Submitted Papers - 2016

The History of Hungarian Life in Columbus, Ohio

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Columbus Ohio is America's 15th largest city with over 800,000 residents. The 2014 US census estimate says there are over 20,000 self-identified Hungarians in the Columbus metro area.

In the early 1900s, there were many factories on the South Side. It attracted many Hungarian immigrants. In 1906 a Hungarian Reformed church was established on Woodrow. Two streets away, a Hungarian Roman Catholic church was built on Reeb. It was named for St. Ladislas, an early Hungarian king and saint. In 1974, the City Council officially designated a part of the South Side as Hungarian Village.

By the mid-1980s, St. Ladislas ended its monthly Hungarian masses. Hungarian events were discontinued as Hungarian Catholics moved & chose to attend various other Catholic churches in the area. The Reformed church remained in Hungarian Village. The area has deteriorated & today only one 90 year old Hungarian is in Hungarian Village.

In 2008, the Columbus Reformed church, a member of th Calvin Synod, lost its full time minister. The Calvin Synod has 23 member churches in 11 states. Twenty two were founded around 1900. Most are struggling to survive. After seven years, the synod has been unable to find a suitable minister for member churches in Columbus, Dayton, & two other locations. The newly elected bishop presides over a church that has lost its building. There are 37 other Reformed churches in 17 states & DC that do not belong to the synod. Most are newer churches in major cities.
All Reformed churches are listed with contact information in the annual Bethlen Almanac published in Ligonier, Pennsylvania.

A major force in Columbus Hungarian Life has been the non-denominational Hungarian Cultural Association. In 2010, the HCA began holding monthly programs at the Reformed church. Even today, HCA holds well-attended dinners, a July festival, plus Soup & Learn programs on Hungarian topics. One of our popular programs is "Life Stories of Local Hungarians"--with one presenter born in the US & one born overseas. Eighteen Magyars have already presented their stories to interested audiences. HCA has shown that we can bring Hungarians to the South Side church, though events held in nicer neighborhoods draw bigger numbers.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Arthur Allan Bartfay graduated from Central High School in Flint, Michigan; earned a BA and MA from Michigan State University in East Lansing. He served on the faculties of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant. Arthur earned ABD credits at The Ohio State University in Columbus and, after 25 years, retired from the staff of The Ohio State University.

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The Horthy-Archive: Unpublished Documents of the Horthy-Family from 1956

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
It has been part of the Hungarian cultural memory for several decades, that the indirect cause of Miklós Horthy’s death in January, 1957 was the depression he fell into when the Hungarian revolution was overpowered and defeated by the Soviet invasion. According the memoir of his daughter-in-law, Ilona Edelsheim Gyulai, “he did everything mechanically” since November 1956. “He neither read the papers nor listened to the radio any more.”

Ilona Edesheim-Gyulay passed away in South England three years ago, at the age of 93. Since that time I have been sorting, digitalizing, researching and publishing her papers. The collection contains several volumes of diaries, from different periods of the 20th century, written by various members of the family. Most of the papers are still unknown in Hungary. According to plans they will be published in the forthcoming years, edited by me. First part of this series: Diary of Magda Horthy (spouse of the regent), was published in Hungary by Libri in my edition in November 2015.

In my lecture I intend to analyze the contemporary entries of Ilona Edelsheim Gyulai’s diary. Besides the narrative text of the diary I will demonstrate and analyze contemporary correspondences of the former regent with relevant actors of the Hungarian emigrant community, like Miklós Kállay, Ferenc Chorin, and Pongrácz Sommsich. These documents are also part of the archives of Ilona Edelsheim-Gyulai; none of them have been published or even researched before.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Andrea Bern is a PhD student at the Department of Modern and Recent Hungarian History of ELTE and researcher, archivist, and editor of the Descendants of Admiral Nicholas Horthy papers in Lewes, United Kingdom. She is also editor at Libri Publishing, Budapest.

