Abstract
The geography and the semiotics of Holocaust memorials in Budapest reflect two types of displacement: symbolic displacement, whereby messages are blurred through unstable or undefined meanings; and material displacement, whereby the signifiers themselves (the monuments) are made difficult to grasp (to see) because they change place, are exiled, or are placed out of sight. Displacement is the defining feature of what I call here the ‘wandering memorial’, sign and signifier of a radically ambivalent collective memory. This chapter contributes to the volume’s discussion on negative events by offering a systematic taxonomy of forms of silence, denial, and ambivalence—paradoxical forms of memory work that are at once about erasure and remembrance.
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Notes
- 1.
See for example https://web.archive.org/web/20130522223832/http://jewish.hu/view.php?clabel=zsinagogak.
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Acknowledgements
While the author is solely responsible for the contents of this chapter, the text greatly benefitted from the work and feedback from several scholars and students. Thanks are due especially to Michael Miller and László Munteán for their generous and attentive readings, comments, and corrections. Grateful thanks to Greta Szüveges and Borbála Klacsmann for their expert assistance with Hungarian sources; to Kata Varsányi and Márton Szarvas for help with field work. Thanks to Olivette Otele, Luisa Gandolfo, and Yoav Galai, the editors, for their suggestions and work on the text.
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Kowalski, A. (2021). The Wandering Memorial: Figures of Ambivalence in Hungarian Holocaust Memorialization. In: Otele, O., Gandolfo, L., Galai, Y. (eds) Post-Conflict Memorialization. Memory Politics and Transitional Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54887-2_11
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