Margit Izsáki/y's A Nation Crucified (1945) in the Context of Her Contradictory Political Identities

Abstract

As I wrote in the previous issue of this journal about Lili Fehér's 1945 memoir, no immediate post-World War female memoirists entered into the Hungarian Holocaust canon. My goal is to enhance our appreciation of the range and complexity of the testimony provided by such female life writing, as a gender-centered reading of these marginalized histories can provide insights into how gender inflects the traumatic experiences of wartime. Here I discuss Margit Izsáki, Ország a keresztfán ['A Country Crucified/ A Nation on the Cross'], also written in1945.  Both Fehér and Izsáki wrote about what transpired primarily in wartime Budapest during 1944. But while Fehér wrote about her personal experiences, Izsáki wrote in the tone of an outsider eyewitness in a journalistic tone, mostly about the tragic fate of others, Jews and gentiles, but about her own life she wrote only in the third person and in a purposefully obfuscated matter. Beyond analyzing the wartime narratives Izsáki wrote, I have also tried to reconstruct at least fragments of her life and gendered self-identity, from her origins in Budapest's Inner Erzsébetváros, to Transylvanian actress, author's wife, rightist journalist, documentarian of wartime atrocities, and, finally, to postwar communist editor of a woman's magazine. This article is meant to be read in conjunction with the earlier piece on Fehér.