“Budapest Blackout” : The Wartime Diaries of Dr. Maria Madi

Abstract

There has been a wide range of scholarship produced on the study of the Holocaust since the end of World War II in 1945. Holocaust historians have become increasingly interested in the role of those that resisted the Holocaust. Dr. Maria Madi was a Roman Catholic doctor living in Budapest during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. In English, Dr. Madi wrote sixteen diary volumes in which she recorded her wartime experiences, including her protection of a young Jewish boy. This project seeks to make Dr. Madi’s diaries accessible to the reading public in the form of a transcribed book in English. Through the study of Budapest census data and city plans, researchers contextualize the people and places that Dr. Madi referenced in her diaries. Researchers transcribed the diaries with translation and transcription assistance from Hungarian students at Károli Gáspár University. Those transcriptions will be developed into a book with the aim of making this history more accessible. This project can be used as resource to understand a perspective from Hungary during the Holocaust.