"without courage, there cannot be truth,

and without truth there can be no other virtue"

Sir Walter Scott

In these notes, I reflect on the possibilities of confronting the darkest chapters of East-Central European history, namely, genocide. This problem is closely related to the moral refoundation of society, law and politics. My concerns are primarily related to the role of law in the process, both descriptively, by trying to explain very contradictory developments in Hungary, and normatively, by arguing for a shame dictated legal policy.

A. A Reason for Shame

What should a society's proper moral attitude be towards genocide if its majority previously victimized a group within society? I argue that it is both morally correct and useful in practice if the majority (and the whole country) feels shame, when discussing the problem in the context of the discrimination and extermination of Hungarian Jews during World War II. The Hungarian authorities were active participants in the Holocaust in Hungary. My proposition is that Hungarians and the Hungarian nation should feel ashamed for having participated in the persecution of Jews. This is a moral obligation of the political community.

I take it as a fact that the Hungarian state was responsible, in the strictly legal sense, for the racist discrimination against, and the persecution and extermination of, the majority of Hungarian Jews. The death toll was roughly 600,000 in total. Beginning in 1920, the Hungarian parliament enacted a series of laws which restricted the rights of Jews.These laws were adopted by an overwhelming majority of members of parliament, without foreign pressure, and met with little public resistance or criticism. By 1941, Nuremberg type race laws were in place. In 1944,...