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Analyzing Agency of Iron Age Migrants in Construction of the Hungary’s Golden Stag Plaques

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
For nearly one hundred years, Hungarian research of ancient nomadism has been energized by the discoveries of a gold stag plaque, among other items, from two Carpathian burials. In this paper I trace cultural ties through the extant art buried with the Carpathian herders and similar material associated with coeval Iron Age groups from the steppes of southern Siberia, Kazakhstan and classical populations around the Black Sea. Comparative analysis of the buried objects suggest a hyphenated route of passage taken out of Inner Asia by the Carpathian herders. Closer analysis of key iconographic elements reveal careful crafting of key steppe imagery to affirm deep cultural roots with steppe culture of Inner Asian. At the same time, stylistic execution of the commissioning objects suggest the personal agency of the owners to convey a cosmopolitan image, one that advertises cross-cultural fluency between the mobile and the settled communities of the Scythian and Classical world. The evidence from the Carpathian burials suggest a loaded composite of visual vernacular that signals mixed affiliations enabling passage through the obverse/reverse worlds of the civilized and the migrant to expand into western territories of the Eurasian steppes. At a time when the contemporary world is seeing mass shifts of peoples, understanding the historic vortex of ancient migrations and the use of visual imagery that signals intersecting affiliations seems especially pertinent.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Mrea Csorba received all three of her academic degrees from the University of Pittsburgh. She has been teaching art history at the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University as adjunct Assistant Professor since the early 90’s. Dr. Csorba's MA thesis (1987) investigated horse-reliant cultures associated with Scythian steppe culture. Her Ph.D. (1997) expanded research of pastoral groups to non-Chinese dynastic populations documented in northern China. Dr. Csorba's current research continues the theme documenting diagnostic artifacts of Scythian culture into the peripheral reaches of the Eurasian steppes. She first discussed the stag plaques of Hungary at an International Conference on China’s Northern Zone held at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012. She presented the Hungarian material with parallel material recently excavated in northeast China at the International Symposium hosted by the 1st Emperor’s Institute of Archeology in Xian, China, in 2013.

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Operation Mercy – Hungarian Refugee Resettlement Mission: Not Impossible

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
What lessons can be learnt from the refugee crisis of the Cold War, following the infamous crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution and freedom fight by Soviet tanks? According to various sources, nearly 200,000 refugees fled Hungary to the West through Austria and Yugoslavia, for various reasons and different motivations. For the two neighboring countries – and the members of the United Nations –, the mission seemed almost impossible: provide temporary shelter/food, make interviews, process, register and resettle the masses of desperate refugees who crossed the borders illegally during that late-autumn and winter of 1956-57.
Despite the existing strict immigration quotas and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, the United States received some 40,000 refugees until 1959. How was it possible? A series of legal, political, military and humanitarian steps were taken, decisions made, and UN Security Council Resolutions adopted – but not enforced - in order to fulfill this mission. Although there was no war officially declared, yet the scene was a former military camp used for embarkation and processing of US troops during WWII at Camp Kilmer, NJ; and the main characters were military personnel such as (retired) colonels, and reservist soldiers apart from c. 2,000 volunteers and 31,225 refugees who were all processed, interviewed and registered at the Army base, turned into a Reception Center. Contributions to the success both on a local and national level included, but not exclusively, financial and in-kind donations, job offers, even punch-card Remington Rand computers from IBM, while others served as sponsors, interpreters, typists, language teachers, and priests.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Nóra Deák is pursuing PhD studies in American Studies at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Her research topic is the reception of the 1956 Hungarian refugees in the United States. She graduated in English and Russian languages and literatures in 1990 in Debrecen, then received a LIS MA in 1997 in Budapest. She has been working as Head of the Library at the School of English and American Studies Library, ELTE, in Budapest, since 1995. Her research was supported by a Fulbright Visiting Research Scholarship at the American Hungarian Foundation, and by Rutgers University Libraries as a Visiting Research Student during 2014 and 2015 in New Brunswick, NJ.

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Hungarian Infiltrees: Mass Migration 1945-48

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Between 1945 and 1948 Europe experienced the largest mass migration of people in Modern European history before today. This paper will follow the illegal trafficking of people across Hungary’s borders, the administrative decisions that made it possible to cross “illegally,” especially in the mass movement in 1947, and the exigencies of travel and refugee maintenance in a war torn continent. The paper will explore the work of NGOs in Hungary and in the DP camps and touch on the fear that often dictated refugee actions as well as the response of the majority communities to their presence.

