János Pelle

János Pelle

JÁNOS PELLE (Budapest, 1950) completed his degree in Hungarian and French at the Faculty of the Humanities of ELTE University. He is a writer, journalist, and literary historian. He is a member of the faculty at the National Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest. His works on the history of anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe include Az utolsó vérvádak (The Last Blood Libels, 1995), Antiszemitizmus és totalitarizmus (Anti-Semitism and Totalitarianism, 1999), A gyûlölet vetése – A zsidótörvények és a magyar közvélemény, 1938–1944 (Sowing Hatred – the Jewish Laws and Hungarian Public Opinion, in Hungarian in 2001, in English in 2004). He has also contributed to the making of the documentary films Midôn a vér... Vérvádak a holocaust után (When the Blood... Blood Libel After the Holocaust, 1996) and Kavics a sírra (Gravel on the Grave, 1998).

WALLENBERG: MAN OF DESTINY

In Hungary, for many years after 1948, it was not possible to write or speak about Raoul Wallenberg in public. In November 1984, I broke the taboo for the fi rst time with an article entitled “The politics of saving lives”, published in the Hungarian cultural weekly Élet és Irodalom. Naturally,