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This study reconstructs the history of Hungarian journalist Jenő Lévai’s book Eichmann in Hungary published in the political context of the Jerusalem trial in 1961. By doing so, it will shed light on the historically given social conditions of historical documentation, particularly on the institutional aspects of the actor’s agency and the political context. This perspective has two major characteristics. First, it follows the subject of Lévai as a person in preparing the book, focusing especially on the relationship he nurtured with the Hungarian authorities. Second, it deals with the trajectory of his manuscript from submission to publication. This dual focus sheds light on how large-scale Cold War tensions influenced individual action in a Socialist country regarding the historical documentation of Nazi atrocities. The paper argues for a complex understanding of the Cold War context as it created opportunities to research and obtain historical documentation of the Jewish genocide in the first place.