This period of migration has been subsumed into the Cold War pathos of the peoples fleeing the Soviets, or in the case of Holocaust survivors as an “interlude”, a limbo for those suspended between the Holocaust and new lives elsewhere. The present refugee crisis reminds us of the impact of this interlude on the political and medical structures, internal national/nationalist politics, and of course, the lives of the migrants.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Alice Freifeld received her PhD (1992), M.A. and B.A. from University of California, Berkeley. She joined the University of Florida in 1994 after teaching at Wheaton College, University of New Hampshire-Durham, University of Connecticut-Storrs, University of Nebraska, and Transylvania University, Lexington, KY. Professor Freifeld has published Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848-1914 (2000), which won the Barbara Jelavich Book Prize in 2001. She also coedited East Europe Reads Nietzsche with Peter Bergmann and Bernice Rosenthal (1998). She has published numerous articles and is currently working on a manuscript entitled Displaced Hungarian Jewry, 1945-48.

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The Great Powers and the Forced Transfer of Hungarians

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In the peace preparation of the victorious Great Powers, at the initiative of Stalin, the expulsion of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia played an important role to fix the new borders in the Eastern part of Europe. Benes exploited the Soviet aims to settle the Slovakian question -i.e. to realize the fusion of Czech and Slovakian lands and to get rid from the entire Hungarian population by a forced transfer on the German pattern. My paper will expose the inter-allied negotiations on the forced transfer of Hungarians from Czechoslovakia, including Stalin's presidential archives new sources, to be published in Moscow in the autumn 2016.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
University Professor and Zoltán Magyary Chair in the University of Public Service (Ecole Nationale d'Administration), Budapest a responsible for a network of Hungarian Diplomatic Historians, former Fulbright and Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University, I thought courses of the History of International Relations and the History of Hungarian Diplomacy in Hungary, France in the last four decades.

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STARTING OVER IN AMERICA: The Story of the Hungarian 56ers

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
"STARTING OVER IN AMERICA: The Story of the Hungarian 56ers" is a 57-min. documentary of personal stories told by thirteen Hungarian refugees who came to the United States following their failed 1956 Revolution against the Soviets. Of the 200,000 who left Hungary, 40,000 were welcomed to the United States to make this country their home. As they tell their stories, we see footage of the Revolution and hear of their disappointment at the outcome and the defeat of their dream for a free Hungary. But their funny, sad, and uplifting stories can now be looked at from a 60-year perspective. We, as viewers, are able to hear these men and women’s first-hand reflections and memories of oppression, communism, revolution, immigration and assimilation. It is a privilege, too, since both the actress Eva Szöreny and Academy-award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond are in the movie and have since died, to hear them recall their experiences in light of this topic.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
City College of San Francisco
ESL Instructor l975 - 2012

Filmmaker 1969- present
http://gatiproductions.blogspot.com

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Contribution of American Public Library Service to Integration and Assimilation of Hungarian Immigrants between 1890 and 1940. Sources, statistical information and methods not identified for immigrant studies.

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
By the turn of the 19th and 20th century America faced the problem of immigrants’ integration. The manpower needs of the industry as priority covered the problem for a while. A debate on the issue lasted decades and offered a great variety of solutions. Among the different views the belief that it can be solved by education was strong. A certain extent it worked for second generation and foreign born immigrant child by the public school system, but not for the immigrant adult. They could communicate and read only on their mother tongue. That created a special situation for public libraries. Following an extensive debate in the professional periodicals and at conferences of librarians, they joined the progressive democrat’s neighborhood program and found their own solution. As a response to the demographic changes they launched a movement for developing “foreign language collections” and trained specialists, the “foreign language librarians” to provide service for immigrants including Hungarians. Until now not much research was made on this movement although archival sources of libraries and their neighborhood studies or annual reports constitute rich sources for immigrant studies and makes trends measurable. The present study analyses and evaluates their debates, their political and philosophical basis regarding integration and assimilation. It presents their methods, the results in the case of Hungarians, and the reactions from the Hungarian communities and from Hungary. The research is based mainly on US and Hungarian archival sources and contemporary published material concerning of the period from 1890’s to the1940’s.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Kovacs Ilona librarian, retired department head of the National Széchényi Library, Budapest.
She gained her diplomas at the Budapest University (ELTE, 1961) and at Kent State University, Ohio (MLS, 1975), and her doctoral degree at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA 1993). Her research area is Hungarians abroad focusing on American Hungarians. As head of the Hungarica Documentation she was director of grants for collecting information and documentation and build up Hungarica databases and also conducting surveys to publish a series of publications on Hungarica material of libraries in Europe, Australia and Canada. She attended several international conferences in Europe, USA, Canada and Hungary and published over 100 articles, studies and books. She was a Fulbright scholar at the American Hungarian Foundation in the AYs 1995 and 2001/03.

