Accepted Abstracts

History of Pécs in the Era of Dualism, Volume VI of the History of Pécs (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Book Presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Last year a team of scholars from Pécs published the sixth volume in their series on the history of city. This one covers the Dualist Period. I wrote a review of it that I hope will appear in HCS but there is a lot more interesting material than what I was able to point out in the short review. My presentation might be of interest to people in the conference since events in local history are not that well known, though they illustrate national trends, sometimes with an interesting twist. The book is quite rich in such material, with great illustrations that would be good to view. I would mention how this work fits in with the planned eight volume set that was initiated soon after the change of regime. I would also point out the limitations of the book and discuss what they reflect about the politics of memory in Hungary.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
George Deák is an independent scholar who returned to the field of history after retirement from a career in information technology. He received his PhD from Columbia University under the guidance of István Deák.

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Fekecs, egy rendhagyó menekült (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Az Egyesült Államok által befogadott több, mint 40000 ötvenhatos menekült több-kevesebb sikerrel beilleszkedett az amerikai társadalomba. Fekecs Miklós (máshol Mihály, Michael) (1935-1960) azonban rossz okból került az újságok lapjaira az új hazájában. Az előadás azt vizsgálja, hogy hogyan vezetett az útja az 50-es évek közepén a rendőrtiszti képzéstől az ÁVH általi letartóztatásán, elítélésén és börtönbüntetésén – Jobbágy Domokos, a később szintén menekült zárkatársaként - keresztül 1956-os meneküléséig, majd bűnözővé válásáig New Jersey államban. A szokásostól eltérő menekült sors vajon milyen hatással volt az 56-os menekültek megítélésére a magyarok és az amerikaiak között?


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Nóra Deák is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Her research topic is the reception, registration, and resettlement of the 1956 Hungarian refugees in the United States. She graduated as an English-Russian high school teacher in 1990 in Debrecen, then received an LIS MA degree in 1997 in Budapest. She was a librarian between 1990-2022, and now she works as an international relations officer at the Secretariat of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her research was supported by a Fulbright Visiting Research Scholarship at the American Hungarian Foundation, and by Rutgers University Libraries during 2014 and 2015 in New Brunswick, NJ. She participated in the Mikes Kelemen Program in 2017/18. She is currently one of the participants of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH) project called The Post-1956 Refugee Crisis and Hungarian Émigré Communities During the Cold War.

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Hungarian Jewish Women: Rape and Liberation (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper will focus on two iconic moments, one is the moment of liberation in 1945 and the other Horthy marching into Cluj on his white horse in 1940. The newsreel footage for both are of a moment of jubilation. In 1940 young wholesome women are photographed waving flags and beaming in their national attire. Likewise, Hungarian Jews felt a patriotic fullness, recalling the “World of Yesterday” when Hungary acquitted Jews with civil rights, permitted them to flourish. They would speak their mother tongue on the streets again. My mother’s disillusionment and trauma began when soldiers in the entering army gang raped her on her way to work downtown. She contracted syphilis and in 1944 was deported to Auschwitz. Similarly, liberation is documented as a moment of jubilation in western newsreels and growingly as a time of rape and pillage in the East. Instead, for my mother and so many others who survived the last death marches, liberation happens on the road with the war raging around them. The Red Army was too busy to tend to them, either to feed them or to rape them. For these vulnerable women, it was a circuitous road home that took many, many months, very often in the wrong direction.

This paper will use testimonies from Transylvanian women including my mother, weaving her story into the larger picture. It relies on the work of Andrea Pető on rape, but even Andrea’s work seems to focus more on the Russian and German armies and the western literature on rape. I will, of course, do my own digging, but I also hope that presenting this topic at the AHEA will help me locate more information about the Hungarian army’s interactions with the public in Transylvania as they reoccupied the area.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
ALICE FREIFELD, Emeritus
Ph.D.: History University of California, Berkeley 1992
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, Associate Professor Fall 1994-2021; Jewish Studies, UF, Spring 2023
Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848-1914 (Baltimore and Washington, D.C.: Johns Hopkins University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000). Barbara Jelavich Book Prize ASEEES, Hungarian Studies Association book prize

