​The Politzer exhibition presents the lives and life-choices of Jews in Hungary through the story of a real Hungarian Jewish family. Among other things, we chose this family because the story is dominated by the secret taboo, the silence, secrecy and denial surrounding the family's origins and history. This is an element that was and is present in the lives of many Jewish families in Hungary - and the designated task of the "House of Coexistence" was precisely to understand, or perhaps to resolve, this phenomenon.
The history of the family is well documented, with memories, life stories and legends from several generations, which we have supplemented with further research. However, there are no authentic objects with stories passed down in the family. On the one hand, this is because family history is replete with flight, displacement, confiscation of property, etc., and the mystery of the underlying phenomenon of the secret did not facilitate the transmission of the objects that did remain (and which might be revealing!).
The story is therefore presented in ten film clips, each seven minutes long, two of which (the beginning and the end of the story) are projected onto a multi-layered veil. The narration of each film tells the story of a family member, embedded in the history of Hungary and the Jews in Hungary. In each of the films, questions, choices and other connections emerge that illustrate the possibilities for social inclusion and integration of Jews.
In addition to the films, maps, chronological data and definitions on the walls help to put the story into a broader context.
A highlight of the exhibition are the two "time capsules": exhibition panels with fragmented surfaces that present interesting facts about everyday occurrences in the 1740s and 2020s (typical foods, distance travelled in a day, etc.).
Two smaller rooms are connected to the main exhibition space, both of which are exclusively digital, helping visitors to engage and connect with the content of the exhibition.
The first digital small room features an introduction to family history, a visualization of a family tree. The content is projected on three walls of the room, so that visitors standing in the middle of the room can feel part of the story while watching the slowly moving projection around them.
In the second digital room, the concept of "coexistence" is underpinned by the project "Be part of it", where objects from a database, based on community participation and collaboration, based on continuous collection and thus constantly growing, are displayed on the wall - projected on three walls, in a similar way to the previous room, surrounding the visitor. The objects, photographs and stories presented here are content shared by visitors to the exhibition, which they can share in relation to the key concepts of the exhibition. The collection campaign will be hosted on a dedicated website, the content of which will be displayed in the room after verification and styling. The projection will be accompanied by a dashboard where visitors can sort and group content already shared by others according to different criteria.
This is the last element of the exhibition that can be visited, and it is here that the concept of coexistence is fulfilled: all visitors can join in, and place their own stories, the stories of their family or friends, thus creating together a "Hungary family album" - one of which, the story of the Politzer family, is presented in the exhibition. Many elements of the story shown in the exhibition are present in the history of almost every family. The networking and interconnections of these will be shown in this final room, creating the cultural DNA of Hungary in an entertaining and at the same time educational way.

Creators
Concept, script: Forgács Péter, Gyekiczky András, Toronyi Zsuzsanna
Digital curator: Ruttkay Zsófia
Texts: Dóra Bálint, Török András, Toronyi Zsuzsanna
Interior design: UV Design: Ugrin László
Audiovisual design, lighting: Proinstall: Kárpáti András 
Graphic design: Dávid Gábor, Tausz Gábor Ezra
Family tree animation: Huszár Dániel
Translation: Bodóczky Miklós, Dóra Bálint, Török András
Legal coordination: Pusztaszeri Katalin
Installation: Belvárosi Építő Kft, Nagy Árpád
Special thanks: Linda Ambrus-Broenniman

Films
Director, producer: Forgács Péter
Production Supervisor: Vida Zoltán
Art Director episodes 1-3: Nosek László
Art Director episodes 4-10: Sass Péter 
Animation Director: Nosek László
Editor: Sass Péter
Musician, Music Supervisor: Melis Márta
Composer: Melis László
Sound director: Zányi Tamás
Storyboard: Kukla Ernő
Graphic: Král Lili, Kukta Béla, Lerch Julcsi, Szántó Zsanett 
Animation: Antal Tamás, Csata Sára, Sebesvári Soma, Sebő Ferenc
VFX: Antal Tamás, Csata Sára, Sebesvári Soma Vida Zoltán

Be part of the story!
Curator: Frazon Zsófia
Design, animation: XORXOR Stúdió: Barkóczi Máté, Hajdu Gáspár, Kiskovács Eszter, Papp Gábor, Setényi Sámuel
Database, webpage, photography, video: Industryfilm Stúdió: Jakus Tamás, Ritter Doron

