Through his recollections Péter Kutas takes us back to his childhood. He turned seven on the 15th of October 1944, the exact day of the Arrowcross Party’s rise to power. In the first part of his remembrances he relates some episodes of his family life, an orthodox Jewish family living in Budapest in the late 1940’s. The figure of „Papa” (the grandfather) appears, who is a mesgiah, that is the community’s kosher meat supervisor. „Mama” had worn a wig all her life in accordance to the orthodox religious code. (Married orthodox Jewish women do not appear with bear heads, but wear a wig, headscarf or hat.)

Diary is remembering, remembering is personal history: a precious historical source. The methods of its historical elaboration is often defined: the author presents history through his personal experiences, from a peculiar perspective.

On the one hand it is something precious: history is put together from human stories and the result is history with flesh and blood characters participating, acting, suffering in it. These flesh-and-blood people are not the least different from the students and teachers present at the lesson.

In October 2004 some graduate students of the Lauder Javne School started to read the diary of a 17-year-old boy. The author of the diary - similarly to the readers - was the student of a high school in Budapest - but that was 60 years ago. The diary, written on lined sheets of paper, is the account of László Kiss, having returned from Auschwitz at the age of 17 in April 1945, about what had happened to him and his family in the previous year, in the year which is known as the most sorrowful period of Hungarian history and of the Hungarian Jewry

Diary is remembering, remembering is personal history: a precious historical

source. The methods of its historical elaboration is often defined: the author

presents history through his personal experiences, from a peculiar perspective.

On the one hand it is something precious: history is put together from human

stories and the result is history with flesh and blood characters participating,

acting, suffering in it. These flesh-and-blood people are not the least different

from the students and teachers present at the lesson.