Abstracts of Submitted Papers 2013

The Origin and History of the Kossuth Hat

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
At the beginning of December 1851 countless thousands of New Yorkers eagerly awaited the imminent arrival of Lajos Kossuth, Hungary’s leader in the struggle against the ruling Hapsburg dynasty during the revolutionary years of 1848-49. Americans followed the conflict with interest and sympathy. When the movement failed, Kossuth, along with thousands of other patriots, fled to the neighboring Ottoman Empire. On September 10, 1851 Kossuth and some fifty of his companions boarded the warship Mississippi, dispatched by the Fillmore administration. Kossuth disembarked at Gibraltar to pay a quick visit to England. The Mississippi entered New York harbor on November 11 while Kossuth arrived on December 5 aboard the steamer Humboldt. His triumphant entry and official welcome took place on the following day.

Kossuth’s enormous popularity wasn’t lost on local businessmen. They knew that any link of their products and/or services to Kossuth, however tenuous, would boost sales and revenues. None was more aware of the power of aggressive publicity than John N. Genin, the city’s leading hatter. The year before Kossuth’s visit Genin scored a remarkable marketing coup when Jenny Lind, the world-renowned Swedish Nightingale, made her American debut. Kossuth’s arrival presented a similar golden opportunity.

Genin’s storehouse was bursting with a new style of hat – low-crowned, soft, and made of felt – which he hoped would be the next trend-setter among American men. What better way to advertise this hat by having Kossuth, the hero of millions, wear it? Sticking an ostrich feather in the band of the hat, he christened it the Kossuth hat. He then presented the headwear to Kossuth and his entourage as they were about to make their entry into the city. Because Genin was a staunch supporter of the Hungarian cause and since the hat had a pleasing appearance and was comfortable, Kossuth and his companions agreed to wear it.

The hat immediately became a rage. Men – young and old, rich and poor, distinguished and humble – rushed to buy it, newspaper enumerated and extolled its appealing characteristics, and even serious supporters of Kossuth felt obligated to comment on it.

Kossuth’s departure in July 1852 did not diminish the penchant for the hat. Indeed, American men would continue to favor the hat, with and without feathers, for another fifty years or so; an astounding feat considering the vagaries of fashion.

The presentation will discuss the life and career of John N. Genin, his relationship to Kossuth and the other Hungarian exiles, and the reasons advanced by various parties for the longevity of the Kossuth hat. There are a number of discrepancies in the literature regarding certain details about the hat and its endorsement by Kossuth – these will be reviewed and resolved utilizing the most reliable evidence available.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Stephen Beszedits obtained his B.Sc. in chemical engineering from Columbia University and his master’s degree, also in engineering, from the University of Toronto. Long involved in historical topics, he has authored some fifty publications during the past decade about Hungarian-Americans and Hungarian-Canadians. Although his primary interest revolves around the participation of Hungarians in the American Civil War, he has also touched upon artists, musicians, physicians, architects and his celebrated grand-uncle, the writer Lajos Zilahy.

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Istvan Farkas, Painter, Books and Magazines Publisher, an Outstanding Representative of the Twentieth Century Hungarian and European Paintings and my Savior during the Siege of Budapest