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Opening the Door for Refugees: The Decision to Accept 56ers in Switzerland, Israel, Canada, and the US

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The nearly 200,000 refugees who streamed across the border after the failed revolution found new homes in many countries around the world. The US and Canada accepted the largest number in absolute terms, and Switzerland and Canada the most in relation to their population. By a calculation in summer 1957, Canada and Switzerland had each admitted 214 refugees per 100,000 population, and Israel 111. When calculated by refugees per $100 million national income, the corresponding figures were 215 for Israel, 196 for Switzerland, and 158 for Canada. The same ratio for the 34,000 US admissions at that date were 22 and 10, respectively. But the US was the biggest financial contributor: $71 million to ICEM, the Red Cross, and the Austrian government. The reasons behind these countries’ disproportionate representation will be the focus of my paper.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Jim Niessen is the President of the AHEA for 2014-2016. He earned his Ph.D at Indiana University with a dissertation on Transylvania in the 1860s. He has published widely on Hungarian and Romanian religious history, libraries, and archives. He has worked as World History Librarian at Rutgers University since 2001, and coordinated the digital project that placed selected records of the President's Committee for Hungarian Refugee Relief online at http://hi.rutgers.edu/56-ers-collection . The proposed paper is part of a series exploring aspects of the 56er story at successive AHEA meetings.

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Recording Visual Histories of Hungarian American Immigrants Arriving after WWII and 1956

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, some 35,000 Hungarians immigrated to the United States. They were often referred to as the “cream of the crop,” passionate members of society in Hungary who were actively involved in 1956 and forced to flee when the Revolution failed. In their new country, many held tight to their strong heritage, went on to establish new cultural and community organizations and are now considered the grand elders of the Hungarian American community.

In 2015, Réka Pigniczky and Andrea Lauer Rice, both daughters of 56ers, launched the Memory Project: Hungarian American Visual History Archive (https://vimeo.com/channels/memoryproject), with the goal of recording personal interviews with 56ers and Displaced Persons (immigrants after WWII). As Phase I of their project, they have completed 35 interviews across the United States and in Hungary.

Modeled on the methodology utilized by the Shoah Foundation, they set about interviewing 56ers with the same set of questions focusing on three themes. They were: life in Hungary before immigration; the personal story of escape or immigration; and the experience of coming to and settling in America. The discussions almost always turned to the issue of cultural identity, particularly interesting since many of the participants have lived more than half their lives in the US.

Our presentation will focus on the overview and scope of this new visual history archive and its preliminary observations based on the first 35 interviews.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):

Réka Pigniczky is a television journalist, producer and independent documentary filmmaker. A second generation American Hungarian, she created 3 films dealing with 1956, immigration, and dual-identity. Journey Home won awards in Hungary and was invited to screen at a number of international film festivals. Inkubátor was voted one of the 25 best films released in Hungary in 2010. Heritage is the prequel to the Memory Project. Réka Pigniczky has an MA in international affairs and journalism from Columbia University in New York, an MA in Political Science from the Central European University and a BA in Political Science from University of California, San Diego.