East Europe Reads Nietzsche, co-edited with Peter Bergmann and Bernice Rosenthal, East European Quarterly Monograph Series, no. 514, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
 Work in Progress: Displaced Hungarian Jewry, 1945-1948.
Hungarian translation of Nationalism and the Crowd, l'Harmattan Press, Budapest.
"A kijózanodott tömeg," [The Sobered up Crowd] Határokon túl [Beyond Our Borders] (trans. by János Boris), Tanulmánykötet Mark Pittaway (1971-2010) emlékére [Research in memory of Mark Pittaway], ed. Eszter Bartha and Zsuzsanna Varga (Budapest: L-Harmattan, 2012), 414-438.
“Displaced Persons and Hungary's Porous Borders, 1945-48,” in Border Changes in 20th Century Europe, Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann, eds., Tartu Studies in Contemporary History, vol. 1 (Berlin: Lit-Verlag, 2010), 163-182.
“Conflict and De-escalation: The Hungarian people and imperial politics from 1848/49 to the ‘Ausgleich’ of 1867,” Comparing Empires, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies series (FRIAS), volume 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 409-424.
“Empress Elisabeth as Hungarian Queen: The Uses of Celebrity Monarchy,” in Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky, eds., The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy (New York : Berghahn Books, 2007; paperback, 2009), 138-161.
“War Crimes Trials: A Public Discourse in Postwar Hungary,” in Beyond camps and forced labour. Current international research on survivors of Nazi persecution (Osnabrueck, Germany: Secolo Verlag, 2008), 231-239.
“Identity on the Move: Hungarian Jewry between Budapest and the DP Camps, 1945-1948,” The Holocaust in Hungary, Sixty Years Later, edited by Randolph L. Braham and Brewster S. Chamberlin, Social science monographs, no. 678 (New York & Boulder: Columbia, 2006), 177-200.
“The Tremor of Cain: Return of the Deported to Hungary,” Hungarian Studies (English language journal published by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), 18:2 (2005), 243-250.
“Displaced Hungarian Jewish Identity, 1945-1947,” in Beyond camps and forced labour. Current international research on survivors of Nazi persecution (Osnabrueck, Germany: Secolo Verlag, 2004), 447-455.
“Kossuth: The Hermit and the Crowd,” Hungarian Studies, vol. 16:2 (2002), 205-214.
"The Cult of March 15: Sustaining the Hungarian Myth of Revolution, 1849-1999," Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present. Edited by Nancy Wingfield and Maria Bucur (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2001), pp. 245-275.
"Marketing Industrialism and Dualism in Liberal Hungary: Expositions, 1842-1896," Austrian Yearbook, vol. 29, part 1, 1998, 63-91. Article prize in Hungarian Studies

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies,
. Judith B. and Burton P. Resnick Invitational Scholar for the Study of Antisemitism fellowship, Sept 1, 2019-May 31, 2020. USHMM Associate, June 1-Aug 31, 2020.

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In Their Own Words: Anti-Semitism in Hungary Then and Now (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The paper is based on the two years of research conducted by Jeffrey Kaplan and his colleagues at the Danube Institute in Budapest from 2019-2021 on the topic of contemporary anti-Semitism in Hungary. The study included personal interviews with over 30 leaders of the Hungarian Jewish community, Hungarian and international NGOs, and relevant scholars in the field. The research produced an international conference in 2021 titled “Anti-Semitism in Hungary: Appearance and Reality” in which every leader of the various streams of the Hungarian Jewish community, Hungarian and foreign NGOs and a representative of the government spoke, as well as an eponymous two volume anthology and several academic articles. The presentation would summarize the findings of the research as well as point towards the future of Hungarian-Jewish relations.
The paper is relevant to the theme of the conference in that it will focus on the current relationship between the various Jewish groups with the Hungarian government, with Israel both in terms of government and religion, and with the diaspora community in Israel. It will also document the alliances made after the wave of anti-Semitic attacks in 2011-12 with the Fidesz government, between the Orbán government and that of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, as well as internal alliances within the Hungarian Jewish community.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Prof. Jeffrey Kaplan, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, has published 25 monographs and anthologies and over 150 academic articles, anthology chapters and studies. His work focuses on cultural and religious history, religious violence, and religious terrorism. He has taught and researched all over the world and is currently the Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Danube Institute in Budapest.

