Randolph L. Braham
Randolph L. Braham | |
---|---|
Bucharest, Romania | |
Died | November 25, 2018 , U.S. | (aged 95)
Nationality | American |
Education | The City College of New York |
Alma mater | The New School for Social Research |
Known for | Specialist in comparative politics and Holocaust studies |
Awards | Jewish National Book Award (two times), Order of Merit Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Republic, Medium Cross of the Hungarian Republic (returned), Order of the Star of Romania (returned), Order of Cultural Merit of Romania, Pro Cultura Hungarica award |
Scientific career | |
Fields | History and political science |
Institutions | City College, The Graduate Center of The City University of New York |
Randolph Lewis Braham (December 20, 1922 – November 25, 2018) was an American historian and political scientist, born in Romania, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the
Braham's career was spent teaching comparative politics and Soviet studies at
Early life and education
Background
Born to a Jewish family in
During his escape to the West, in the Hungarian village of
In his oral testimony (1997) for the
Move to America
After arriving in the American Zone in Berlin, Braham served as a translator for the U.S. Army. His extended family was murdered in
Career and research
Positions held
Braham began his teaching career at CUNY in 1962 at The City College of New York, chaired the political science department there, and became a distinguished professor (CUNY's highest rank) in April 1987. He retired from active teaching in September 1992 and began his residence as professor emeritus at the
Braham was a member of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., from the Museum's earliest planning through May 2005 and participated in the Academic Committee's Fellowship Subcommittee from its inception in 1999; he also was a special advisor for the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York and for Yad Vashem. His works were used as major source books by courts of law in various countries, including Canada, Germany, Israel, and the United States in cases involving restitution and war crimes. Braham's memoirs, concluded in 2013, are on deposit at his archives at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). Included there are notable accounts of the difficult ways with which historians of the Holocaust have dealt with Soviet-bloc states and others unwilling to provide or hiding documentary evidence.
Writing and lecturing
In 1990, as reported in the Washington Post, when appearing before the jury in the war-crimes trial of Imre Finta, a Hungarian gendarmerie commander, Braham testified, My function is to pursue the truth ... I try to comprehend the incomprehensible. And in 2014, in his open letter when returning his Hungarian honors, Braham wrote: As a survivor whose parents and many family members were among the hundreds of thousands of murdered Jews, [I] cannot remain silent ... It was my destiny to work on the preservation of the historical record of the Holocaust.
In the 1998
In January 2014, in a widely published open letter on what he saw as increasing attempts by Hungary's rightist
Nobelist Elie Wiesel, also a survivor of the Hungarian holocaust and a long-time colleague of Braham, concluded his foreword to Braham's 2013 geographical encyclopedia stating, To recommend this work to teachers, their students, and researchers is more than an act of friendship. It is the duty of remembrance that belongs to the realm of the sacred.[8] In 2017 Braham gave his last lecture in Budapest, and two months before his death published an open letter on the recent Hungarian government decision to construct a "competing" Holocaust museum.
Two nights before his brief final hospitalization in 2018 for heart failure, Braham was actively writing revisions to his recent work, yet reluctantly had to cancel his farewell address —The Struggle between the History and Collective Memory of the Twentieth Century: The Holocaust vs. Communism — scheduled the next day at the Rosenthal Institute he founded 39 years previously.
Awards
His two-volume The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary
In 2013, Braham received the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category for his three-volume The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary.[8][10]
Among his other honors are the
Selected works
- 1963: The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry: A Documentary Account (New York: Pro Arte, 2 vol.).
- 1977: The Hungarian Labor Service System, 1939-1945 (New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press).
- 1981 (2016): The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 2 vol.; 2nd ed. 1994; Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 3rd ed. 2016).
- 1997 (2015): A népirtás politikája: A holocaust magyarországon [The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary] (Budapest: Belvárosi Könyvkiadó, 2 vol.; 3rd ed. 2015).
- 1997: (with Attila Pók) The Holocaust in Hungary: Fifty Years Later (New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press).
- 2001-2014: Tanulmányok a holokausztról, Vol. I-VII [Studies on the Holocaust, 7 vol] [Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006]; (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2014).
- 2006: (with Brewster S. Chamberlin) The Holocaust in Hungary: Sixty Years Later (New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press).
- 2007: (with Zoltán Tibori Szabó) A magyarországi holokauszt földrajzi enciklopédiája [The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary] (Budapest: Park Könyvkiadó, 3 vol.).
- 2008: (with Zoltán Tibori Szabó) Az észak-erdélyi holokauszt földrajzi enciklopédiája [The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania] (Budapest: Park Könyvkiadó; Cluj-Napoca: Koinónia).