Sources:
Eisikovits Haszid Zene Gyűjtemény, Fortepan, Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtár, GP Archives, Jan van Ijken Photography and Film, Josephinum Wien, Jüdisches Museum Wien, Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Magyar Zsidó Múzeum és Levéltár, Nemzeti Filmintézet, Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Privát Magyarország Alapítvány, Semmelweis Orvostörténeti Gyűjtemény

A kiállítás a „Rumbach Sebestyén utcai zsinagóga felújítása” c. projekt támogatásával készült, 2018-2020. ​

In the early summer of 1944, an easily noticeable, hexagram-shaped yellow badge appeared on the clothes of almost 700 000 hungarian citizens. This mark stigmatized those who wore them and made them vulnerable to all kinds of racist atrocities and made the implementation of the antisemite laws – that expanded already to every aspect of daily life – even more easier.
About those, who were marked by the yellow badge, very few photos are preserved, not surprisingly, because they didn’t want to be seen and remembered like this. There weren’t even too many possibilities to take photos, among many of their others properties,, jews couldn’t keep their cameras either. And there wasn’t so much time either, the countryside jews were very quiclky collected into ghettos abd from there they were sent, in a few weeks to extermination camps within totally inuhmane circumstances. Their faces disappeared with them, the faces we see ont he walls of the exhibition, mainly belong tot he survivors of the Shoah.
The diaries and memoirs, the articles from the contzemporary newspapers, the placards will show us the process the atmopshere of those days, the sufferings the hungarian jews underwent in this period and the reactions of the wider hungarian society to the stigmatization of their fellow citizens who were labeled „jewish” accoring to the racist laws. Humiliation, shame, fear, despair, rarely wrath, the feelings of those who faced persecution, and, ont he other side, indifference or, not so rarely, active hostility, hatred. Those who became compassionate, who felt sorry, usually didn’t dare to openly express their feelings because they were afraid of retribution. The decree that prescribed the wearing of the yellow badge for jews, fatally divided hungarian society and in itself was a huge step towards the nazi’s goal, the „final soution”, the depravation of the hungarian jews from their properties, their isolation, deportation and – finally – annihilation.

Curated by Katalin Jalsovszky

​Our exhibition displays the history of the Pest Jewish Quarter. For centuries, the city excluded Jews from its territory. This ban has been lifted by a decree of Emperor Joseph II in 1783.  By that time, fourteen Jewish families lived in the immediate vicinity of Pest, in a huge building block owned by the Hungarian aristocrat Orczy family. Their number grew quickly. Most of them had arrived from Óbuda, the era’s most populous Jewish community. Others came from various regions of the Austrian Empire, such as Moravia or Galicia. The newcomers settled in Terézváros, a quarter close to the large Pest marketplaces. Back then, the neighborhood consisted mainly of gardens and farmhouses. Most of the immigrants were young and dynamic. Their economic activities brought quick existential growth not only for them, but also to the city, which soon became a European metropolis. They started families, founded Jewish community institutions and erected their temples.
We can reconstruct their everyday life from what the previous generations have left for us. We can read diaries, official documents, and love letters. We can look up the inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter’s buildings in the conscriptions.  Our Archives holds their applications, permissions, tax lists and many other dusty documents of their strenuous lives. Moreover, photographs, letters and cake recipes as well as pieces of the lethal yellow star sign might be hiding in old drawers somewhere in the Quarter.
These documents and objects are thin threads connecting past and present. Some were carefully preserved, others survived only accidentally. Entwining them might produce the dynamic patterns of the past’s colorful fabric: the life, joy and sorrow, birth and death of many Kohns and Rosenthals, Kőváris and Rózsavölgyis. And we can walk the same streets and squares they walked. We can enter the same gates and look out through the same windows to the same streets as they did.   
Our exhibition displays ten time periods through ten digital maps to show what it has meant to be Jewish in the Quarter from 1785 to today. We present the neighborhood and its vicinity, the streets and squares and the way Jews lived in the heart of a burgeoning city. We can also peek into the history of specific buildings: who lived there, what they did, what documents and objects they have left behind to us.
To figure out where and how Rosenthal lived among us.