Lóránt Bódi

Research Fellow (10/2024 – 03/2025)

Remains without Body: The Cultural Imagination of the Holocaust Soaps

Already during the Second World War, there were rumours and harrowing beliefs among the public about the German extermination machine, which decades later hardened into legends or myths. One of the most enduring Holocaust legends was the story of the so-called RIF soaps. Survivors have played an important role in preserving the memory of the soaps for decades, but the story has also moved beyond the confines of those memories and moved into public discourse. Up to the present, historical research has mostly focused on the historical origin of the “soap myth” and sought to falsify this legend. However, this project is following the approach of Geertzian historical anthropology to explore the social function it continues to have in a given cultural context as a response to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Particularly, the knowledge of the origins of the soaps among the survivors has never been considered, and this research project aims to fill these important gaps. In that sense, it will analyse the “myth” and its different historical-semantic layers by using survivors' testimonies, Jewish commemorative practices, and public discourses.

Lóránt Bódi is a social researcher and editor. He worked as Assistant Research Fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in international research projects such as COURAGE (Horizon2020) and UMSCEN (Creative Europe). He received his PhD from ELTE (Eötvös Loránd University) in the Atelier – European Historiography and Social Sciences programme. His main research interest is 20th century Eastern European history, with a special focus on the history of authoritarian regimes and the Holocaust. Since 2022, he has been the editor-in-chief of the journal Café Bábel. Currently, he is a visiting lecturer at Metropolitan University and Corvinus University (Széchenyi College for Advanced Studies) and a Research Fellow at the VWI.

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