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This article examines the child-relief activities of the American Red Cross in Hungary in the aftermath of the Great War, offering an insight into the workings of humanitarianism in interwar Europe. A close look at this one Central European ‘playground’ of transatlantic intervention helps us understand the logic and the underlying political, economic and ideological motives behind Allied humanitarian aid to ‘enemy’ children. Analysis of the ways in which the war’s aftermath affected children, their bodies and their relief throws light on the relationship between violent conflicts, children in need and humanitarian intervention. The article looks particularly at the role of the child’s damaged body and its photographic representation, making it what Cathleen Canning calls an ‘embodied experience of war’. Exploration of the humanitarian discourse around the suffering child helps us identify the humanitarian reaction to the unforeseen social consequences of wartime confrontation. The article argues that the harmed body of the ‘enemy child’ served to mobilise transnational compassion that challenged the war’s deeply anchored ‘friend–foe’ mentality. The child turned into a means of configuring and translating human suffering beyond ideological and political borders. At the same time humanitarian child relief helped to further consolidate asymmetric international power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 1938 First Vienna Award obliged Slovakia to cede substantial territories to Hungary. For many Slovaks, the logic of ethnic borders transformed Jews into, or confirmed them as, "security threats," accentuating the goal of ethnic homogeneity as a defense against Hungarian irredentism. Despite the relationships between the Award and the Holocaust of Slovak Jewry, the literatures on Slovak-Hungarian relations and the Holocaust in Slovakia remain disconnected. The work presented below proposes fusing them in favor of a transnational and regional understanding of the Holocaust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with an untypical military officer, Kisbarnaki Farkas Ferenc (or Farkas Ferenc de genere Kisbarnaki), who also had a good relationship with the Roman Catholic Church and scouting movement. His career evolved smoothly until 1944. The Wehrmacht occupied the Kingdom of Hungary on 19 March, and not much later the front reached the Hungarian border. A part of the Hungarian leader group—including Governor Horthy—wanted to extricate Hungary from the war and therefore contacted the Soviet leader. But the German secret service knew everything about this negotiation as well. Therefore a coup d’etat was organized by the German secret services using the Hungarian extreme-right parties as well. 15 and 16 October were key days of the coup d’etat. Although some became loyal to the Hungarian Government, a large number of people joined the new regime. A few officers and clerks waited to see whether the coup d’etat would prove successful or not. Kisbarnaki Farkas was an officer of this kind. From then on his fate was linked to the will of the new puppet government. The paper presents how Kisbarnaki Farkas acted in various political situations and what kind of decisions he made during this period. It is also an important question how all this influenced his post-war life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the diplomatic role of the United States within the creation of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which formally ended World War I. Focus is given to the treatment of Hungary by the U.S. diplomatic mission. Topics addressed include the U.S.'s position over the reforming of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's borders, disagreement by the U.S. Senate over ratification of the Treaty, and the specific work of U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing and diplomat Charles Seymour.

Copyright of Journal of Belgian History / Revue Belge d'Histoire Contemporaine is the property of Cegesoma and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstracts for the articles in this issue of the journal are presented, which address such topics of modern Belgian history as the party platforms of the liberal and socialist parties in Belgium after World War II, language policy in the 1930s, and diplomatic relations between Belgium and Hungary in the interwar period.

This article argues that the ideological and emotional meanings of the terms ‘Holocaust’ and ‘antisemitism’ have obstructed their use as analytical concepts in Holocaust scholarship. It claims, specifically, that they frame the persecution and annihilation of Jews during World War II as unique, placing these events and processes apart from essential historical and political contexts. The destruction of Jews in wartime Hungary underscores how histories of state and nation building—in this case the drive to realize ‘Greater Hungary’ with a marked Magyar majority—generated multi-layered mass violence against non-Jews as well as Jews. Focusing on the multi-ethnic borderland of Subcarpathian Rus’beforethe German invasion of Hungary in March 1944 illuminates the links in the state's multi-layered attack against the region's society and sheds new light on the particular victimization of Jews, also after March 1944. Almost all the scholarship on the Holocaust in Hungary has addressed the period after the German invasion, dealing with ghettoization and deportation to Auschwitz. This perspective has provided important insight, but it has also overshadowed significant dimensions in the history of wartime Hungary. The histories of the state's borderlands, which have received limited attention, challenge this account of ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary. This article uncovers how anxieties about disloyalty and foreignness played crucial roles in the exclusionary campaign against Jews, Roma and Carpatho-Ruthenians in Subcarpathian Rus’. The Hungarian authorities planned and carried out discriminatory and violent measures against them and, whenever national and international opportunities permitted, mass deportations. The examination of these related processes of mass violence lays bare the meaning of ‘antisemitism’ in a specific political context, highlighting connections between anti-Jewish policies and the persecution of other groups. Viewing this violence as it unfolded, rather than backward from the ‘final solution’ and Auschwitz, opens new paths to rethink ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Studia Historica. Historia Contemporánea is the property of Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia Historyczne is the property of Polska Akademia Nauk, Warszawska Drudkarnia Naukowa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses eugenic policies for social and biological improvement implemented by the Hungarian government between 1940 and 1941. Particular focus is given to the relationship between practical politics and the rhetoric surrounding social and biological renewal. Topics discussed include antisemitism, territorial expansion, population control, and Hungarian nationalism.

