Accepted Abstracts

Myth and Reality in Efforts to Rescue Hungarian Jews in 1944

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Because the Nazi deportations of the Jewish population in Hungary proceeded in secret, a crucial question is: How and when did knowledge about this unprecedented campaign reach leaders not only in Hungary but also in the West? As it turned out, the efforts to stop the deportations succeeded only after that knowledge had reached Hungary and the Allies simultaneously.
The “Auschwitz Report,” the testimony of two escaped prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, was transmitted from Slovakia even before deportations began. This report presented convincing documentation about the Nazi extermination machine. Although many scholarly accounts are available about the crucial role of the Vrba-Wetzler report, a simultaneous view of the two distinct paths of this report, one to Washington, where the authority and the control of effective bombing missions resided, and the other to the head of state in Hungary, is still lacking.
On the basis of information he had in his possession, Roosevelt warned the head of state in Hungary, Admiral Horthy, that there would be serious consequences if the deportations did not cease. That warning contributed to the halting of deportations. Budapest was spared, but by that time the Jews of the provinces had been taken.
After the revelations of the “Auschwitz Report,” a coded message with the urgent request to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz reached Switzerland from Slovakia. Because of delays, the message did not reach the president for serious consideration. If those rail lines had been destroyed, as proposed, a more comprehensive rescue could have succeeded.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Frank Baron emigrated to the United States in 1947. After studies at universities in Illinois, Indiana, Marburg and Göttingen, he received his doctorate from the University of California in Berkeley. He began teaching German language and literature at the University of Kansas in 1970. His work as director of the Max Kade Center for German-American Studies resulted in a digital library for Alexander von Humboldt and a book on Abraham Lincoln and the German immigrants. He has published books and articles on the history of Renaissance humanism, origins and evolution of the Faust legend, and the works of Rilke, Thomas Mann, and Herman Hesse.

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Heat Index: The Role of Paprika in Anglophone Tourism to Interwar Hungary

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
American and British tourists played an oversized part in the imaginations of interwar Hungarian tourism promoters. Despite their relatively far-off geographical origins, despite having been enemies only a few years before, and despite arriving in comparatively low numbers, they fell into a circle of “close” and privileged foreigners whose prominence in the promoters’ minds overshadowed their actual presence. When it came to tallying successes in attracting visitors from abroad, Anglophone tourists were, in the words of one booster, aranyfácánok (golden pheasants): rich, glamorous, and willing to part with their dollars and pounds – as long as they were courted in the right way.
One of those ways, it seems, was to manage Anglo-American expectations when it came to Hungarian cuisine. Paprika – the sine qua non of cookery in modern Hungary – was a particular cause for concern. With a reputation for intense spiciness, some tourism promoters seemed to worry that paprika would be off-putting to the mild Anglophone palate, and attempted to reassure potential guests that the country would (literally) be to their taste. On the other hand, paprika had grown into a powerful metaphor for Hungarianness itself – but especially for an exoticized, eroticized fascination of Anglo-Americans for Hungarian women.
This paper is an early investigation into the role of paprika in promoting tourism to Hungary in the interwar period. Drawing on guidebooks, travelogues, advertisements, periodical sources, and films, it will explore the complicated way that paprika was emphasized or suppressed in the never-ending quest to attract big-ticket guests.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Andrew Behrendt is Assistant Teaching Professor of History at the Missouri University of Science & Technology. His main research areas include the history of tourism and interwar cinema in Austria and Hungary. A portion of this research is expected to be forthcoming soon in the Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918 series of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In addition to transforming his dissertation into a monograph, Andrew is in the early stages of a project on the relationship between tourism and cuisine in Habsburg and post-Habsburg East-Central Europe.

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From Kossuth’s Twin-Soul to the Nation’s Chief Nurse: the Legacy of Zsuzsanna Kossuth Meszlényi

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The youngest sister of Governor Lajos Kossuth died in exile in New York at the age of only 37. By the time she arrived in the United States in 1853, her personal life had been full of ups and downs: lost her husband and baby son within a year of each other; spent months in prison twice; and became sick – first she had only coughs, then pneumonia and finally „pulmonary affections”. But she also had a career, quite unusual at the time: in April 1849 she was appointed the Chief Nurse of camp hospitals during the Hungarian War of Independence. Not as famous as Florence Nightingale, who is considered the founder of modern nursing, Zsuzsanna Kossuth organized 72 camp hospitals and a network of volunteer nurses, 5 years earlier than the Crimean War.
This paper is going to discuss the primary and secondary sources of her life and work, her supporters – both Hungarian exiles and American intellectuals. And finally a new image, probably used as a carte de visite (i.e. “visiting card”), will be presented, as a way of her prominence, up-to-datedness, and businesswoman-like attitude.
The year 2017 was dedicated in Hungary to her memory in particular commemorating the 200th anniversary of her birth, and to nursing as a profession in general. Her legacy should be promoted globally.


