Justice et vengeance ? : Un appel à la responsabilité intellectuelle des écrivains survivants du Progrès (1945-1947)

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Justice or vengeance ?Thanks to the Kastner train, the Hungarian writer Béla Zsolt made it to Switzerland. He then chose to go back to Hungary in the summer of 1945. Amidst the ruins of the capital of the new “democratic” Hungary, which was occupied by the Soviets, he started a weekly by the name of Haladás (The Progress). He did so on behalf of the Radical party, which is to say the Hungarian left-minded bourgeois liberals, but he also involved friends with Socialist convictions. Together with a number of like-minded intellectuals, many of whom were survivors, Zsolt shaped a utopian liberal Hungary, which had very little chance of being reflected in the historical trends in place on the eve of the Cold War. This article examines the journal’s criticism of another group of writers, the népiek, during its first two years of existence. The attitudes of most of the népiek, from the passing of the first anti-Jewish law to the extermination period, were practically indifferent at best, if not supportive. The much-expected purges among the intellectual class never really took place in Hungary and the biased promotion of certain népiek during the postwar period both enraged and paralyzed the intellectuals associated with The Progress. A lonely voice in the postwar literary milieu, the journal called for an examination of Hungarian intellectuals’ share of responsibility in the extermination of their fellow Jewish citizens. That call would barely be heard and the debate would be put to an end in 1948.