The article discusses the extent of the Holocaust in states that were allied with Nazi Germany, including Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. Topics include the impact of military events on the cooperation of political leaders with German plans, the survival of native Jews and deportation of Jewish refugees from Finland, Romania, and Hungary, and the impact of prior anti-Semitism on the treatment of Jews. It is said that church leaders in Bulgaria and Finland were able to minimize the killing of Jews in their countries.

The article looks at the experiences of French people traveling in Hungary during the interwar period. These include Jesuit priest Pierre Delattre, linguist Aurélien Sauvageot, and newspaper reporter Jacques Delebecque. Particular focus is given to the relationship between French and Hungarian culture as depicted in their accounts. Details on the travelers' experiences of hospitality and ceremonial solemnity, as well as their views of Hungarian attitudes towards the past, are presented. The French monarchist movement is also discussed.

An article is presented that examines national socialism and the establishment of German-Hungarian borderland space, known as Burgenland, prior to World War II. The article examines the collapse of Austria in 1938. It examines the role of nationalism and the German Nazi Party in German and Hungarian territories during the time period. The article also discusses the oscillation between offensive and defensive nationalization tactics employed by Germany, the reaction to such actions by Hungary, and the roles played by Germany and Hungary in establishing borderland space following 1938.

The article discusses the mission of Raoul Wallenberg, as the secretary of the 1944 Swedish delegation to Hungary, to coordinate humanitarian relief for the Jews of Europe during the Jewish Holocaust. The genesis of Wallenberg's mission, which resulted from a request to Sweden's government by the U.S. government's War Refugee Board (WRB), is discussed. The Soviet Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs Vladimir G. Dekanozov's assertion that the Soviets would protect Wallenberg in Hungary is discussed. An overview of Wallenberg's disappearance in 1945, which resulted from his arrest by the Soviets, is provided.

The article focuses on Hungary's secret peace talks with the U.S. and Great Britain (Allies) during World War II (WWII) and how the Allies' failure to capitalize on these offers of peace impacted their war strategy. The author explains how the Allies provoked a German invasion of Hungary to launch the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, explores how this decision put Hungary's Jewish population in danger and led to the final phase of the German-sponsored genocide program Holocaust, and analyzes the moral choices of the Allies.

Postwar Hungarian Communists wanted to construct the history of 1919 as an instance of a usable past and establish the First Hungarian Soviet Republic as the praefiguratio of their own regime. In this attempt they could benefit from previous Soviet exercises in historical typology, which identified episodes in the past as models for contemporary political action. Nonetheless, the thirtieth anniversary of the Hungarian Bolshevik regime in 1919 was not only an occasion for creating a historical interpretation adequate for the objectives of Sovietization. The ceremonies did not merely aim at making their conception of history authentic, but also to induce a particular politicized relationship to historical time. Yet, the ceremonies Hungarian Communists carefully designed to disseminate their political agenda failed in fulfilling these goals. Their failure calls the attention to that the relationship of cautiously executed political rituals and the credibility of ideological messages is far from being unambiguous. The case of the thirtieth anniversary of First Hungarian Soviet Republic provides the opportunity to examine how historical festivals function and what are the criteria of successful political rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an examination into the theological relations between Protestantism and the Catholicism during the inter-war period of Hungarian history. The work of Hungarian Calvinist theologian László Ravasz is reviewed within this paradigm as a case study and example of the larger trends of his society. The conflicted dialectic of conservative nostalgia and liberal utopianism within the theological circles of the period is highlighted. Also discussed is the larger conflict of secularism and Christian teaching regardless of denominational perspective.

The article discusses the early history of the literary journal "Hungarian Quarterly." It describes the social and political context of pre-World War II Hungary, the political work of prime minister Count István Bethlen and his establishment of the journal for propaganda purposes, and the founding of The Society of The Hungarian Quarterly." The relationship between the journal and the shaping of political, cultural, and social views of the Hungarian and Romanian elite is discussed, along with the effect of World War II and the German invasion of Hungary on the purpose of the journal.

The article traces the history of Novi Sad in the province of Voivodina in Hungary. The city was established between 1692 and 1788 on the left bank of the Danube. At the end of World War I, Novi Sad became part of the newly formed South Slav state. The city was able to maintain its Serbian name of Novi Sad but the old names of streets and neighborhoods were altered. After World War II, Ujvidek/Novi Sad became the economic, political, cultural and educational capital of the Autonomous Province of Voivodina.

The article discusses the doctoral thesis "Milk Sauce & Paprika: Migration, Childhood & Memory of the Interwar Belgian-Hungarian Child Relief Project" by Vera Hajtó, a student at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, focusing on the joint child relief program by Belgium and Hungary during the interwar period. Other topics include the establishment of the program by the Catholic Church, how migration impacted children in the welfare program, and the political, social, cultural impact of the program.