The Open Society Archives has arranged a series of programs on the occasion of the opening of the new Hungarian national exhibit, on the former site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The opening of the Hungarian exhibit in Auschwitz coincides with the sixtieth anniversary of the beginning of the deportation of the Hungarian Jews, more than four hundred and thirty thousand of whom perished in Auschwitz, the epicenter of the Holocaust.
OSA has decided to reconstruct the first two official Hungarian Auschwitz exhibits, which opened on site during the time of Communist rule in 1965 and 1980, respectively. The two exhibits, in line with the official historiography, retroactively replaced the Jewish inmates with communist anti-fascist resistors in the camps; the Jews had been killed in Auschwitz, and their traces were lost subsequently. The exhibition intends to reveal the secret the Communist presentations wanted to hide: the mutual fear, suspicion, paranoia, the inability of the East-Central European societies to face their tragedy following World War II.