AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1978. Budapest (1980)

IV. Könyvtörténeti és művelődéstörténeti tanulmányok - Markovits Györgyi: Magyar írók Angliában, angol könyvek Magyarországon a hitleri uralom delelőjén - Hungarian Writers in England, English Books in Hungary at the Apogee of the Nazi Regime

and since the spring of 1942 they have helped the armed combat as well by means of wide-spreading use of cultural activity like books, brochures, evenings of music, political lectures and dramatic performances. A Hungarian artist, György BUDAY has designed the woodcut "V", a symbol of Victory, to announce the would-be victory of the Allies. In 1944 the three most important Hungarian emigrant organizations were united and, under the chairmanship of Mihály KÁROLYI, the Hungarian Council in England has been set up. Its programme outlined the tasks of the new, democratic Hungary. The second part of the paper deals with similar endeavours in Hungary. In England, the exiles campaigned against "the brown plague" in Hungarian; at the same time, hundreds of books came out in the German-satellite Hungary, works by Anglo-Saxon writers that had been listed by the Hitlerists since 1933 among books to be destroyed. Works of MAUGHAM, SHAW, WELLS, HEMINGWAY, Thornton WILDER, JOYCE and SHAKESPEARE were banned almost everywhere in Europe, in all countries occupied by the Nazis. They wanted to destroy everything that proved viable or represented some value in bourgeois culture and the small and subjugated Hungary was the country that, in spite of the strict measures of the authorities, gave shelter to these treasures of human mind. As György LUKÁCS has stated, "despite all ignomity of turning to fascism Hungary offered a stout ideological resistance against Hitlerism". Main evidences of this resistance are the works published in Hungary during World War II, translated from Anglo-Saxon into Hungarian by writers and poets having been persecuted. 586