“A Convinced Anti-Communist and Rabid Zionist”

Simon Wiesenthal Through the Lenses of Hungarian State Security Service Reports during the Kádár Era

Abstract

This study focuses on Simon Wiesenthal, the former head of the Zentrum für jüdische historische Dokumentation (Jewish Historical Documentation Centre), and his relations with Hungary during the Kádár era. Based on original and previously unpublished sources from the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL) and other repositories, this article examines the attitude of János Kádár’s regime toward Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal, who was under surveillance by the Hungarian State Security Services from the 1960s until the fall of communism, attracted the attention of political decision-makers not only in Hungary but also in other Eastern European countries as a leading figure in the Austrian Jewish community, though his activities aimed at exposing and bringing Nazis to justice soon came to the fore. Wiesenthal, who was also familiar with the activities of former Nazis in the countries of the Eastern Bloc, became a symbol of a new Austrian Jewish identity, but he also became more universally significant. Eastern European state-socialist countries would have preferred him to focus solely on “capitalist countries”, but Wiesenthal’s universal quest for justice made no distinction between Eastern and Western European citizens, and therefore between Eastern and Western crimes and criminals. These observations were generally expressed in the rhetoric of official anti-Zionist propaganda and the ideological language of the Eastern European regimes – in relation to Jews and Israel – which was significantly strengthened after the Six-Day War (1967) and the Polish anti-Zionist purges (1968).