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. She participate in the Mikes Kelemen Program in 2017/18.

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From Liberal to Illiberal Crowd: 30 Years After

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
A revised version of my book, Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848-1914, is being translated into Hungarian for publication by l'Harmattan. The original epilogue focused on 1989. The new epilogue would benefit tremendously from feedback at the NEHA conference.

The paper will follow the remolding of Hungarian politics since the end of Communism. It will use the lens of crowd politics and the new statuescape to follow the changes in political goals, national imagination, and political control. Viktor Orbán began as a student leader of Fidesz and speaker at the reburial ceremony for Imre Nagy. As the Communist era lost its historical nuance, reform communism was discredited and the celebration of 1956 has dimmed. March 15 moved from a family-friendly holiday to a caustic one inappropriate for children. Interwar leaders gained pedestals in the renewed nationalist rhetoric.
Crowd politics has been an essential element of Hungarian nationalism since the nineteenth century. Political scientists make a sharp division between crowd demonstrations and festive gatherings, between grassroots activism and government orchestrated events, but Hungarian politics invariably interconnect the two.
The opposition has at several points engaged in crowd protest. The recent crowds protesting proposed overtime work seemed to catch the government flatfooted, but Orbán's political acumen has in part been his ability to use, seize, or orchestrate both festive gatherings and politically defiant crowds for regime change or to increase his hold on power; for electoral victories or parliamentary advantage; to attract international support, or rally internally against foreign opinion.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Alice Freifeld is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida. She received her PhD (1992), M.A. and B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. 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. She is former President of Hungarian Studies Association.

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Ilona Duczynska and the 1919 Hungarian Commune

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Ilona Duczynska (1897-1978) was one of the most significant Austro-Hungarian revolutionary figures of the 20th century. She was a comrade of Lenin and of the men and women who made the 1917 Russian Revolution. She was most certainly the spark plug that lit the fuse of the 1918-1919 Hungarian revolutions, which hammered the final nails into the coffin of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She is the most important female Hungarian representative of the "professional revolutionary” for whom the fight for social justice does not have a national identity, has no territorial boundaries. She is the type of revolutionary that revolutions tend to devour. Duczynska was always a puzzle, an irritant in the eyes of the Bolsheviks. She was kicked out of every Communist Party that she ever joined. Had she not left Russia in 1920, she would have been surely executed along with her closest comrades, lovers and admirers who stayed behind or went to Russia to seek safe haven from the Fascism sweeping through Europe after WWI.
This presentation will examine a small but significant part of Duzyinska’s revolutionary “identity” - her role in the short lived 1919 Hungarian Republic of Councils. Was she an obedient servant, a local propagandist for the Russian Bolsheviks or an independent Hungarian warrior for social justice, committed to the transformation of her country’s unjust, unsustainable socio-political system?



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
András B. Göllner is a Political-Economist (PhD. The London School of Economics) and Emeritus Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia University, Montreal. Author of three books, and numerous articles in refereed scholarly journals, Göllner also publishes on social media surfaces and in such well known media outlets as The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, The National Post, Social Europe or the Montreal Gazette. His latest book, Ilona: Portrait of a Revolutionary is being released this year by Montreal publisher LLP Inc. His current research focuses on the political language of Cyber Capitalism.

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A magyar energiapolitika történeti alakulásának geopolitikai aspektusai

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Tanulmányom egy speciális, a jelenlegi globális energiapolitikai folyamatok között közérdeklődés felkeltésére alkalmas aspektusból, a geopolitika aspektusából vizsgálja a 20. század második felének és a 21. század elejének magyar történelmét és annak folyamatait.
Az energiapolitika az 1950-es éveket követően a nemzetállamok fontos stratégiai kérdése, az energiatermelést domináló fosszilis energiahordozók egyenlőtlen földrajzi elhelyezkedése energiaimportőr és energiaexportőr országokra osztotta fel a világot. Az energia meghatározó politikai potenciállá, s több esetben háborút kiváltó okká vált a 20. század második felétől napjainkig, ezáltal a modern kori történelem egyik fő mozgatórugója volt. Magyarország energiahordozókban rendkívül szegény állam, az ország energiapolitikáját, a felhasznált energiahordozók típusát nagymértékben meghatározta az energiafüggőség.
A II. világháborút követően szovjet mintára létrejött extenzív, energiaigényes iparához szükséges megnövekedett szükségletét szinte teljes mértékben a Szovjetunióból szerezhette be. Magyarország a többi közép-európai országhoz hasonlóan az elmúlt 25 évben számos intézkedéssel próbálta meg csökkenteni Oroszországhoz kapcsolódó egyoldalú energiaimport-függőségét, azonban ezek a törekvések csak részsikereket értek el, Magyarország és Közép-Európa nagy részének orosz energiaimport-függősége napjainkig fennmaradt.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Haffner Tamás közgazdász, okleveles közgazdasági elemző, a közgazdaságtudomány doktora, a földtudományok doktorjelöltje. 2011 óta foglakozom a magyar energiapolitika kutatásával, többek közt annak történeti aspektusával. A témában 2018-ban doktori fokozatot (PhD) szereztem a Pécsi Tudományegyetem Közgazdaságtudományi Karán. 2015 óta, jelen tanulmányom keretében foglalkozom a magyar energiapolitika geopolitikai aspektusaival. Munkámat jelenleg a Pécsi Tudományegyetem Földtudományok Doktori Iskolájának doktorjelöltjeként végzem. Kutatómunkám mellett Pécs város területfejlesztési intézményének, a Pécsi Helyi Akciócsoportnak az igazgatói feladatait látom el.

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Nation Concept of the American Hungarian Emigration, with Special Regard to the Situation of Hungarians Living in Romania

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The lecture focuses on the nation concept of American Hungarian Diaspora organizations and its leaders who advocated human rights of Hungarians living in Romania in the U.S. during the Cold War, taking into consideration both their relationship to the motherland and their position on Hungarian minorities living beyond the borders of Hungary. Each of the organization and movement established by the different waves of immigration in different periods represented a special community culture and mentality, mostly competing with each other, based on imported values from the motherland, and as a consequence, all of them developed their own special nation concept regarding Hungary, its neighboring countries and their Hungarian minorities. This left a strong mark on their chosen advocacy objectives, lobbying instruments, quality of their networks and of their relationship with the prevailing Hungarian Government. The advocacy activities of four different diaspora organizations will be analyzed along the factors mentioned above: namely the points of view and main features of the American Hungarian Federation, American Transylvanian Association, the Transylvanian World Federation and the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Gabriella Hermann owns master’s degrees in International Relations (from Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary) and in Ethnography (from Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary). Being a PhD candidate at Corvinus University of Budapest’s International Relations Multidisciplinary Doctoral School, she has specialized on ethnic advocacy activities of Hungarian Diaspora organizations in the U.S. for Hungarian minorities living in Romania during the Cold War, which led her to apply for a Fulbright scholarship at Rutgers University, New Brunswick (NJ), where she spends her research stay in 2019.

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A diaszpóra csoportkohéziós összetevői

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Jelen előadás a diaszpórák identitásmegtartó aktivitásának tartalmi elemeit vizsgálja a globálisan változó népvándorlási, társadalmi és kulturális körülmények közepette. A szerzők kitérnek a diaszpóra kategóriát meghatározó kritériumokra, valamint az anyaállamok eltérő diaszpórastratégiai felfogásaira. A diaszpóra csoportkohéziós elemeinek tárgyalásakor az elemzés tárgyát képezi a migrációs eredetet szerepe, amely alapján e közösségtípus elkülöníthető más, hasonló jellegű etnikai, nemzeti vagy vallási alapon szerveződő kisebbségektől, valamint a magyar szóhasználatban gyakran elődforduló tömb és szórvány kifejezések jelentéstartalmától. A diaszpóra további kritériumainak tárgyalásakor a szerzők elemzik a diaszpóra közösségek társadalmi integrációs folyamatait és modelljeit, az etnikai határok intézményesülési megoldásait, valamint az anyaországok diaszpóra felé irányuló támogatáspolitikáit. Az ezekre vonatkozó, szakirodalomban megjelenő tipológiákkal kapcsolatban külön felhívják a figyelmet arra, hogy a különböző ideáltípusok a valóságban nem jelennek meg „vegytiszta” formában. Ennek illusztrálásaként, a tanulmány végén röviden összevetjük az ismertetett elméleteket a jelenlegi magyar kormány egyes diaszpórapolitikai gyakorlataival.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ákos Jarjabka is an Associate Professor at the University of Pécs, Faculty of Business and Economics, where he received his PhD in 2004. Since 20013 he has been the head of the Department of Leadership and Organizational Sciences. His publications encompass the science of leadership, international management, and project management. Since 2005 he has been a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is the leader of the University of Pécs Diaspora Program. akos@ktk.pte.hu

Dániel Gazsó was born in 1984 in Budapest (Hungary). He completed his studies in social and cultural anthropology at the University of Granada (Spain). Since 2015 he is a research fellow at the Research Institute for Hungarian Communities Abroad (NPKI). Since 2018 he is a lecturer at the National University of Public Service – Faculty of Science of Public Governance and Administration. He is also co-editor of the scientific journals entitled Kisebbségi Szemle and Hungarian Journal of Minority Studies. His research topics are concerned with national minorities, interethnic relationships, nationalisms, kin-state policies, migration and diaspora studies.

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George Creel and Hungary: An Improbable Diplomat

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In the period from the First World War until the Cold War there was no more unusual connection and friendship in the political arena than that of the Damon Runyonesque George Creel of the United States with some of the leading political figures of Central and East Europe. Creel served as one of the closest advisors to the cerebral and Calvinistic President Woodrow Wilson and as a member of his cabinet during the First World War. At Wilson's behest,Creel became involved with Central and East European affairs at the conclusion of World War I. This paper will focus on the largely unknown history of Creel's relationship with Hungary from WWI until the dawn of the Cold War


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Katalin Kádár Lynn is the Editor in Chief and Publisher of Helena History Press LLC, Reno, NV USA and Budapest, Hungary. As a historian her research has been concentrated on Central and East European political exiles and exile organizations. Her most recent research focus is on the intelligence activities of exile organizations during WWII and the Cold War. Amongst recent publications are an essay co-authored with Mark Stout Every Hungarian of any value to intelligence; Tibor Eckhardt, John Grombach, and the Pond that appeared in the October 2015 issue of Intelligence and National Security. Her essay on Hungarian immigration will appear in East Central European Migrations During the Cold War: A Handbook, Anna Mazurkiewicz, ed. DeGruyter Oldenbourg. Forthcoming 2019. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Colorado, her master's degree at Washington University, St. Louis, MO and her PhD at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She is an out of country member of the Hungarian Academy.

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Panel Proposal: Book discussion of Ernő Munkácsi, How it Happened: Documenting the Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The proposed book panel will address some of the key questions raised by Ernő Munkácsi’s How it Happened: Documenting the Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry, a seminal book on the Holocaust which has recently been released in English for the first time. Originally published in Hungarian as Hogyan történt? in 1947, Munkácsi’s book is an important document on the history of the Holocaust in Hungary written by a key witness from among the persecuted. The panel will begin by introducing Ernő Munkácsi, a member of the Budapest-based Neolog elite who, in 1944, served as secretary for the Hungarian Central Jewish Council. The panelists will aim to draw the immediate contexts of his seminal early postwar publication Hogyan történt?, including the controversy surrounding the activities of the Central Jewish Council in Budapest. More generally, the panelists will discuss the major dilemmas Munkácsi confronted when developing an interpretation of the Holocaust in Hungary and how he sought to resolve them. As well, the panelists, contributors to the new English-language edition of Munkácsi’s volume, will share their observations on how and with what exact aims their extensive scholarly contributions (two introductions, a biography, annotations, glossary, maps, and archival photos) were created.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ferenc Laczó is assistant professor in modern and contemporary European history at Maastricht University. He is the author of three books, including Hungarian Jews in the Age of Genocide. An Intellectual History, 1929-1948 (Brill, 2016). His main research interests lie in political and intellectual history, Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Many of his writings are accessible via https://unimaas.academia.edu/FerencLaczó

Susan Papp is pursuing a Ph.D. in Modern European History at the University of Toronto. She has taught in the Hungarian Studies Program in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Ms. Papp has published widely in the fields of Hungarian immigration to and settlement in North America @and, more recently, about the Politics of Exclusion in the film industry in Hungary during the inter-war period. In 2015, she was awarded a Fellowship at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Ms. Papp spent fifteen years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a journalist and producer where she was awarded the prestigious Michener Award. One of her recent books, Outcasts: A Love Story, published by Dundurn Press, is based on a true story of a Christian man who tries to save a Jewish woman in Hungary in 1944. This book has been translated into Hungarian and Hebrew and has been made into a documentary film that is regularly shown on Canadian television. Email: susan.papp@utoronto.ca

Chair: Louise O. Vasvári (Ph.D., UC Berkeley) is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and of Linguistics at Stony Brook University. Currently she teaches in the Linguistics Department at NYU and is also Affiliated Professor at the University of Szeged. She works in medieval studies, diachronic and socio-linguistics, Holocaust studies, and Hungarian Studies, all informed by gender theory within a broader framework of comparative cultural studies. In relation to Hungarian Cultural Studies she has published with Steven Tötösy, Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature (2005), Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies (2009), and Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies (2011). Email: lvasvari@icloud.com

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Hungarians Talk Homeward from the Celestial Empire: Voices in the Hungarian Press on China and the Chinese

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper deals with the creation, transmission and application of stereotypic images of a country and its people by agents of a traditionally non-colonial state in the period of imperialism. By exploring the representation of China and the Chinese in the Hungarian-speaking press between 1869 and 1904, I have two purposes in mind. On the one hand I intend to contribute to the understanding of the emerging Hungarian Orientalism and Sinology as well as its place in the broader Euro-American discourses. On the other hand I am focusing on a phenomenon of talking about relevant issues at home under the disguise of the otherized foreign. In this paper I am introducing the concept of “homeward-talking”, and the reasons of its application in the Sino-Hungarian context.
Sources include reports from and news about a traveler-scientist writing about the status of Asian women, the accounts of a custom officer describing various aspects of Chinese life, two missionaries operating in turbulent periods, and a technocrat engineer of many superficial and biased ideas about China. I argue that all these individuals were largely part of the coeval Western discourses on China while partly had their own, specific topics for their Hungarian readers.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Mátyás Mervay earned his BA in history at the Eötvös Lóránd University (Budapest, Hungary) and his master’s degree at Nankai University (Tianjin, China), majoring in modern and contemporary Chinese history. His master’s thesis dealt with Austro–Hungarian prisoners of war in China during World War I. He is currently a doctoral student in East Asian history at New York University. His first article, co-authored with Jiang Pei, “Yizhan qijian zai Zhongguo de Ao Xiong zhanfu” (Austro–Hungarian Prisoners of War in China during World War I), dealing with the reception of the refugee soldiers as well as the detention of the Austro–Hungarian garrison forces in Beijing and Tianjin, was published in Lishi jiaoxue (History Teaching), no. 5 (2017). His second article on the “Austro-Hungarian refugee soldiers in China” was published in July 2018 by the Journal of Modern Chinese History (2018). He is currently preparing his dissertation proposal with a working title: "Central European Diasporas in China 1910s-1950s".

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Leopold Ungar’s 1956: Hungarians, Christians, and Jews in Austria

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
As part of my continuing work on the Hungarian refugee crisis of 1956, I gave an AHEA talk last year entitled “Send us a Planeload! Catholic Organizations and the Resettlement of 56ers.” That presentation touched upon the partnership of the director for Austria of America’s Catholic Relief Service, Fr. Fabian Flynn, with the head of Vienna Caritas, Msgr. Leopold Ungar. This paper will focus specifically on Msgr. Ungar.
Ungar (1912-92) was born in Wiener Neustadt of Jewish parents originating from Hungary. Inspired in part by the social engagement of the satirist Karl Kraus, he converted to Catholicism and entered seminary in 1935, but fled Austria due to his Jewish ancestry after the Anschluss and was ordained in France. He was interned twice as an enemy alien, first in France after the country’s occupation by the Germans and then again in Britain. His languages and his experience as a refugee led to his appointment as head of Vienna Caritas in 1950.
Ungar amplified the generous reception that Austrians accorded the Hungarian refugees in 1956, and his measures to ensure more humane conditions and protect Jewish refugees from anti-Semitic incidents contrasted with the sometimes ambiguous response of secular authorities. John Connelly has demonstrated in From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965 that Austrian Jewish converts and other Grenzgänger were prominent among the theological pioneers. Ungar, who during his long career in Austrian Caritas steadily increased its international engagement, should be seen in a similar light.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Jim Niessen earned his Ph.D from Indiana University in 1989. After three years of college history teaching he shifted to the library profession, earning an MLIS and then working as a librarian since 1994, first at Texas Tech University and then since 2001 at Rutgers University. His research and publications have ranged from religion and politics in nineteenth century Transylvania (his dissertation topic) to Romanian nationalism, church history, libraries and archives, to the refugees from Hungary during the Cold War. Many of his publications are freely available available at https://soar.libraries.rutgers.edu/bib/James_P._Niessen .

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Creating False Identity – The Campaign Against the “Galician Jews” in the Era of the Horthy Regime

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In the Hungarian Kingdom, before 1918 the Jews were considered as Hungarians. In the era of the Horthy regime, especially at the beginning of the regime and in its final years, unlike in the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Jews were excluded from the Hungarian nation. Although at the national census Jews were registered as Hungarians, the rhetoric of the regime, and numerous decrees of the governments spoke about the Jews as a separate race. Moreover, a special group of Jews were picked up from this “alien” race. This special group was called “Galician Jews”. In my proposed paper I would like to tell how and why this false identity was invented, used and exploited in the era of the Horthy regime.

Originally this label: “Galician” referred to those Jews who or whose ancestors moved to Hungary from the East. They were made responsible for the failure of the assimilation of Jews to the Hungarian nation. Since the beginning of the 1920s, at the National Assembly, but also increasingly in public discourse, the term “Galician” no longer referred to people originating from Galicia or Russia. In public life, this adjective was assigned to every Jew whose Hungarian affiliation was questioned. “Galician” Jews were made scapegoats of the defeat of World War I and of the post-war revolutions. “Galician” Jews were unwanted Jews whom Hungarian national elite wanted to deport from Hungary. In 1941 they became the first victims of the Holocaust in Hungary.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Tamas Stark received his PhD from the Eötvös Loránd University 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. In 2014 he was Fulbright visiting professor at the Nazareth College in Rochester NY. 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 prisoners of war and civilian internees and postwar migrations. His main publications include: Hungarian Jews During the Holocaust and After the Second World War, 1939–1949; A Statistical Review ( Boulder CO, 2000), Magyar foglyok a Szovjetunióban (Budapest 2006) and „...akkor aszt mondták kicsi robot” – A magyar polgári lakosság elhurcolása a Szovjetunióba korabeli dokumentumok tükrében. (Budapest 2017).

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Unbridged Divides: Francis Joseph in Hungarian Nationalist Narratives and Public Memory

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper explores nationalist narratives and public memory of Francis Joseph and the Habsburg era in Hungary. In this work, Budapest’s Liberty Bridge serves as a lens and reference point of sorts in an examination of nationalist historical narratives and public memory of Francis Joseph and the era of the Dual Monarchy in Hungary. In particular, this paper will trace the way in which ruling governments have attempted to impose their own versions of history and identity onto the public spaces of Budapest and into the minds of their citizens.
Beginning with the years following the 1848 revolution, this paper touches on views of Francis Joseph during the Dual Monarchy, before moving on to the Emperor-King’s role in the Horthy and Socialist eras. In Budapest, one reason that the Liberty Bridge never regained its pre-Socialist era name, Francis Joseph Bridge, is due to a lack of popular positive memory of Francis Joseph, in contrast to several other important Hungarian historical figures. In the contested field of Hungarian national narrative the memory of Francis Joseph never truly found its place; for while he did gain a significant degree of popularity in the later decades of his reign, Hungary’s longest-ruling monarch never gained a place in the country’s imagination.
By turns marginalized, vilified and ignored over the course of the twentieth century, the king who oversaw the creation of modern Budapest is today largely absent from public space and from public discourse.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Thomas Szigeti is a PhD student currently enrolled at New York University. Following the completion of his MA in history at the Ohio State University in 2015, he spent several years in Budapest working as a translator and editor for an English-language news site, before returning to the United States to resume his academic studies.

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