For most lay readers as well as historians, the only encounter with Jews from Subcarpathian Rus’ comes from the series of heart-wrenching photographs contained in the Lili Jacob's “Auschwitz Album,” documenting the arrival and murder of a transport of Hungarian Jews in the summer of 1944. In his book, Genocide in the Carpathians, however, Raz Segal strongly reminds us that this event was but the result of a long process predating the Holocaust.

In topic and methodology, Segal's book reflects several newer interventions in Holocaust scholarship. First, he focuses on a borderland outside of Nazi control; indeed, the Nazis make but a fleeting appearance. Second, he presents a deep analysis of ethnic policy within the region and a local Hungarian concept of ethnic unity “derived from the colonial binaries of civilization and backwardness” (5). In this way, he highlights the imperative to examine the Holocaust in Eastern Europe on its own terms, recognizing that, in many places, the fate of the Jews was locally mediated and based far more on geographically specific historical and traditional relationships than on policies from Berlin. Finally, this book meaningfully questions the application of a blanket concept of antisemitism as a permanent feature of Eastern European life.

Genocide in the Carpathians distinguishes itself from many works on the Holocaust in its extensive discussion of the ethnic and political history of this complicated region both before and after the murder of the Jews. The book begins with a succinct but important history of Subcarpathian Rus’ prior to World War I. This is not only background but also argument as Segal examines the incredibly complex intersections of culture and religion in the shared spaces of Jews and non-Jews that, he argues, were not usually characterized by deep enmity. Emphasizing this complexity, he continues with a discussion about the role of Czech control of the region after World War I, an incursion that “sharply contradicted the myth of Czech democracy” (34). Czech leaders viewed Subcarpathian Rus’ as a backward and uncivilized place and actively promulgated an image of Jews as disloyal to the new state (7). Ethnic Magyars, too, received poor treatment during this period, placing Jews in an all too common and uncomfortable position as targets of persecution by Christian authorities and persecuted minorities.

In the following chapters, Segal traces the social breakdown alluded to in the title as existing modes of accommodation and interaction were fractured by war and increasingly discriminatory Hungarian policies toward its new territorial acquisitions where a form of ethnic cleansing was intended to remove unwanted groups from a pure Hungarian (Magyar) state. The book then covers the development of the Holocaust in Hungary in a more traditional manner but one that focuses almost exclusively on Hungarian policy and actions rather than the moment of the summer of 1944 when the Nazis descended on Budapest to send Hungarian Jews to their deaths. Here, he provides more conventional (but no less important) discussions of issues like killing, robbery, and sexual violence. This is a welcome change of emphasis that accentuates the areas that Hungarian and Nazi policy had in common while attributing much of the agency to local actors. The book ends with a discussion of the violence toward Jewish survivors by the Soviets (and their fellow Hungarians), another useful reminder that the discrimination Jews faced was not concocted and driven from Berlin.

Segal makes two important interventions or challenges to existing scholarship in this well-researched local study. First, he joins others in eschewing the concept of the bystander as a relatively useless characterization. He highlights that this position is not static but dynamic, adding to the important continuing emphasis on this topic.

Second, and perhaps more controversially, Segal challenges the concept of antisemitism as applied to the Holocaust. He asks whether antisemitism represents a “foregone conclusion” or, as he argues, “suggests research questions” (27). Throughout his study, he examines the “process” of antisemitism, arguing that for much of its history, the region was not a hotbed for anti-Jewish violence as one might assume. Indeed, he dates the rise of antisemitic thought and discrimination to the 1920s. Segal suggests that at times “resentment” may be a better descriptor for interactions than antisemitism. He connects this critique of antisemitism as a coordinating idea with critiques of nationalism, viewing each term as too blunt an instrument to adequately discern complex motives. This mode of inquiry is most powerful when it remains critical (and Segal is right to see it as one that should ask research questions). However, he does not always provide the most satisfying answers. The reader is left wondering how antisemitism should be reimagined in the Subcarpathian Rus’ context and if it was as absent as the author contends. Peaceful coexistence does not, after all, necessarily indicate acceptance. It is, perhaps a function of the word that it is difficult to imagine antisemitism as a “process” without a more detailed explanation from the author. Certainly, it was different in this regional context, but was that difference benign?

It is, however, important to note that the preceding questions stem from the provocative questions and critiques that Segal offers in this book. He provides us with a complex monograph that combines empirical narrative with challenging theoretical and methodological questions. That these questions are not easily answered is to his credit rather than a critique. This is a book that will be of great of value to a variety of scholars, particularly those looking for an insightful and comprehensive regional study of the “long history” of the Holocaust.