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Istvan Farkas was an expressionist and a modern painter and also was the owner and director of a famous books and magazines publishing house in Budapest. He was a prominent painter in Paris, member of the Ecole de Paris during the interwar years. In his paintings of the 1930’s and 1940’s, he depicted an alien and a mysterious world full of ghostly figures, which could be understood as meditations on the frailty of the human existence. Some of his paintings were recalling his service in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War. His mentor was the famous painter Laszlo Mednyanszky. Upon the death of his father in 1932, he assumed the leadership of his family’s prominent publishing company in Budapest, Singer & Wolfner. Publishing writers and artists like Ferenc Herczeg, Geza Gardonyi, Sandor Brody, Ignotus, Zsolt Harsanyi, Gyula Krudy, Lorinc Szabo, Lajos Posa, Karoly Lyka, Juliana Zsigray among many others. Also, he published the magazines “New Times” (Uj Idok) a literally journal, which catered to the, Hungarian middle classes, “Hungarian Women” (Magyar Aszonyok), and “My Newspaper” (Az En Ujsagom), a children magazine. The publishing house motto was: “Hungarian to the Hungarians” ( “Magyart a Magyarnak”). When the Germans occupied Hungary in March, 1944, Farkas was among the first ones arrested by the Gestapo. Some of his prominent friends who were close to Admiral Horthy, like the writer Ferenc Herczeg, tried to save him, but it was either too late or as the legend goes, he did not want to be saved. His life ended in the concentration camp. My own personal connection to him that I knew him quite well as a little boy, since my mother was his confidant and his personnel secretary. Both my mother and I survived the siege of Budapest during the Second World War, staying in his specially built, reinforced, concrete underground shelter during the biggest street fighting.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Andrew P. Fodor (Andras), Independent Scholar, “Deep Sea” consulting engineer, left Hungary after his participation as a cadet, in the 1956 Hungarian revolution. He has attended the University of California, Berkley on a WUS scholarship and received his engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of New York in 1969. He has also received a certificate and a degree from Columbia University and from Birbeck College, University of London. During his professional career he was stationed in London, England as his base, for over 10 years, working in various positions from Project Engineer to Chief Consultant. He has researched and designed undersea, deep water structures, offshore oil and gas platforms and sea bed mining facilities, concentrating on “sub-sea completion systems” all over the world. After his retirement, he continued work as a consulting engineer; also he has returned to his basic interests, literature and doing research on the history of science. In the last twenty years he has given lectures at various conferences: AHEA Conferences, Bolyai Conference and at various engineering meetings. Presently working on a literary book, covering his experiences, during the siege of Budapest, the 1956 revolution and the various seas and oceans around the world, where he has been working during his professional career. Andrew Fodor is a member of ASME, API, and NCIS (National Coalition of Independent Scholars).

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What are the Communication Patterns of Hungarian Americans?

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The summary of Krisztina Olah's 2012 master paper helps to better understand the trends and patterns of the Hungarian-American communication.
Since when has there been Hungarian-American communication at all? How do the different Hungarian communities and organizations throughout the United States organize (or not organize) their communication? Why is communication so important for the ethnic minorities? Ms. Olah’s creative project looked for answers for these questions.
The speaker conducted a qualitative research in the Cleveland Hungarian community during the years of 2011 and 2012. Analyzing the past and finding the communication patterns of the present helped to create a more effective and well-based communication strategy for the future. The multiple interviews with individuals, families, leaders of Hungarian organizations, businesses and churches, local journalists and minority organizations provided interesting findings not only about the Cleveland region but also about other regions and cities where Hungarians live. The paper gives direct suggestions and the best examples of practices for the Hungarian communities and organizations who want to improve the communication and information sharing among their members.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Krisztina Olah is a marketing and communication expert. She finished her master studies in Communication Management at the John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio 2012. She graduated from the University of Miskolc in Hungary with a bachelor’s degree in Business Economics and Marketing 2002. In the past ten years, Krisztina have been working in Germany, the U.S., and Hungary as a marketing professional for several large and small companies and non-profit organizations. She is interested in leadership, gender studies, medical communication, and tourism.

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"Meeting of Worlds, Melting of Cultures" -- A journey from East to West

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
This presentation aims to provide an insight into how an Eastern European journalist and professor’s way of thinking and story meets the Canadian culture and academic practice at universities while teaching different courses in journalism and political science.
While in Hungary, the constitutional system and the rule of law were weakened following the last elections of 2010, and the system of checks and balances has almost ceased to exist, the freedoms of speech and expression are continuously challenged and suppressed; the fundamental rights and freedoms —especially the freedom of assembly and opinion— have been thought to be subdued in Canada following the G20 Summit of 2010 in Toronto and the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot.
While teaching journalism ethics and theory of radio and television at different universities in Ottawa and Toronto, students and professors often claim that the incumbent party in Canada has already launched an attack against fundamental freedoms. During lectures and class debates, two different worlds and different experiences met each other and generated heated discussion about where the point of no return lies in a democracy. According to some stereotypes, Canadians are forbearing citizens and Hungarians are said to be warm-blooded, yet every lecture and debate proves that both Canadian born students and first generation immigrants to Canada have learnt the same lesson. In Canada, from the very first moments, the country makes her citizens able to protect democracy and not to accept harm on freedom. The Hungarian example reveals the fact that a newborn democracy can easily be the victim of social instability, political populism, and apathy, while a country over the Atlantic enables her citizens to safeguard freedom. The experience of witnessing how Canadian professors and students learnt the lesson about functional multiculturalism and different ethnic groups’ peaceful coexistence evokes opposite sentiments back in Hungary. Besides teaching the compulsory curriculum, differing backgrounds and understandings come face-to-face, resulting in the melting of different cultures and the emergence of the very same democratic ethos.
This journey of a Hungarian immigrant is an apparent demonstration of mutual understanding and interaction between contrasting cultures and experiences.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Jozsef Orosz is an adjunct professor teaching journalism ethics, theory of radio and television and media policies at different universities in Ottawa and Toronto. Before his landing in Canada, he was one of the top-notch broadcast journalists hosting radio and TV shows in Hungary, also a human rights activist and founder of the Hungarian Democratic Charter of 2007. He did some landmark interviews, radio and TV shows in his country of birth. He covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, sent his reports from Baghdad during the Gulf Wars in 1991 and 2003, covered the Yugoslav war and the aerial bombing of Belgrade. Mr. Orosz worked at ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings in 1991, and gained a scholarship to the University of Texas, Austin in 1995. He received recognition for his journalistic works, was awarded with the Hungarian Pulitzer Prize and Hemingway Prize for Lifetime Achievement in journalism.

