pThis book examines a complex array of individual responses to the abuse of power by the state in three horrific episodes in a short period of East-Central European history the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews in Nazi death and labor camps the Arrow Cross terrorist rule in Budapest and finally the Stalinist terror in Hungary and East-Central Europe. Through the prism of survival, Lszl Borhi explores the relationship between the individual and power, attempting to understand the mechanism of oppression and terror produced by arbitrary, unbridled power through the experience of normal people.ppDespite the obvious peculiarities of time and place, the Hungarian cases convey universal lessons about the Holocaust, Nazism, and Stalinism. In the author's conception, the National Socialist and Stalinist experiences are linked on several levels. Both regimes defended their visions of the future against social groups whom they saw as implacable enemies of those visions, and who therefore