Randolph L. Braham

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Randolph L. Braham

Randolph Louis Braham (born December 20, 1922 in Bucharest as Adolf Ábrahám ; died November 25, 2018 in New York City ) was an American historian who primarily researched the Holocaust in Hungary.

Life

Braham's father magyarized his name Itzig Leib in Lajos Ábrahám . Adolf Ábrahám grew up in his parents' hometown in Transylvania (Erdély) Dej , which returned to Hungary in 1940 with the Second Vienna Arbitration . There Ábrahám attended the Jewish elementary school and the Petru Rares middle school and made an apprenticeship as a carpenter. Due to the Hungarian Jewish laws, Ábrahám was not drafted into the Royal Hungarian Army , but was recruited into the Munkaszolgálat forced labor force in 1943 and deployed in the phase of the Hungarian army in the Ukraine , which was conquered by the Germans, Romanians and Hungarians . During the advance of the Red Army , he was taken prisoner by the Soviets , from which he was able to escape. At home he found that the Jewish community in his hometown had been wiped out and that his parents, his siblings and many of his friends had been ghettoized and deported by the Hungarian gendarmerie and the Eichmann commando in 1944 and then murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . He passed his Matura in the now again Romanian Dej and then went via Hungary and Austria to Munich , where he worked as a Displaced Person for the Joint Distribution Committee and UNRRA . In 1948 he was able to emigrate to the USA, where he Americanized his name to Randolph Louis Braham.

In the United States, Braham studied at City College of New York , which he graduated with an MA in 1949. In 1952 he received his doctorate in political science from the New School for Social Research . In 1953 he received a scholarship from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and began his research on the Holocaust in Hungary. In 1954 he married Elisabeth, a chemical process engineer, and they have two sons. From 1956 Braham taught comparative political science at the City University of New York . He was the director of the Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Plan of the Budapest Ghetto (1944) in The Politics of Genocide

Braham served on the scientific advisory board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC , which opened in 1978, and was also an advisor to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, which opened in 1997 . Braham published more than 60 books and a variety of scientific journal articles. His study The Politics of Genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary was first published in 1981.

Braham was honored with various awards, including the Star of Romania in 2004 . However, Braham returned all awards from the Hungarian state in 2014 as a criticism of the history policy of the right-wing conservative government Viktor Orbán , as it had gone "among the history falsifiers" to gloss over the part of the Horthy regime in the Holocaust in Hungary. Among the medals were the Hungarian Order of Merit (2011), the award "Pro Cultura Hungarica" ​​(2001) and the Hungarian Cross of Honor. The Hungarian documentation center Holokauszt Emlékközpont , which opened in 2004, named its library after him, and Braham withdrew his consent to this honor with a letter of protest.

Braham died in November 2018 at the age of 95.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Hungarian Jewish Catastrophe: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography . YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1962
  • The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry: A Documentary Account . New York: Pro Arte, 1963.
  • The Holocaust in Hungary: An Historical Interpretation of the Role of the Hungarian Radical Right , in: Michael R. Marrus : The "Final Solution" outside Germany , Volume 2 (= The Nazi Holocaust: historical articles of the destruction of European Jews . Volume 4). Meckler, Westport, CT 1989, ISBN 0-88736-258-3 , OCLC 311127743 pp. 564-589 (first 1972 (English)).
  • The Kamenets Podolsk and Délvidék Massacres: Prelude to the Holocaust in Hungary , in: Michael R. Marrus: The Nazi Holocaust: historical articles of the destruction of European Jews . Volume 4). Meckler, Westport, CT 1989, ISBN 0-88736-258-3 , OCLC 311127743 pp. 540-563 (first 1973 (English)).
  • The Hungarian Labor Service System, 1939-1945 . Columbia University Press, 1977.
  • The Jewish Question in German-Hungarian Relations during the Kállay Era , in: Michael R. Marrus: (= The Nazi Holocaust: historical articles of the destruction of European Jews . Volume 4). Meckler, Westport, CT 1989, ISBN 0-88736-258-3 , OCLC 311127743 pp. 590-615 (first 1977 (English)).
  • The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary . Revised and enlarged edition. Columbia University Press, 1994 (first 1981)
  • with Attila Pók : The Holocaust in Hungary: Fifty Years Later . Columbia University Press, 1997
  • The Holocaust in Hungary: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography, 1984–2000 . Columbia University Press, 2001
  • with Julia Bock: The Holocaust in Hungary: A Selected and Annotated Bibliography, 2000-2007 .
  • Open letter of resignation from The Hungarian Order of Merit , at: Hungarian Spectrum , January 14, 2014
  • The Assault on the Historical Memory of the Holocaust , in: Hungarian Spectrum , March 2014

literature

Web links

Commons : Randolph L. Braham  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Professor Emeritus Dr. Randolph Louis Braham. Political scientist, historian, internationally recognized scientist of the Holocaust in Hungary , at: Holokaust Documentation Center Budapest (Holokauszt Emlékközpont), November 6, 2011
  2. ↑ a b Dan Bilefsky: Holocaust Scholar Returns Top Award to Hungary in protest , in: The New York Times , January 27, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Braham, Randolph L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Braham, Randolph Louis; Ábrahám, Adolf (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Holocaust researcher
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Bucharest
DATE OF DEATH November 25, 2018
Place of death New York City