Torn Cobwebs of Memory: Interweaving Film and Fiction in Post-Franco Spain and Post-Communist Hungary, Shifting Narratives of the Holocaust and Dictatorship in the Wake of Political Transition to Democracy

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dc.contributor.advisorGarcía-Caro, Pedro
dc.contributor.authorSerfozo, Eva
dc.date.accessioned2020-02-27T22:40:20Z
dc.date.available2020-02-27T22:40:20Z
dc.date.issued2020-02-27
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation examines discourses on the memories of both the Holocaust and of the national dictatorships in Spain (1939-1975) and Hungary (1949-1990). In both post-dictatorial societies, the narrative shift about the dictatorial past occurs simultaneously with the re-emergence on the narratives of the Holocaust. I analyze the narrative strategies of memoirs, historical novels, and biographical films (biopics) produced between 1964 and 2014, drawing on concepts of multidirectional and palimpsestic memory, developed by Michael Rothberg and Max Silverman. Through these recollections similar patterns of avoidance and silence can be observed in the two regions. The frequent framing of memories in terms of “us” and “them” suggests that memory discourses remain nationalized and that mental walls survive both within and across nations. “In A Cobweb: Europe as a Hostile Space in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sepharad (2001)” looks at life-stories of “uprootedness” from all across Europe. The Spanish narrator passively relays the accounts of persecution during the Holocaust and Stalinism. His position of ‘outsider’ mirrors the dominant Spanish discourse of neutrality during WWII. “Buchenwald Memoirs, When Living Memory Becomes History: Jorge Semprún and Imre Kertész”, connects the works of a Hungarian Jew and a non-Jewish Spanish resistance fighter. Analyzing their first literary productions along their reflexive works three decades later highlights the different narratives on the Holocaust during and after the dictatorships. “Empty Photo Frames and Giant Posters” brings together Javier Cercas’s The Impostor and Alice Zeniter’s Gloomy Sunday, two multigenerational novels that depict the quest of two protagonists to learn about the past of their ancestors. The well-kept family secrets symbolize how the new democracies failed to come to terms with the legacies of a grim past. Competing Narratives of Heroism in rescuing Hungarian Jews: The films Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man (2002) and the Angel of Budapest (2011) demonstrates the process of constructing a national Holocaust hero. The two films have identical plots, both narrate the rescue activities of the Spanish legation in Budapest during 1944, albeit with different leading heroes. By emphasizing the rescuers’ actions, these films seek to mask the complicity of Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy in the Holocaust.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1794/25298
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Oregon
dc.rightsAll Rights Reserved.
dc.subjectHolocaust in Hungaryen_US
dc.subjectImre Kerteszen_US
dc.subjectJavier Cercasen_US
dc.subjectPost-Communist Hungaryen_US
dc.subjectPost-Franco Spainen_US
dc.subjectSpain and the Holocausten_US
dc.titleTorn Cobwebs of Memory: Interweaving Film and Fiction in Post-Franco Spain and Post-Communist Hungary, Shifting Narratives of the Holocaust and Dictatorship in the Wake of Political Transition to Democracy
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
thesis.degree.disciplineDepartment of Romance Languages
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Oregon
thesis.degree.leveldoctoral
thesis.degree.namePh.D.

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