Andrea Pető on Hannah Szenes: Multilayered Memorialization

Abstract This article addresses the important arguments made by Andrea Pető in relation to the ‘circles of forgetting’ in Hungary. In particular, it focuses on Pető’s case study of the woman born in Hungary as Aniko Szenes, known in English as Hannah Szenes or Senesh, and the transformation of one into the other. Drawing inspiration from Pető’s analysis, the article analyses the Anglophone representation of Szenes’ history in the form of poetry and documentary cinema, to contrast the absence of Szenes from Hungarian memorialization with the ways in which she is remembered in the USA, Israel and beyond.