Historian defends the House of Fates
October 11th, 2018A historian who helped devise the House of Fates project four years ago writes that the controversy around the exhibition, which will be devoted to the memory of Holocaust child victims, is an expression of emotions rather than facts.
On 24.hu, András Gerő, a professor of History at Central European University and director of the government-sponsored Habsburg History Institute, argues that the House of Fates project will boost resilience to anti-Semitism and spread knowledge about the Holocaust, therefore the fierce opposition organized against it by intellectuals at home and abroad is irrational and counter-productive. The Museum should have been inaugurated four years ago, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Hungarian Holocaust, and Gerő criticizes the government for freezing the project in response to international pressure. ‘I have rarely seen such inconsistency on the part of a government’, he writes. Gerő explains that the planned exhibition will be mainly targeted at the younger generations and is intended to explain to them in a way they can understand the fate of the tens of thousands of innocent children murdered in 1944. After the visit they can research all aspects of the Holocaust and its antecedents in the adjacent documentation centre. The House of Fates complex will also include an educational centre where students will attend classes and where teachers will be offered specialized training on Holocaust subjects. Gerő hopes that this time the project will not be suspended. The editors of the left-wing site invite readers to contribute to the debate.
Tags: House of Fates