At the end of the 19th century, after a long domination by Austria, Hungary was emerging as a modern state. As a country with a diversity of ethnic and regional groupings -- of not just Hungarians, but also, for example, Jews, Germans, Slavs, Rumanians, and Romas-- great emphasis was being placed on establishing a distinct and unifying identity for the Hungarian nation, with its own history, language, and culture.

Its capital Budapest was expanding rapidly. Grandiose modern building were rising, trams and metro lines were being laid out, vast new neighborhoods and industrial centers were being built. Jews constituted about a quarter of the city's population. They were a prosperous, largely assimilated community that sought to be an integral part of this new Hungarian nation. Their bourgeoisie played a prominent role in industrial and financial circles, and Jewish intellectuals, rejecting Zionism, were in the forefront of those promoting the awareness of Hungarian culture. In particular, they strongly encouraged the elevation of Magyar from local dialect to national language, starting the first Magyar newspapers and printing houses.

During the Second World War about two-thirds of Hungarian Jewry were killed by the Nazis. Of those who survived, many emigrated in the post-war years, especially after the failed anti-communist uprising of 1956. The idea, so prominent before the war, that Jews could have an equal place in a pluralistic Hungarian nation, was difficult to sustain in the post-Holocaust context. Hungary was now a communist state and as such opposed the retention of a distinct Jewish identity and culture, while in the West the consensus was that only through Zionism could there be a future for the Jewish people.

As Hungary now emerges from years of communist rule, the country is undergoing a modest, if unequal, economic revival. Few Jews remain in Budapest and the grand Hungarian Jewish culture of the past is no more. Yet still to this day many of those recognized as the greatest Hungarian writers and poets were of Jewish origin.

* "Absent Memories" is a term refered to by Ulrich Baer in his essay To Give Memory a Place: Holocaust Photography and the Landscape Tradition, pubished in Spectral Evidence; The Photography of Trauma (MIT Press, 2002.) The text overlays in these photographs are derived from the Hungarian translation of this text, as published in issue 37 - 38 of Enigma (Budapest, 2003). Other text overlays are derived from poems by Miklos Radnoti, one of Hungary's greatest poets, who died in the Holocuast.