History/Political Science paper by Stark, Tamás
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).