How do we remember the past?  What do we choose to remember?  And, just as important, what has been erased from public memory?  Where do we find these erasures, the “forgotten” remnants of the wrenching events that defined the 20th century?  The Past is not Past (A múlt nem múlt el) examines the ways that Hungarians and Austrians on both sides of their common border remember, distort, forget, and ignore the wrenching events that mark the generally horrible century.  These episodes and developments include World War I, the collapse of the Habsburg empire and postwar political instability, the Treaty of Trianon, World War II and the Holocaust, removal of ethnic Germans, the Iron Curtain and the 1956 revolution, the end of Soviet rule, and the post-1989 migration crisis.  Based on fifteen years of travel throughout the borderlands from the author’s home in Győr, the largest city in the region, as well as on published sources and conversations with residents, the book–part travelguide, part social history, and part memoir—addresses these questions.  Fifteen maps and more than 140 illustrations help readers find the answers.

The book is available for purchase at the Holocaust Memorial Centre ticket office. For more information, please contact: kommunikacio@hdke.hu