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Mr. Gábor Kádár

Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellow
"Hungarian Jewish Responses to the Persecution, 1938-1945: An International Comparison"

Professional Background

Mr. Gábor Kádár received an M.A. in history and communications at Elte University in Budapest, Hungary. During his fellowship at the Museum, he was a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, and a historian at the Budapest Holocaust Museum. For his Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research, Mr. Kádár conducted research for his project “Hungarian Jewish Responses to the Persecution, 1938-1945: An International Comparison.”

Mr. Kádár has published and received awards for his research on the Holocaust and Hungary. He is the author of nearly one dozen articles and, with Zoltán Vagi, Aranyvonat. Fejezetek a zsidó vagyon történetébol [Gold Train: Chapters from the History of Jewish Assets] (Osiris Kiadó, 2001). After his tenure a revised and enlarged version of this book was published in English under the title Self-Financing Genocide: The Gold Train, The Becher Case, The Wealth of Jews, Hungary (Central European University Press, 2004). Kádár is a three-time recipient of the Scholarship of the Hungarian Republic and the Scientific Scholarship of ELTE University of Sciences of Budapest, and a two-time recipient of the J. and O. Winter Fund of the Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. As an active member of Yad Vashem’s Holocaust Remembrance Authority in Hungary, Mr. Kádár assisted in collecting Holocaust-related archival materials in local Hungarian archives for Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has also received research grants from the Open Society Archives and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for which he conducted research on the economic aspects of the destruction of Hungarian Jews, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Mr. Kádár was also invited by the United States Presidential Advisory Committee on Holocaust Assets to conduct research on Hungarian war criminals in U.S. captivity and the final fate of assets confiscated from Hungarian Jews.

Fellowship Research

During his tenure at the Museum, Mr. Kádár addressed some of the major unanswered questions about Jewish responses to the Holocaust in Hungary by examining the way in which Hungarian Zionist groups, the Aid and Rescue Committee, Halutz organizations, and the Central Jewish Council, among others, interacted with one another and responded to the catastrophe. He also explored Hungarian Jewish knowledge of the “Final Solution” and the influence that had in their varied responses. Mr. Kádár’s study compared the responses of Hungarian Jews to those of Jews in other countries.

Mr. Kádár was in residence at the Mandel Center from November 14, 2003 to March 14, 2004.