Edith Bruck (born 1932) is a Hungarian-born survivor living presently in Rome. She is an acknowledged author of several books, founder of a feminist theatre group in Rome and film director. Bruck’s novel »Nuda proprietà« (1993) is about the relationship of a Jewish woman, having received a notice of eviction, and an elderly woman whose husband had been an SS officer: “How long can I bear […] her remembrance of the past, which I cannot return with memory of my own?” This quote reflects on the issue the lecture adresses: the inability to communicate memory as a Jew, as a Holocaust survivor, as a Hungarian and as a feminist writer and activist. This lecture will address the issue (fantasy) of constructions of home with the help of interviews Andrea Pető made with Edith Bruck and a film about her titled: “The visit” (1983). The film documents her return to her home village in the Northern Eastern Part of Hungary with a film crew many years after her family has been deported to Auschwitz. The paper is addressing the strategies of her work as a writer, film maker and activist to create spaces/places for intersectional memory.

Andrea Pető: Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University in Budapest.