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1 Hungarian Folk Tale + 1 French Fairy Tale = Paul Fejős’ Fantasy Film: Preserving Images of Hungary Between the Two World Wars in Marie, Légende hongroise (1932)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Film director Paul Fejős left his native Hungary in 1923 for Hollywood, then in 1928 moved to Paris to make “talkies.” The French company Osso had set up studios in Budapest, allowing Fejős a return to native soil for the French-Hungarian co-production Marie, Légende hongroise (Tavaszi zápor; Spring Shower) 1932, made simultaneously in 4-5 other languages. Marie, a village servant girl seduced and abandoned by the wealthy fiancé of her employer’s daughter, is cast out from home and village. Finding work as a maidservant in a Budapest bordello, she gives birth. Dressed in folklore costume, Marie presents her baby to the Virgin Mary during a Catholic religious ceremony. The local authorities decide to confiscate the baby. Marie, maddened with pain, dies of grief. Having assumed a Madonna-like persona, we find her scrubbing the floors of Heaven, and upon seeing her daughter about to be seduced, she pours out her bucket of water, causing a spring shower that will separate young lovers, warning them of the dangers of physical passion. Film historian István Nemeskürty referred to this film as a solitary jewel of Hungarian cinema. The narrative is simple with little dialogue although much music, relying on striking, repeated motifs (the flowering tree), presenting a world of feeling, not fact, a fairy tale of an archetypal Cinderella mistreated by archetypal bad people, but who in the end magically achieves consolation and the capacity to influence events. The sparse, stylized cinematography renders it one of the most intensely metaphoric works of the 1930s, while simultaneously suspending on celluloid a lost world of Hungary between village and capital.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Mártha Pereszlényi-Pintér is Chairperson of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Cultures and Associate Professor of French at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH. She earned her Ph.D. in Romance Languages from The Ohio State University, and studied at the Institut de Touraine (Tours) and the Bryn Mawr Program (Avignon) in France. Her research and publication accomplishments include French and also Hungarian Literature and Culture of the pre-modern period (Medieval, Renaissance, 17th century), Film, and Language for Business & the Professions. She has read papers at national and international conferences. While at OSU, she wrote or co-wrote 16 manuals for individualized instruction in both French and Hungarian with group grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Annenberg Foundation. She was born in Austria and emigrated to the USA with her Hungarian parents. She is also a past President of AHEA, and chaired or co-chaired four past AHEA annual Conferences.

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Bicultural Bridges: Cultural Diplomacy at the American Corner Budapest

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Today cultural diplomacy is not just an area of international relations but also a well-known field of academics. According to political scientist Milton Cummings, cultural diplomacy is "the exchange of ideas, information, values, systems, traditions, beliefs, and other aspects of culture, with the intention of fostering mutual understanding". Osojnik describes the concept the following way: cultural diplomacy is not used in the narrow sense of diplomacy referring to relationships between diplomats and government representatives but it describes various modes of cultural exchange.

The term cultural diplomacy may have only been defined recently but the practice of cultural diplomacy can be seen throughout history. “Explorers, travelers, traders, teachers and artists can be all considered living examples of informal ambassadors or early cultural diplomats (for example, the establishment of regular trade routes enables a frequent exchange of information and cultural gifts between traders and government representatives)”. Today any person who interacts with someone from a different culture facilitates a form of cultural exchange. The interaction of people and the sharing of language, religion, ideas, arts and traditions constantly improve relations between nations.

