-histories.over-blog.com

Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner