Gabor S. Boritt (born 1940 in

Budapest, Hungary Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population of ...

) is an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

. He was the Robert Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the

Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College The Civil War Institute (CWI) at Gettysburg College is a non-profit organization created to promote the study of the American Civil War Era. The CWI was founded in 1982 by historian and Gettysburg College professor Gabor Boritt, an Abraham Linc ...

. Born and raised in Hungary, he participated as a teenager in the

Hungarian Revolution of 1956 The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...

against the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

before escaping to America, where he received his higher education and became a scholar of

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...

and the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...

. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 16 books about Lincoln or the War. Boritt received the

National Humanities Medal The National Humanities Medal is an American award that annually recognizes several individuals, groups, or institutions for work that has "deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement with the huma ...

in 2008 from President George W. Bush.

Early life

Boritt was born to a Jewish family in

at the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. The

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

forced his family to live in a single room in a hospital on the ghetto's edge, where he played on bloodstained floors. As his father helped lead resistance against the Nazis, his grandfather's family was deported from the countryside and murdered in

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...

. By the end of the war,

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...

was in ruins and Hungary in Stalin's grip. In the years that followed, Boritt's mother died, his father and brother were imprisoned, and he was sent to an orphanage. In 1956 sixteen-year-old Boritt joined the

1956 Hungarian Revolution The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hung ...

. He remembers the initial euphoria: "We thought it was a whole new world. Anything was possible." Days later, 3,000 Soviet tanks crushed those possibilities, and Boritt and his sister Judith headed for the Austrian border. In darkness, they hiked through wooded hills before coming to a no-man's-land guarded by watchtowers with machine guns. Freedom lay on the other side. Together, they started running.

Escape to America

After months at an Austrian refugee camp, Boritt came to the U.S. with just one dollar in his pocket, arriving in the "dirtiest city" he had ever seen:

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Told that the real America is "out west," Boritt headed to

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large po ...

. Wanting to learn English, he picked up a free booklet of Abraham Lincoln's writings. Captivated by Lincoln's mastery of the language and his rise from poverty to the presidency, Boritt began studying American history and earned his bachelor of arts degree from Yankton College in 1962 and a master's degree from the

University of South Dakota The University of South Dakota (USD) is a public research university in Vermillion, South Dakota. Established by the Dakota Territory legislature in 1862, 27 years before the establishment of the state of South Dakota, USD is the flagship uni ...

in 1963, followed by a Ph.D. from

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...

in 1968. As an immigrant, he felt obliged to go to

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making ...

, where he taught soldiers about the

. In 1978 after deciding to pursue the study of Lincoln from the economic angle, he published his first book ''Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream'', which placed what Boritt called "the right to rise" at the center of Lincoln's outlook. One of a handful of books on Lincoln published in the 1970s, a 1995 survey of leading experts by ''Civil War Times'' lists it as one of the 10 most important books ever written about Lincoln.

Gettysburg College

After teaching at the University of Michigan, in 1981 Boritt came to

Gettysburg College Gettysburg College is a private liberal arts college in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1832, the campus is adjacent to the Gettysburg Battlefield. Gettysburg College has about 2,600 students, with roughly equal numbers of men and women. ...

, founding the Civil War Institute, where the school created for him the nation's first fully funded chair for the study of the Civil War. He helped create the $50,000

Lincoln Prize The Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, founded by the late Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman in partnership with Gabor Boritt, Director Emeritus of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, is administered by the Gilder Lehrman Institute for Ameri ...

, widely considered the most coveted award for the study of American history. He also helped create the Gilder Lehrman Institute, which is focused on improving the teaching of history in schools.

Modern accomplishments

Boritt served on the boards of the Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation and the

Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Jews ...

, appointed by Congress. His book ''The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech Nobody Knows'' (2006) was featured on the cover of '' U.S. News & World Report'' and called "fascinating" by the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

. In September 2008 Boritt gave a tour of the Gettysburg battlefield to President George W. Bush, Laura Bush and a group including White House Advisor Karl Rove, Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. On November 17, 2008 President George W. Bush awarded Boritt the

from the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

"for a distinguished career of scholarship on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era. His life's work and his life's story stand as testaments to our nation's precious legacy of liberty."2008 National Humanities Medalists
, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2008, Accessed February 4, 2009. His life story is the subject of a feature-length documentary film titled ''Budapest to Gettysburg'' (2007), directed by his son Jake Boritt. In 2009 he retired. Gabor Boritt was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State’s highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2009 as a Bicentennial Laureate. In 1996, Boritt received The Lincoln Forum's Richard Nelson Current Award of Achievement. Boritt and his wife Liz live in an 18th-century farmhouse on the edge of the

Gettysburg battlefield The Gettysburg Battlefield is the area of the July 1–3, 1863, military engagements of the Battle of Gettysburg within and around the borough of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Locations of military engagements extend from the site of the first sho ...

which they restored with their own hands. It served as both a stop on the Underground Railroad and as a Confederate hospital. Together they have raised three sons: Beowulf Boritt is a set designer (and streaming video ad star) in

, Jake Boritt is a filmmaker who lives in

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Ha ...

, and Daniel Boritt is a biologist specializing in birds who lives in

Indianapolis, Indiana Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Mar ...

Works

* ''Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream'' (1978) (ASIN B010TTIP5I), * ''Changing the Lincoln Image'' (1985) (with Harold Holzer and Mark E. Neely, Jr.) (ASIN B001Q90WOI) * ''Lincoln, The War President: The Gettysburg Lectures'' (1992) (with

Robert V. Bruce Robert Vance Bruce (December 19, 1923 in Malden, Massachusetts – January 15, 2008 in Olympia, Washington) was an American historian specializing in the American Civil War, who won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book '' The Launchin ...

) () * ''Why the Confederacy Lost'' (1992) (ASIN B0099L2F9A) * ''Lincoln's Generals'' (1995) () * ''War Comes Again: Comparative Vistas on the Civil War and World War II'' (with

David Eisenhower Dwight David Eisenhower II (born March 31, 1948) is an American author, public policy fellow, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and eponym of the U.S. presidential retreat Camp David. He is the grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenho ...

) () * ''The Historian's Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History'' (1996) () * ''The Gettysburg Nobody Knows'' (1997) () * ''Jefferson Davis's Generals'' (1999) () * ''The Lincoln Enigma: The Changing Faces of an American Icon'' (2002) () * ''The Lincoln Image: Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print'' (2005) () * ''The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech Nobody Knows'' (2006) () * ''Slavery, Resistance, Freedom'' (2009) () * ''The Will of God Prevails: Meditations on God and the Gettysburg Address'' (2014) ()

References

This article is partly based on the documentary film, ''Budapest to Gettysburg''.

External links

Budapest to Gettysburg

The Gettysburg Gospel

Gettysburg College Civil War Institute

Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission

Interview
on ''The Gettysburg Gospel'' at the

Pritzker Military Museum & Library The Pritzker Military Museum & Library (formerly Pritzker Military Library) is a non-profit museum and a research library for the study of military history on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. The institution was founded in 2003, and its sp ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boritt, Gabor 1940 births Hungarian emigrants to the United States Gettysburg College faculty University of South Dakota alumni Boston University alumni 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Jewish American historians Historians of the American Civil War Living people National Humanities Medal recipients Yankton College alumni American male non-fiction writers 21st-century American Jews