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Lottyka sikeres száz esztendeje egy pedagógusdinasztiában Kerekes Judit és Tóth Mariann könyve (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Book Presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Egy pedagógus dinasztia életére világít rá ez a könyv. Körmöcbányán, a magyar aranybánya helyszínén kezdődik 1840-ben. Első világháború, Trianon, második világháború, 1956, a vasfüggöny mögött, megnyilnak a határok, kitárul a világ. Napjainkban Balatonfüreden zárul.
A bemutatott pedagógus dinasztia tagjai gyógypedagógiától, a tanítói, a tanári, az igazgatói életmintákat mutatnak be. Ők a pedagógusok, akik a különböző történelmi korok kihívásaiban, embert próbáló időszakaiban, újra tudtak kezdeni, magyarok maradni, nemzedékeket nevelni.
Valós történeteket ismerhet meg a résztvevő, az első világháború hét éves katonai szolgálatáról és az érintett családokról, az elszakított területek magyar pedagógusairól, az otthonukat gyermekeikkel elhagyó, szükségből vagonlakókká válókról, a semmiből új életet építő, s mégis a tanári hivatásban hívő magyarok életéről.
Az apáról, aki meglátja a frontról halottan hazahozott fiát. A mérnökről, aki tanárrá képezi magát, s olyan szeretetben neveli a tanítványait, hogy amikor Trianon után mindent felszámolnak az elszakított területeken, ami magyar, de az ő festményét az iskola falán hagyják, amit egykor vezetett. A gyógypedagőgusról, aki a reménytelennek hitt gyermeket megtanítja beszélni, s ezt a korabeli szakmai lapok dicsérik. A testnevelőtanárról, aki kilencven évesen közli egykori diákjaival: több érettségi találkozóra már nem tudok utazni. Nem baj Lotty néni, majd mi jövünk. S jöttek, Svájcból, Svédországból, Kaposvárról, Kecskemétről, Győrből, mindenhonnan, minden évben a tanárnő százkétéves koráig.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. Kerekes Judit a City University of New York matematika oktatás professzora, tanszékvezetője. Kutatási területe az óvoda iskola átmenet, a logikus gondolkodás és a számfogalom megértésen alapuló kialakítása. Magyar és angol nyelven publikált könyveket. Magasrangú nemzetközi konferenciák előadója, publikációk szerzője. Közéleti szereplései, Annual XVI Mathematics Connection Conference principal. Magyar-amerikai kapcsolatok ápolása és ébrentartása: AMSZ excecutive board member, New York Amerikai Magyar Színház színésze, alelnöke húsz évig. Alapitója és társelnöke az Amerikai Magyar Iskolák, American Hungarian School Association-nak. XI. AMIT (22 állam 33 iskolája) Konferencia társelnöke. Külföldi egyetemek meghívott előadója. Cserkész tiszt, KMCSSZ Iskolatábor igazgató és táborparancsnok egy évtizeden át.

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The Opportunity of Cultural Autonomy for Hungarians in Romania (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Cultural or non-territorial autonomy appears as a less invasive, less confrontative way of addressing the wants of national minorities. This legal construct addresses a large number of the main worries minorities have regarding the preservation and evolution of their language and culture, which is why the paper argues that its introduction in Romania would solve a number of current challenges in areas such as mother tongue education, the functioning of cultural institutions, from press and literature to theatres and other artistic institutions.
The lack of such a framework in Romania is baffling, especially in view of the fact that a number of its neighbors have adopted cultural autonomy (Serbia and Hungary), or have at least tried to (Ukraine). In wider East Central Europe, we see that cultural autonomy has a history going back at least a century, so there has been sufficient experimentation with the idea to shape it in accordance with local specificities.
The paper presents some of the main lessons today’s cultural autonomy frameworks provide, and proceeds to present the legislative proposal submitted almost two decades ago by the Hungarian political representation in front of the Romanian Parliament. In a comparative view, it will address the strengths and deficiencies of the proposal, as well as the reasons behind decision-makers’ reluctance to address the proposal on its merits.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
I am a PhD student at the University of Debrecen, and my main topic of research is in the field of international investment arbitration.
Since 2017 I’ve been a teaching assistant at at Sapientia EMTE, in Kolozsvár, teaching International Economic Law.
Since 2022 I’ve been a visiting lecturer at the University of Miskolc, teaching International Commercial Arbitration to LLM students.
I am the founder of Advocacy Group for Freedom of Identity, a grassroots human rights organization, taking a practical approach to minority right matters by defending discrimination cases in front of the courts.

