[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 134 (Friday, October 11, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1836]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




TRIBUTE TO HUNGARIAN WRITER IMRE KERT[Eacute]SZ, RECIPIENT OF THE NOBEL 
                          PRIZE IN LITERATURE

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 10, 2002

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I rise today to 
recognize and commend Mr. Imre Kert[eacute]sz, on being the first 
Hungarian to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. Although he is the first 
Hungarian to receive the Prize for Literature, Mr. Kert[eacute]sz joins 
twelve other distinguished Hungarians who have been awarded the Nobel 
Prize in other fields.
  Mr. Kert[eacute]sz is a celebrated author whose stories have brought 
to life the atrocities of the Holocaust, and have shared with the world 
the difficult choices people were forced to make when their lives were 
torn apart by Nazi occupation.
  Imre Kert[eacute]sz was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1929. At the age 
of 14 the Nazis invaded his country, and he, along with hundreds of 
thousands of other Hungarian Jews were deported to suffer the 
unspeakable horrors of Auschwitz and other camps. After a short time 
Mr. Kert[eacute]sz was transported to Buchenwald, another camp, from 
which he was liberated in 1945.
  Upon his return to Hungary he worked for a Budapest newspaper, but 
was dismissed in 1951, when it was taken over by the Communist Party. 
After two years of military service he supported himself as an 
independent writer and translator of German authors including 
Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Freud, Roth, Wittgenstein and 
Canetti, all of whom have had significance for his own writing.
  Mr. Kert[eacute]sz's first novel, ``Fateless,'' was completed in 
1965, but was not published for another ten years. It was this novel 
that the Swedish Academy singled out in awarding Mr. Kert[eacute]sz the 
2002 Nobel Prize for Literature. This extraordinary novel is the semi-
autobiographical tale utilizing Kert[eacute]sz's alter ego Gy[ouml]rgy 
K[ouml]ves, a 15 year-old Jewish boy who has been arrested and sent to 
a concentration camp. Once there he becomes intimately aware of the 
horrors of the death camp, but he learns to survive.
  ``Fateless,'' was the first part of the trilogy that included the 
outstanding novels ``Fiasco,'' published in 1988, and ``Kaddish for a 
Child Not Born,'' published in 1990. Both books continue to use 
Gy[ouml]rgy K[ouml]ves as the voice for Imre Kert[eacute]sz. In 
addition, Mr. Kert[eacute]sz's published works include ``Galley 
Diary,'' ``Chronicle of a Metamorphosis,'' ``The Holocaust as 
Culture,'' ``Moments of Silence While the Execution Squad Reloads,'' 
and ``The Exiled Language,'' as well as a collections of lectures and 
essays.
  Mr. Speaker, despite having been a published author for more than 30 
years, Imre Kert[eacute]sz was not widely recognized internationally 
until the early 1990's, and his is not even a household name in Hungary 
today. Mr. Kert[eacute]sz believes that this lack of recognition is a 
result of a lack of awareness about the Holocaust in Hungary. As he 
told reporters after the announcement on October 10, 2002, ``People [in 
Hungary] have not faced up to the Holocaust. I hope that in light of 
this recognition, they will face up to it more than they have until 
now.''
  Mr. Speaker, I ask all of my colleagues to join me in congratulating 
Imre Kert[eacute]sz for receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. His 
writing shares the fragile experience of the individual against the 
barbaric arbitrariness of history with stirring stories that have drawn 
in and captivated readers around the world.

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