Cultural diplomacy can be practiced by the public sector, private sector or civil society. In my present talk, I will shed light on how cultural diplomacy is practiced in the American Corner Budapest, an information and resource center that was established in 2009 as part of the U.S. State Department’s American Corners initiative. AC Budapest is a cooperation between the U.S. Embassy in Hungary and Corvinus University of Budapest. At the beginning of the presentation, I will provide historical background of the American Corners worldwide and describe the goal and the mission of the centers. With specific examples, I will underline the importance of cultural diplomacy and introduce the types of events the American Corner Budapest is involved with, highlighting the Bicultural Bridges series with its programs that aim at connecting Hungarian and American cultures through history, people, events, exhibitions, books and films. The presentation will conclude with the importance of global intercultural dialogue, reached by respect and recognition of cultural diversity and heritage. American Corners around the world are helping nations to respect and recognize such cultural diversity.
Milton, Cummings. "Cultural Diplomacy and the United States Government: a Survey."
Cultural Diplomacy News. Institute for Cultural Diplomacy. Web. 10 Apr 2013.
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Osojnik, Marta. “Cultural Diplomacy and the European Union: Key Characters and Historical Development.” .
Constantinescu, Emil. "What is Cultural Diplomacy." . Institute for Cultural Diplomacy. Web. 10 Apr 2013. .
US Department of State, Bureau of International Information Programs, March 2006 Newsletter.

Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Erika Sólyom earned a B.A. degree in Russian and English Studies (EKTF, Eger) and received her first M.A. in English Language and Literature (ELTE, Budapest) in Hungary. In 2003 and 2005, respectively, she earned an M.A. and an M.Phil. in Linguistics at New York University. Her research interests are in intercultural communication, minority language education, linguistic human rights, language and gender as well as language change and globalization. Since 2004, she has been teaching Hungarian as a Foreign Language for US study abroad students of ELTE and Corvinus University of Budapest, where she is also the Director of the American Corner Budapest cultural center. In 2002, she published with Carol H. Rounds Colloquial Hungarian, Routledge’s well-known language learning series. In 2003, she was awarded a US Fulbright-Hays fellowship and conducted research on Hungarian language change. Her sociolinguistic findings appeared in Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies edited by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvári in 2011.

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Béla Tarr and the Past and Future of Hungarian National Cinema

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Cinema studies in Hungary have expanded and diversified significantly in the last 25 years. What seems to have remained constant however is the analytical framework that defines Hungarian cinema in terms of a self-contained national tradition and places it within the cultural project of nation building. For instance, very little has been said about Hungarian films’ transnational circulation and reception or about the impact of the global flow of visual culture on Hungarian cinema. Does the idea of a Hungarian national cinema make sense in the post-1989 political and economic reality defined by European integration and a heavily globalized media culture? And if yes, how do we describe what “national” means? In other words, what did “Hungarian cinema” mean in the socialist era and what significance does the notion have today for film fans around the world?
Béla Tarr’s oevre will serve as a case study to demonstrate that Hungarian cinema can maintain its intensely local character, while also gain supranational relevance under dramatically changed global production, distribution and reception practices. Looking at Tarr’s geopolitical landscapes, this paper will argue that his films’ seamlessly intersect the politically poignant critique of Hungary’s late socialist reality with an existentialist meditation over human imperfection. The harsh landscape of the Hungarian countryside anchors the characters’ lives in an intensely material way. The crumbling walls, relentless rain, and flat, dreary landscape could not be more concrete and tangible. Yet, the overwhelming images of decay and isolation are also symbolic of the transience and eternal passing of everything man-made. The continuous oscillation between these two interpretative dimensions: the universal and the local, the abstract and the concrete, the atemporal and the historically specific makes Tarr’s movies prime examples of how Hungarian cinema can prevail in the rapidly changing global film culture.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Lilla Tőke is an Assistant Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She obtained her PhD in May 2010 from Stony Brook University in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. Her doctoral dissertation with the title “Communism with Its Clothes Off: Eastern European Film Comedy and the Grotesque” examines the genre of communist film satire, asking why, after 1989 with the dramatic political, economic, and cultural changes, these films became cult classics, widely circulated and appreciated amongst all audiences. She also has an MPhil degree in Gender Studies from the Central European University, Budapest. Her research interests revolve around the subject of Eastern European cinema, transnationalism and Hungarian television, and feminist theory.