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Üdvözöljük az Egyesült Államokban: A Hungarian Diaspora Response to the Hungarian Refugee Crisis, 1956-1957 (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper investigates the response of the Hungarian diaspora to efforts by the US government to transport, process, and resettle over 38,000 Hungarian refugees and parolees in the months immediately following the failed uprising by drawing upon a collection of Hungarian-language diaspora newspapers. The diaspora community would serve two critical functions during this process: translation and integration. These publications provide insights into the recruitment of Hungarian speakers, and the broader Hungarian diaspora, to participate in the processing, resettlement, and integration of newly arrived Hungarian refugees and parolees. As such, this paper reveals how local communities participated in national policy initiatives while also showing how US foreign policies affected domestic communities.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Patrick is a History PhD Candidate at Baylor University studying the global Cold War and its effects, particularly in Hungary and Eastern Europe. His dissertation focuses on the formation of political identities among Hungarian refugees in the United States following the 1956 Uprising. These individuals experienced life on both sides of the Iron Curtain and developed a variety of relationships within the Hungarian diaspora, with US policymakers, and with Hungary.

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The American Foreign Missions and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
I will describe how the U.S. State Department and U.S. Embassies all around the World reacted to the Hungarian revolution. The paper based on my research in the National Archives in College Park, MD. There I found the telegrams and reports of American embassies all around the World. My research focuses on multiple aspects of the United States' political reaction to the revolution.
The first few days in the communication were gathering information about the events in Budapest. The American foreign offices collected information about the reception of the events in foreign countries. These documents give new information pertaining to how countries all around the World reacted to the Hungarian revolution. From many places, like Hungary, Moscow, France, etc. the embassies sent many telegrams every day to Washington D.C.
After the American decision to not send troops to Eastern-Europe the second goal of the embassies were getting information on which country will follow the U.S.’s policy about the Hungarian question in the United Nations. After the Soviet attack, the big refugee crisis provided a third wave in communication since the U.S. was interested in who is willing to accept Hungarians. The American Embassies' inner communication shows that it was a prestige question of how many refugees can go to different countries. The United States organized it’s biggest airlift since the Berlin crisis, to transport Hungarians to New Jersey. Austria and Yugoslavia received thousands of dollars of support from the U.S. and from the United Nations.
I provide a wide view of the different reactions not just geographically, but in their topics and by the most typical reactions. I will talk more about the American Embassy in Moscow and in Budapest since these are critical places in the view of the topic. The Embassy in Moscow was responsible for getting the American decision to the Soviet leaders, but also their role in information gathering was critical in the first week of the revolution. The Hungarian Embassy’s reports and telegrams are providing a very interesting view, of what was life like in the offices and what was the official information from Hungary.
Another unique aspect of the documents is that they contain information about the reaction of the society in some countries. Protests, blood donations, donation events, and public speeches were reported from all around the World. The diplomats reported these events from the local press, but in some cases, they were participants too.
The goal of my presentation is to give a brief introduction to this topic with the use of new documents and new perspectives.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
PhD-student of University of Pécs

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Nature in Late Nineteenth-Century Budapest (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Late nineteenth-century Budapest was one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Contemporaries marveled at its breweries, mills, public buildings, shops, coffeehouses, and crowded streets. The city’s rapid rise evoked powerful, opposing feelings – love and hate, pride and resentment – among much of the population. Yet few doubted that Budapest had become a metropolis, a different world from the countryside. In recent decades, however, historians have paid closer attention to the dynamic relationship between the city and its hinterlands, as well as between Budapest the local landscape and environment. Building on this work, my paper will look at the role of nature in the late nineteenth-century city. This in many ways is a story of dramatic transformations. Although the landscape and environment have powerfully shaped the history of Budapest, the reverse is also true. As the city boomed, its residents dug, dammed, desiccated, deforested, paved, and polluted – in the process drastically altering terrestrial and riverine ecosystems. Similarly, following the work of William Cronon, I will also explore how the city’s growing population and economic muscle affected landscapes and environments far removed from the city itself. The growth of Budapest went hand-in-hand with the emergence of large-scale cereal cultivation in neighboring districts and with deforestation in remote mountain regions. But the paper will end more hopefully, examining the ways in which some people rediscovered and worked to protect nature in the city.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Robert Nemes is Charles A. Dana Professor of History at Colgate University. He is the author, most recently, of Another Hungary: The Nineteenth-Century Provinces in Eight Lives (2016).

