The Dreadful Angel

Miklós Radnóti is widely recognized as one of the greatest Hungarian poets of the twentieth century. He came from a highly acculturated Budapest family and received no Jewish education or introduction to Jewish ritual. He remained indifferent to Jewish affairs his entire life, assertively proclaiming his freedom from Jewish particularism. He and his wife converted to Catholicism in 1943 in an effort to save themselves from persecution. Although his poems have little Jewish content, they foretell and then record the savagery of the Nazi years. While serving in a forced labor battalion during the war, he was shot dead by his Hungarian guards.