The Past is not Past

How do we remember the past? And what do we forget? This part-history, part-memoir examines how Hungarians and Austrians living along their common border remember, distort, and forget episodes marking the tumultuous twentieth century, including world wars, the Holocaust, the Iron Curtain, the migration crisis and more.

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«A unique, invaluable, and potent reminder that the past shapes the future and yet all the while is being rewritten and reinterpreted.»


(Dr. Dennis Deletant, OBE, Emeritus Professor, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London)





«Points out on almost every page that the past always reappears; the fate of the victims, their persecutors and descendants is intertwined in one way or another.»


(Dr. Péter Krausz, Chairman, Jewish Roots in Győr Foundation)





«Returning to his parents’ home country, the author uncovers the history of the Austrian-Hungarian border region. He works through layers of truth and falsification, and gives a fascinating insight into the history of this region»


(Dr. Erwin A. Schmidl, retired director of the Institute of Strategy and Security Policy of the Austrian National Defense Academy, president of the Austrian Commission of Military History)


How do we remember the past? What do we choose to remember? And, just as important, what has been forgotten and erased from public memory, and where do we find the erased and forgotten reminders of the wrenching events that defined the twentieth century?


This book examines how Hungarians and Austrians living along their common border remember, distort, forget, and ignore episodes marking recent times, among them World War I, the collapse of the Habsburg empire, postwar instability, the Treaty of Trianon, World War II and the Holocaust, removal of ethnic Germans, the Iron Curtain and 1956 revolution, the end of Soviet rule, and the post-1989 migration crisis. The book examines the shaping of memory, both public and private, of this tumultuous century of upheaval, including war, revolution, systematic theft, and murder, along with changes in political regimes, national borders, and demographics.





The author draws on fifteen years of travel in the borderlands from his home in Győr, the largest city in the region, along with published sources and conversations with residents. Part social history and part memoir, this highly illustrated book contains sixteen maps and sixty illustrations to help readers find the answers.