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Facing the Holocaust in Budapest pp 209–254Cite as

The Thaw?

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Abstract

The title of this chapter requires an explanation. ‘The Thaw’ was the title given by Ilya Ehrenburg to his 1956 socio-political analysis of life in Soviet society during the period of the Stalin cult. In society as in nature a thaw is not a simple, easy and harmonious process taking place uniformly and without conflicts. At times during the thawing period, heavy clouds appear and sudden storms blow up. In the light of the government statement announcing improvements and changes in the ghettos and camps, a thaw was expected in the situation of the Hungarian Jews. Without denying the positive aspects of this ‘thaw’, I nevertheless found it necessary to add a question mark to the title of the chapter, because heavy clouds darkened the scene in this case too.

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Endnotes

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  1. Tel Aviv, Israel

    Arieh Ben-Tov

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© 1988 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Ben-Tov, A. (1988). The Thaw?. In: Facing the Holocaust in Budapest. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6935-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6935-8_9

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