Review Article: The Saddest History Ever Written: On Randolph L. Braham’s "The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary" (2013)

Only in 1989, after forty-five years of Soviet domination, could the Holocaust in Hungary begin to be discussed openly and honestly. One scholar in particular, the author – editor of this mammoth geographical encyclopedia, Randolph L. Braham, has devoted his life and career to uncovering the truth about what happened within the borders of Hungary and the annexed territories. Since 1961 he has written or edited, co-authored or co-edited more than fifty books on the Holocaust. The masterful two-volume Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (1994) appeared to be his definitive statement. But now, with a team of Hungarian Holocaust scholars and journalists, he uncovers, with maps and photos, how the Holocaust was implemented within each and every city, town, and village of every one of the forty-one counties in wartime Hungary.