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Discriminatory Discourse as the Means to Political Ends

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Coinciding with the 2008 global economic downturn has been an escalation in violent attacks and intimidation against Roma and the resurgence of extremist groups with explicit anti-Roma agendas all across Europe. The Roma face widespread discrimination as social institutions and other elites have not only been complicit in the reproduction of prejudiced discursive representations, but also in allowing or denying access to social goods for subordinated minorities. The geographical scope of this study will be limited to Hungary in order to focus the contextualization and develop a more in-depth investigation into the discursive mechanisms used to rationalize discriminatory rhetoric and naturalize the criminalization of a subordinated demographic. While human rights groups have published reports criticizing the way the Hungarian government and local police forces have handled such incidents, this study will focus specifically on exposing how Jobbik, Hungary’s right-wing nationalist political party, uses discriminatory discourse in their founding documents as a means to gain more political supporters through a positive self-representation and simultaneously blame economic hardships on the Roma, which ultimately leads to the reproduction of prejudiced attitudes and their further marginalization.
Drawing from Ruth Wodak’s historical-discourse approach to critical discourse analysis and Teun van Dijk’s investigations of discriminatory discourse, this study will attempt to make explicit how the Jobbik party is complicit in reproducing discriminatory practices against the Roma, how such discriminatory discourse continues their marginalization and serves as an obstacle to their social integration, and how power relationships are generated and sustained through linguistic mechanisms within particular historical contexts and existing social structures.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Nora Tyeklar is a graduate student at University Massachusetts Boston studying Applied Linguistics. She graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor’s degree in English, minoring in International Relations. Upon receiving her Bachelor’s, she returned to Hungary on a scholarship to study at the Balassi Institute (a school established by the Hungarian Ministry of Education and Culture to promote Hungarian language and culture studies) in Budapest. The purpose of the scholarship was the education of the Hungarian diaspora through intensive Hungarian language instruction alongside classes in various subject areas including the history of Hungary, contemporary Hungarian literature, and Hungarian culture. While still in the incipient stages of her work in critical discourse analysis (CDA), her two proposals were accepted and she will be presenting research and data concerning how discursive mechanisms are used in the positive self-representations of voluntary agencies and the negative representations of refugees assisted through the U.S. refugee resettlement process at two respective conferences in 2013. Her research interests include critical discourse analysis, literacies of displaced peoples, and migration studies.

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Hungarian Women's Traumatic Embodied Narratives of the Holocaust

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
I will examine how women of different cultural backgrounds narrate their Holocaust experiences pertaining particularly to [the loss of] their gender identity, and, more broadly, to female-centered “politics of the body.” I will discuss how gendered bodily experience is foregrounded in their recording of events about their physically and psychologically traumatized war experiences, illustrating that the human body is itself a politically enscribed entity. I will discuss, among others, the memoirs of two women from Transylvania, Gisella Perl, an Orthodox Jew and noted gynecologist, who with her bare hands aborted 1,500 fetuses in Auschwitz, and that of Olga Lengyel, who, in contrast, tried to deny her origins, but did write at length about sexual activity in the camp. I will also discuss the work of Edith Bruck, who unlike Perl and Lengyel, came from an impoverished shtetl background, and whose whole oeuvre is suffused with issues of women’s bodily experiences, beginning with her recounting of undergoing menarche at age twelve while enclosed in the cattle cars on the way to Auschwitz, to her postwar life ,where she willfully aborted numerous times. Bruck’s work also illustrates that bodily trauma, particularly that related to rape and to motherhood, did not end with the liberation, where many women had to struggle to restructure their gender identity.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Louise O. Vasvári, who received her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of California in Berkeley, is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and of Linguistics at Stony Brook University & Adjunct Professor of Linguistics at New York University. She has also taught in various visiting capacities, including at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Eotvos Lorand University and at the Central European University, the University of Connecticut (Storrs), and the Université de Jules Verne (Amiens), and Szeged. She works in medieval studies, historical and socio-linguistics, translation theory, Holocaust studies, and Hungarian Studies, all informed by gender theory within a broader framework of comparative cultural studies. She has recently published with Steven Tötösy, Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature (2005), Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies (2009), and Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies (2011). She has also published a monograph-length work in Hungarian on memoirs of Hungarian women survivors (2009),

