Project Manager
Pedersen, DanielProject manager
Stockholm UniversityAmount granted
102 917 SEKYear
2016
The title of the project is the opening of a small card found along the railroad tracks in Jászberény. It is a couple of parents writing to their son to tell him that they are on the train to be deported. The card was thrown from the carriage and someone found it on the embankment. A card the son finally got in his hand through a kind fellow human being. Today it can be found in the Tomas Kertész collection, which documents Jewish life in the Hungarian town of Jászberény with over a thousand photographs, interviews and other materials (dolls, documents, etc.). The archive is the result of 20 years of work collected by Kertész (a librarian at Stockholm University) and constitutes an enormous documentation of Jewish life in Jászberény up to and including the Holocaust. Both the town and the life of its Jewish population form a mirror, a kind of micro-history showing the whole tragic fate of Hungarian Jewry, but also the multicultural life that was typical of many towns in Central Europe before the Second World War. The book recounts the fate of some families. Some survive, others escape or go into hiding. However, most are murdered by the Nazis. By linking the fates of a few families, you will be able to see how families' lives are turned upside down by Nazi racial policies and deportations. The book will have five main chapters presenting the background of the different families and a final chapter introducing Kertész himself and his work in creating this unique collection.