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Communism, Religious Ecumenism, and the Prelude to Revolution (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In 1954 Reformed Bishop Albert Bereczky invited the World Council of Churches to hold a meeting of its Central Committee in Hungary. More than a hundred committee members and visitors convened in Galyatető near the Slovak border in July-August 1956 amidst loosening authority both within and outside the churches. The meeting and the changes it stimulated may have contributed to the outbreak of the revolution. My AHEA paper a year ago focused on this meeting and the ensuing accusation by the Kádár regime of WCC collusion in the counterrevolution. This year I will move back in time to ask why Bereczky extended the invitation in the first place. The date and place of the invitation, the WCC’s Evanston Assembly in August 1954, suggests a connection with the New Course (Új szakasz) of Imre Nagy. My paper will look at Hungarian policy toward the ecumenical churches, and especially toward the WCC, under Nagy as well as before and after his first premiership. Who were the Protestant békepapok collaborating with the government in its opening toward the WCC, and were they the chief partners of the WCC leadership in this opening? For my answers I will take a fresh look at the posthumous memoir of Reformed leader László Pap (1908-83) and records in Hungarian church and government archives.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
James P. (Jim) Niessen earned his Ph.D at Indiana University with a dissertation on religion and politics in nineteenth century Transylvania. He has published several studies on the Romanian and Hungarian national movements. After supervising the digitization ten years ago of a portion of the records of the President’s Committee for Hungarian Refugee Relief, he shifted the focus of his research to the reception of the 56ers and has published various studies on this topic in Hungary and the US. Since 2001 he is World History Librarian at Rutgers University. He served two terms as President of AHEA in 2014-18.

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Misled by Evgenii Khaldei: His “Budapest Ghetto” Photos were not Taken in the Ghetto and Were Staged (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Evgenii Khaldei, the Soviet photojournalist of World War II, gained fame in the West during the 1990s when his photographs picturing the victims of the war were exhibited there. Among his Holocaust-related photographs are two iconic photos that he claimed were taken on January 18, 1945, when the ghetto in Budapest was liberated. One is the representation of the wanton murder of Jews and the other their survival. These photographs, when exhibited or published in albums, were accompanied by Khaldei’s brief stories about their origins. This presentation reexamines Khaldei’s claims, which are still associated with the photos, and proves that they were not taken in the ghetto; they were staged, and the stories Khaldei attached to them were false. The presentation will be done with 36 slides.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Peter Pastor is professor emeritus of history at Montclair State University, New Jersey. His special interest is the history of diplomatic and military relations between Hungary and Russia/USSR. He is the author of numerous articles, a monograph, and editor or coeditor of several books.

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Cracking Naphegyi’s Code: Deciphering the Cryptic Papers of a ’48-er (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Gábor Naphegyi occupies an odd space in Hungarian-American history, at once present in several historical publications but still fundamentally mysterious. By some counts he seems to have made his way from the Hungarian army to Hamburg to the United States in early 1849, while the revolution of 1848 still continued. Preceding the rise of mass transatlantic migration, migrants of Naphegyi’s ’48-er cohort migrated the globe to some diverse places. In his convoluted and storied life, Naphegyi was a doctor, author, scientist, linguist, businessman, insurance agent, and revolutionary in various locales in North America, all the while a conman, counterfeit artist. Naphegyi’s North American travels spanned the political boundaries of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, benefitting from porous borders on both sides of the Atlantic. His life illuminates global mobility in the post-revolutionary decades and the enduring privilege of an elevated class status as a member of the intelligentsia, even in the era of the so-called "self-made man."
Two boxes of Naphegyi’s papers, housed at Yale University, contain documents in several languages, as well as telegraph ticker tape and a cipher seemingly of his own devising. This paper will explore the author’s attempts at making sense of this odd, cryptic, and multilingual archive.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Kristina E. Poznan, PhD, is a scholar of American migration and foreign relations history. Her work examines the relationship between transatlantic migration, migrant identities, and separatist nationalism in the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the context of migration to the United States. From 2017 to 2019 she was editor of Journal of Austrian-American History, sponsored by the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies and published by Penn State University Press. She is currently a clinical assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland and the managing editor of the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation, the journal of Enslaved.org.