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Childless in Nők Lapja

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Literature across various disciplines, as well as geographical and cultural borders, suggests that women without children, particularly those who have chosen to be child-free, often find themselves portrayed negatively in media. In this essay, a part of my PhD research, I contribute to this scholarship, examining representations of women without children in Hungary. Hungary makes for an interesting study, given the nation’s history of low fertility rates and reproductive and family policies. During communist control, various reproductive and family policies were created to encourage women to procreate. Hungarian women’s reproductive choices were curtailed—sometimes eliminated—during periods of intense pro-natal policy and they were politically pressured and cajoled into motherhood. After the regime change in 1989, party leaders blamed women’s workforce participation for the nation’s shrinking population and subsequent problems. Women in Hungary continue to face political pressure concerning their reproductive rights and in 2011, the new constitution included language that threatened Hungarian women’s access to abortion. In light of this history, my project examines how Hungarian women without children have been, and continue to be, represented in Hungarian society. For my study, I use the popular women’s magazine Nők Lapja, from 1989 to present, as a barometer for the dominant representations of child-free women in post-socialist Hungarian society, contextualizing the content of the magazine within the historical, political and cultural history of the country. This essay presents the working results of my research.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Tanya Watson is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She holds both an Honor’s Bachelor of Arts and a Master’s degree in philosophy. Her PhD research examines representations of women without children in the Hungarian women’s magazine Nők Lapja.

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The Hungarian Jewish Museum’s Attempts in the Years 1939-44 to Preserve the Past in the Face of an Uncertain Future

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The idea of a Hungarian Jewish Museum was born soon after the millennial exhibition of 1896, collecting was started in 1909 and the Museum was opened to the public in a minimal way in 1916. It moved into a purpose built space in 1932 (next to the Dohany synagogue where it still is today) and struggled during the 1930’s to find its feet, define its purpose, and develop its activities. During WWII, on the eve of the destruction of a large segment of Hungarian Jewry, it became perhaps the most important institution in the country for researching, documenting, collecting, exhibiting, and safeguarding Hungarian Jewish culture and history. But what is specially remarkable and poignant about the work of the Museum at this time is the conscious attempt to create not merely a repository for documents and objects illustrating Jewish life in Hungary but a testament to the integral part Jews had played in Hungarian life over the centuries. A good part of this work was undertaken in the mostly unspoken hope that appreciation of this linkage would be beneficial for the Jewish community.
Based on research in the Hungarian Jewish Archives, where the remnants of the Museum’s documents are housed today, this paper will examine how in the years between 1939-1944 despite serious limitations in human and financial resources and the increasingly threatening war-time situation, the leaders, advisors, and tiny professional staff of the Museum made a concerted and heroic effort to seek out and save what they could of the past; for them this was not just about saving the Jewish past but the Hungarian past also. They understood that their role was no longer just to remain a store-room of memories from the past (“a múlt emlékeinek tárháza”) but to become a lasting memorial for the future, however uncertain that future was.
In parallel with the devastation of the Jewish communities in the countries surrounding Hungary, a feverish round of activities began. These included: rewriting the organization’s charter and objectives, expanding its advisory board, creating a new association for scholarly and cultural research, making trips around the country on rescue missions, organizing and curating exhibitions, delivering public lectures, publishing a journal to disseminate research, among others. Little of this activity has been researched and written about although much of the current collection is a living testimony to the efforts of those years. The question may well be asked: was their effort to preserve the past in vain?



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Judy Young has a B. A. (Hons) and M.A. in Modern Languages (Oxford 1966, 1972), M.A. in German Literature (McGill, 1970), Certificate in Hungarian (=Part I of Mod Langs BA from Cambridge, 1967), Grad Diploma in Jewish Studies (Oxford, 2000). After teaching German language and literature courses at McGill, Concordia and the University of Ottawa, she worked for some 25 years in the Canadian Government’s Multiculturalism Programs, developing and managing arts and academic programs. During the last twelve years she has undertaken some joint projects in Central and Eastern Europe in the management of cultural diversity, with respect to the participation of minorities in the social, political, and cultural life of the societies in which they live. She has presented papers and published articles on Canadian multiculturalism, Canadian literature, ethnic studies, Miksa Fenyo’s wartime diary, the media reception in Hungary to Imre Kertesz’s Nobel prize and most recently co-edited the papers of an international conference , The 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Hungarian and Canadian Perspectives (University of Ottawa Press, 2010). She is President of the Canada-Hungary Educational Foundation and Secretary of the Hungarian Studies Association of Canada.

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