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
City College and The
Graduate Center
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the ...
of the
City University of New York. A specialist in
comparative politics
Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the ''comparative method'' or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively, this can include questions relatin ...
and the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
, he was a founding board member of the academic committee of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...
(USHMM), Washington, D.C., and founded The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies at the Graduate Center in 1979.
Braham's career was spent teaching comparative politics and Soviet studies at The City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...
, where he chaired the political science department. He was the author or editor of over 60 books, authored or co-authored chapters in 50 others, and published a large number of scholarly articles. The vast majority of his published work deals with the Holocaust in Hungary
The Holocaust in Hungary was the dispossession, deportation, and systematic murder of more than half of the Hungarian Jews, primarily after the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944.
At the time of the German invasion, Hungary had a Jewis ...
. He became best known for his two-volume work ''The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary'', first published in 1981.
Early life and education
Background
Born to a Jewish family in Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
(as Adolf Ábrahám, with the Hebrew name Avraham ben Itzhak ben Aryeh), the son of Lajos Ábrahám and Eszter Katz, Braham was raised in extreme poverty in Dej, a historically Hungarian small town in Transylvania
Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...
. He spent 1943–1945 in the so-called Labor service of the Hungarian army in the Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
, slave-labor units of military-age Jews who ordinarily were murdered after major campaigns or before retreats. During the chaotic Hungarian collapse to the Soviets, Braham escaped and traveled homewards secretly through German-occupied Hungary.
During his escape to the West, in the Hungarian village of Nyíri
Nyíri is a village in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County in northeastern Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the ...
, he and four others were rescued from the Hungarian gendarmerie (working as an arm of the SS) by a Christian farmer, István Novák (d. 1983), who in 1985 was honored by Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
in Israel as Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sa ...
. Never once in any of his published writings, until his 2014 open letter to the Hungarian community rejecting his honors from the Hungarian government, did Braham reveal that he himself was a survivor. In his magnum opus ''The Politics of Genocide,'' he did use as a photo illustration—perhaps the only one without a source reference—a photograph of his own dog tag.
In his oral testimony (1997) for the USC Shoah Foundation
USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Hol ...
project, he describes ''inter alia'' the ordeals of his unit during the final year and winter on the Russian front attached to the Hungarian Army. These include the frequent hangings and tortures and that some of the men during that winter were reduced to marching barefoot and naked covered by only a blanket, defecating while walking. He also described how, during Army maneuvers, he and the other Jews were placed face down in rows in otherwise impassable swamps, for the troops and horse-drawn carriages and horse-drawn artillery to ride over.
Move to America
After arriving in the American Zone in Berlin, Braham served as a translator for the U.S. Army. His extended family perished in Auschwitz, with the exception of his older sister, who was a prisoner there but survived. Braham emigrated to America in early 1948. Although forbidden as a Jew by the pre-World War II Hungarian government to attend Gymnasium (high school), he received a B.Sci. in economics and government from The City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...
later that year, a M.Sci. in education from City College (the education school has since moved) in 1949, and a Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in political science from The New School for Social Research
The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSS ...
in 1952. The next year he became an American citizen, changed his first and last names and adopted his father's name Lewis (occasionally cited incorrectly spelled "Louis").
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 Graduate Center
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the ...
of the City University of New York.
Braham was a member of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...
, 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
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...
, New York and for Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
. 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
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...
(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
Imre Finta (2 September 1912 – 1 December 2003) was the first person prosecuted under Canada's war crimes legislation. He was charged in 1987 and acquitted in 1990.
Early life
Finta was born in Kolozsvár (modern-day Cluj-Napoca, Romania). He ...
, 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, cannot remain silent ... It was my destiny to work on the preservation of the historical record of the Holocaust.
In the 1998 Oscar
Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to:
People
* Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms.
* Oscar (Irish mythology) ...
-winning Academy Award for Documentary Feature
The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film is an award for documentary films. In 1941, the first awards for feature-length documentaries were bestowed as Special Awards to '' Kukan'' and ''Target for Tonight''. They have since been best ...
The Last Days
''The Last Days'' is a 1998 documentary film directed by James Moll and produced by June Beallor and Kenneth Lipper; Steven Spielberg, in his role as founder of the Shoah Foundation, was one of the film's executive producers. The film tells th ...
, Braham provided contextual overviews of the Hungarian Holocaust. He was the subject of the documentary ''Rémálmok nyomában,'' which is available in an English version titled ''Retracing a Nightmare''.
In January 2014, in a widely published open letter on what he saw as increasing attempts by Hungary's rightist Orbán government to falsify history and whitewash the Horthy era, Braham returned his medals and resigned from the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, and forbade using his name in connection with the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest after excessive government interference. Previously, in 2005, he resigned from the Order of the Star of Romania, after a noted rightist was honored with membership.
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.'' 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'' won the 1981 National Jewish Book Award (USA) in the Holocaust category. It earned him citations in the New York State Assembly (1981) and the '' Congressional Record'' (1981, 1994, 2004). Its most recent expanded revision appeared in 2016.
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.''
Among his other honors are the Order of Merit Officer's Cross of the Republic of Hungary (1995), the ''Pro Cultura Hungarica'' award of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture (2002), the ''Science for Society'' award of the Hungarian Academy of Science (2004), the Order of the Star of Romania
The Order of the Star of Romania (Romanian: ''Ordinul Steaua României'') is Romania's highest civil Order and second highest State decoration after the defunct Order of Michael the Brave. It is awarded by the President of Romania. It has five r ...
, Officer Rank, of the Romanian Republic (2004; returned in 2005), the Order of Cultural Merit of Romania, Commander Rank, and the Medium Cross of the Republic of Hungary (2011; returned in 2014).
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'' he 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'' tudies on the Holocaust, 7 vol udapest: 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'' he Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary(Budapest: Park Könyvkiadó, 3 vol.).
*2008: (with Zoltán Tibori Szabó) ''Az észak-erdélyi holokauszt földrajzi enciklopédiája'' he 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'' he Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania(Bucharest: Elie Wiesen National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania; Kishinev: Cartier).
References
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
*
*
*
External biography
* n Hungarian. Contains details of Braham's early years and the culture of his community.*
*
* ith 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"
ilmed lecture in English with simultaneous Hungarian translation2017-10-03
"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"
ilmed lecture, Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-StudienNov. 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.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Braham, Randolph L.
1922 births
2018 deaths
Romanian Jews
Romanian emigrants to the United States
People from Dej
Historians of Nazism
Historians of the Holocaust
Jewish American historians
American male non-fiction writers
Place of birth missing
Holocaust survivors
Jewish Hungarian history
Officer's Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (civil)
Commanders of the Order of the Star of Romania
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
Graduate Center, CUNY faculty
City College of New York faculty
City College of New York alumni
The New School alumni
Hungarian World War II forced labourers
Historians from New York (state)