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Reconsidering the Postwar in Hungary: society, money, and the state, 1945–1958 (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The paper presents the findings of my recently completed doctoral research on the role of money in shaping socio-economic change in postwar Hungary. The paper argues that the Hungarian postwar state was financially more vulnerable in terms of policy implementation than previously assumed in economic histories. Even during the most repressive Stalinist years, citizens counteracted state power and questioned the forint’s value, the course of public policy, and the state’s fiscal authority inflicted upon them often by turning the disorganised planned economy and communist bureaucracy to their advantage. The findings of the study are based on the assessment of five thematic cases related to various economic phenomena and monetary instruments. Namely, these are the hyperinflation of 1945–6; direct taxation of the self-employed (1945–56); state-loans (1949–55); consumer lending and home construction loans (1953–6); and, finally, consumption and the lottery (1953–8). The paper relies on unused primary evidence sourced from multiple Hungarian archives. It builds on party and ministerial reports on policy design and implementation, ‘mood reports’ of workers’ public opinion, personal letters, complaints, petitions, and private ‘proposals’ as well as interviews conducted with Hungarian émigrés during the early Cold War.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Szinan Radi is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Jordan Center of New York University. His research considers state-society relations, everyday economic life, and the popular experience of early-communist rule in postwar Eastern Europe with a special focus on Hungary. He obtained his BA degree in History from the Karoli Gaspar University in 2015, his Master's degree in History (Economic and Social History) from the University of Manchester in 2017, his research Master's degree in Social Science Research (Economic and Social History) from the University of Nottingham in 2019, and his PhD in History from the University of Nottingham in 2022.

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What Has the US Done to Repatriate Prisoners of War Captured by the Soviet Union? (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The anti-American and anti-Western tendencies of the current Hungarian politics is having an impact even in historical research. One of the strangest accusations against the Western powers, especially the United States, is that they are responsible for the tragic fate of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian prisoners of war and civilian internees who were deported to Soviet labor camps after the Second World War. It is alleged that Western governments consented to the deportations and then failed to intervene to repatriate prisoners of war. My presentation will summarize US policy on the POW problem. It will explore how, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the US government made pressure on the Soviet leadership to repatriate POWs, regardless of their nationality. The fate of prisoners of war in the Soviet Union became an important issue at the sessions of the United Nations between 1950 and 1953. As the Soviet Union refused to provide relevant information on the prisoners held in the camps even in the early 1950s, two ad hoc committees were set up to investigate what had happened to the missing prisoners. Finally, the paper will show how Hungarian émigré groups joined the efforts of the United States and the United Nations to free Hungarian prisoners in Soviet camps.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
I am a senior research fellow at the Institute of History of the Research Centre for the Humanities in Budapest. My research interests include the Holocaust, forced population movements during the Second World War and the early post-war period, and the history of Hungarian prisoners of war and civilian internees in Soviet captivity.

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Restricted, Undesirable, Illegal: The Inter-American Impact of Quotas on Hungarian Immigration to North America (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
When the US Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921 and the Immigration Act (Johnson–Reed Act) in 1924 the measures introduced were largely aimed at limiting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and they clearly impacted the Hungarian migration trajectory. The paper looks back at the events taking place 100 years ago and assesses their impact on Hungarian immigration using an inter-American approach. It focuses on the 1920s, an era that often serves as the end of similar studies, and looks at US and Canadian policies together, this way providing novel insights into Hungarian immigration to North America. During this period Hungarian immigrants shifted categories between desired and undesirable, legal and illegal, restricted and deported among others and the migration pathway of Hungarians who wished to go to North America was transformed entirely with Canada becoming more attractive than before either as a springboard to the US or as a permanent destination. The paper reveals how these shifting categories and pathways were intertwined in the United States and Canada when it came to Hungarian immigration and also highlights how various aspects of current immigration debates have their roots in trends evolving 100 years ago. The paper also introduces a so far neglected topic when it addresses the issue of Hungarian illegal immigration on the US-Canada border in the 1920s.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Balázs Venkovits is associate professor and director of the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen and head of the Canadian Studies Centre. He earned his Ph.D. in 2014 and completed his habilitation in 2021. Among others, he is the recipient of OTKA (2022-26) and Jedlik (2013-14) grants, a JFK Research Fellowship (2013) and a Fulbright (2010-2011). His academic interests include travel writing studies, migration studies, US-Hungarian relations, and Hungarian immigration to North America. He has presented and published papers internationally in Hungary, Finland, the US, Mexico, Poland, the UK, and France.

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