“Where is my grandfather?” A Family History of the Holocaust in Hungary

• Vorträge & Diskussionsrunden

Online!

Holocaust Memorial Lecture 2025

Judit Kárpáti, Louis Wörner and Tim Cole

The Institute for the History of the German Jews in Hamburg, the Wiener Holocaust Library London and the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester are pleased to co-host a virtual event for Holocaust Memorial Day 2025. The event is organised in response to the 2025 HMD theme ‘For a Better Future’.

80 years after the Holocaust in Hungary, we are still confronted with gaps in our historical understanding of the violent events. The names and fates of tens of thousands of Jews deported and murdered by the Nazis and their allies are unknown. This uncertainty troubles many surviving families. As we become the generations who carry forward the legacy of the witnesses and remember those who were murdered, more and more descendants embark on the quest to reconstruct their family histories of the Holocaust.

Hungarian writer and journalist Judit Kárpáti will speak about her mission to find out what happened to her grandfather – a mission that is orientated towards the future. The Nazis deported László Schächter from Hungary in 1944 and deployed him for forced labour in camps in Northern Germany where he perished. Judit will reflect on the importance of history for her own family as well as for society at large in conversation with historian Louis Wörner, active in memorial initiatives in Hamburg and researcher in the project ‘Digital Commemoration and Research Infrastructure: The Holocaust in Hungary 80 Years Later’. Tim Cole, Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol, will contextualise this family history with the Holocaust in Hungary and the deportations.

Speakers:

Judit Kárpáti. At the age of eight, the writer and journalist Judit Kárpáti created her first newspaper to support the Polish Solidarity movement Solidarno. Turning 50, she learned that her great-grandfather was Polish. As a contrast to the communist everyday reality of her childhood, she grew up in a home filled with French chansons, jazz, and classical music, with French culture remaining a defining influence in her life. She studied international relations at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and later worked as a PR expert for various corporations, including the largest Hungarian film distributor. For the past 18 years, she has been a freelance PR specialist, podcaster, and writer. She is a columnist for Magyar Narancs, Hungary’s leading socio-political and cultural weekly, known for pioneering gonzo journalism. For the past two years, she has been researching the life stories of her Central European Jewish and non-Jewish ancestors to be published in a forthcoming book. In her investigation for her Holocaust-victim paternal grandfather's fate, she publishes parts of her findings on her personal story combined with exchanges on the history of the Holocaust she had with survivors, historians, archivists and other experts in Poland, Slovakia and Germany.

Tim Cole is Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol in the UK. His research ranges across social, cultural, environmental and landscape histories, with a particular interest in the Holocaust and its memory. He is the author and editor of a number of books that include a study of ghettoization in Budapest (Holocaust City, 2003), a socio-spatial history of the Holocaust in Hungary (Traces of the Holocaust, 2011) and books on geographies of the Holocaust (Geographies of the Holocaust, 2014; Holocaust Landscapes, 2016). Tim is currently co-writing a book on the role of monuments in democracies, as well as working on digital humanities projects related to the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Louis Wörner studied History at the University of Hamburg. As a historian and activist, he deals with the history and remembrance of Nazism and forced labour in northern Germany. In 2017, together with other activists, he founded the Initiative Dessauer Ufer which campaigns for the preservation of Lagerhaus G, the site of one of Neuengamme's largest subcamps in the city of Hamburg, and fights for a memorial to forced labour in Hamburg. He also works as a guide in the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. As a historian, he contributes the EU-funded transnational research and remembrance project ‘Digital Commemoration and Research Infrastructure: The Holocaust in Hungary 80 Years Later’ (HUNGMEM). A cooperation of the Institute for the History of the German Jews with partner institutions in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, the project aims to build a digital memorial and research infrastructure to commemorate those who were deported from Hungary from 1944 onwards. Louis Wörner researches deportees from Hungary in the Neuengamme concentration camp and its subcamps and in the process also came across the story of László Schächter.

The event will be held on Zoom. Please register here.

The event will be recorded. If you would like to ask a question during the event, please type your question into the chat function, and we will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Your webcam will not be seen during this event.