Andrea Lauer Rice is a multimedia producer, author and speaker who focuses on teaching the next generation through new and innovative ways. The author of several books and a graphic novel, she produced an educational computer game and created numerous educational websites, including an oral history site and visual history project. Rice actively manages several social media accounts, all with the goal of teaching and reaching young people with the stories of heritage and cultural traditions. Lauer Rice earned an MBA at Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

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Emigration in the Aftermath of the Trianon Treaty and the US Immigration Restrictions Act

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The post-World War I era featured new borders in Central and Eastern Europe under the Trianon Treaty as well as the passage of restrictive immigration laws in the United States in 1921 and 1924. While scholars have examined the effects on Hungarian migration of the Trianon Treaty and U.S. quotas separately, rarely do we consider the effect that these two major post-war developments had on each other happening at the same time. Especially in borderlands areas, people’s home villages might not end up in the state they identified with nationally. This had tremendous effects on the likeliness of migrants already in the US to return to Europe. It also closed off the option of going to the United States for many individuals at the very comment that they might be seeking to move because of new political borders. This paper will examine the interplay between the Trianon borders and American immigration restriction legislation in the migration decisions of Hungarians in the 1920s.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Kristina Poznan is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the College of William & Mary. She is completing her dissertation, "Becoming Immigration Nation-Builders: The Development of Austria-Hungary's National Projects in the United States, 1880s-1920s." The project has been supported by a Fulbright Austrian-Hungarian Joint Research Award, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Poznan has offered courses at William & Mary, the Károli Gáspar Reformed University, Christopher Newport University, and Randolph-Macon College. She is a historical consultant for Bettina Fabos's "Proud and Torn," an online interactive visual timeline of Hungarian history, and secretary of the Hungarian Studies Association.

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A 1956 Refugee Remembers

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
A personal report of a Hungarian asylum seeker - after the Soviet Union crushed the rebellion in 1956, reporting on difficulties crossing the Iron Curtain, on camp life experience in Vienna, on difficulties crossing the ocean on the U.S. military boat named after General Walker, on arrival in Camp Kilmer in New Jersey and on adjusting to western life style in New York. The illustrated report is based on my book entitled CLIMBING OUT FROM UNDER THE SHADOW, published in 2010.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Elizabeth Molnar Rajec is a retired professor emerita,Fulbright scholar, PEN member, academic librarian from City College CUNY, published author on Franz Kafka and Ferenc Molnar. The latest among her many publications is Climbing Out From Under the Shadow, New York, 2010.

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Hungary and the Refugee Question, 1914 – 2015

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
During the past century, Hungary has confronted the challenge of refugee crises four times.

During World War I, tens of thousands of Galician Jews fled to Hungary, mainly to Budapest, ahead of the advancing Russian imperial army. The Hungarian government provided social, medical, and housing assistance for these refugees. Despite the protection of the state, the Galician Jews were the target of criticism, and newspapers and politicians waged discrediting campaigns against them.

In autumn 1939, more than one hundred thousand Polish refugees arrived in Hungary. Most of them left for the Mediterranean region, but thousands remained and found shelter here during the war.

In 1989, thousands of East Germans gathered in Budapest because Hungary had given up the mines and barbed wire sealing the border with Austria. They demanded to be let through to democratic West Germany and, in an extraordinary historic moment, the government heeded their wish.

In 2015 more than three hundred thousand refugees from the Middle East and Afghanistan crossed Hungary for Germany and Sweden. The Hungarian government replied to this latest crisis with a vehement anti-migrant campaign, and built a barricade along Hungary's southern border in late summer to keep newly arriving refugees out of the country.

The proposed paper would compare government policy in these four situations. The paper would then examine the factors that affected the government behavior and public opinion in these cases.

After two of these four refugee crises, Hungarians themselves needed international support as 200 hundred thousands out-migrated with the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Issue: did Hungary treat their in-migrants with the support that so many Hungarian out-migrants sought?



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Tamás Stark received his PhD from the University of Budapest in 1993. From 1983 he was a researcher at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and in 2000 he was appointed a senior research fellow. His specialization is forced population movement in East-Central Europe in the period 1938-1956, with special regard to the history of the Holocaust, the fate of civilian internees and prisoners of war, and the postwar migrations. In 1995 he was visiting fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. In 2014 he was Fulbright professor at the Nazareth College in Rochester NY. USA. His main publications include: Hungary’s Human Losses in World War II. (Uppsala, 1995), Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust and after the Second World War (Boulder, CO, 2000), Magyarok szovjet fogságban (Budapest, 2006).

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