- 2011: (with William J. vanden Heuvel). The Auschwitz Reports and the Holocaust in Hungary (New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press).
- 2011: Bibliography of the Holocaust in Hungary (New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press).
- 2013: (with Zoltán Tibori Szabó) The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies), 3 vol.
- 2015: "Magyarország: Hadjárat a holokauszt történelmi emlékezete ellen," A holokauszt Magyarországon: hetven év múltán Randolph L. Braham and András Kovács, eds. (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő), pp. 229–261 (In English: "Hungary: The Assault on the Historical Memory of the Holocaust," The Holocaust in Hungary: Seventy Years Later Randolph L. Braham and András Kovács, eds. (Budapest: Central European University, 2016).
- 2019: (with Zoltán Tibori Szabó) Enciclopedia geografică a Holocaustului din Transilvania de Nord [The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania] (Bucharest: Elie Wiesen National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania; Kishinev: Cartier).
References
- ^ a b Smith, Harrison (27 November 2018). "Randolph L. Braham, Leading Historian of the Holocaust in Hungary, Dies at 95". The Washington Post.
- ^ Roberts, Sam (November 28, 2018). "Randolph Braham, 95, Holocaust Scholar Who Saw a Whitewash, Dies". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 6, 2019. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
- ^ Schveiger, Paul (2008). "Braham, Randolph Louis". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
- ^ "The Righteous Among The Nations: Novák István (? – 1983)". Yad Vashem. Archived from the original on 25 March 2019. Retrieved 25 March 2019.
- ^ * Rémálmok nyomában
- ^ * Retracing a Nightmare: A Documentary of Randolph L. Braham
- ^ "Holocaust Scholar Returns Top Award to Hungary in Protest". New York Times. 27 January 2014.
- ^ a b "Review Article: The Saddest History Ever Written: On Randolph L. Braham's The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary (2013)". Hungarian Cultural Studies Vol. 7. 2014.
- ^ "The Hungarian Episode (New York Times Review of The Politics of Genocide, 1st ed.)". New York Times. 4 October 1981. Retrieved 25 November 2018.
- ^ a b "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 2020-01-21.
External links
Personal biographical material
- Personal Testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation Part I May 28, 1997
- Personal Testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation Part II May 30, 1997
- Personal Testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation--Additional material and indexes
- "Open letter of resignation from The Hungarian Order of Merit [In English]". 2014-01-26.
- "Open letter of resignation from The Hungarian Order of Merit [In Hungarian]". 2014-01-27.
- "Open letter: "The Unholy Alliance between the Orbán Government and Slomó Köves Of Chabad". 2018-09-24.
External biography
- László Karsai (2002). "Interview: Professor Randolph L. Braham looks on his life after 80 years". Archived from the original on 2013-03-23. Retrieved 2018-11-27. [In Hungarian. Contains details of Braham's early years and the culture of his community.]
- "Short Biography of Randolph L. Braham". 2011-11-06. Retrieved 2013-10-14.
- "Laudatory Remarks on Randolph L. Braham and His Work on the Hungarian Holocaust". 2017-10-11.
- "In Memoriam: Randolph L. Braham (1922-2018)". 2018-11-25. [With appended statement from András Heisler, President of the Association of Hungarian Jewish Religious Communities.]
Scholarship
- "The Holocaust in Hungary: A Forensic Analysis"/"A magyarországi holokauszt bonctani elemzése c. előadása"[permanent dead link] [Filmed lecture in English with simultaneous Hungarian translation] 2017-10-03
- "The Assault on the Historical Memory of the Holocaust"/"Magyarország: Hadjárat a holokauszt történelmi emlékezete ellen" [In English and Hungarian] March 2014
- "A Postmortem of the Holocaust in Hungary: A Probing Interpretation of the Causes” June 2012
- "Hungary: The Controversial Chapter of the Holocaust" [Filmed lecture, Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien] Nov. 13, 2011
- "The Reinterment and Political Rehabilitation of Miklós Horthy" Originally published in 1993; posted 2013-09-15
Archives
- Index to The Randolph Braham Collection at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Research material collected by Randolph L. Braham, includes materials relevant to the Holocaust and its aftermath in Eastern Europe in general, and in Hungary and Romania in particular, trials against suspected war criminals, the revival of extreme right ideologies, and biographical information pertaining to the donor. Includes audio and videorecordings of interviews Randolph Braham conducted between 1972 and 1996 with survivors of the Holocaust in Hungary. Organized into 17 series.