The International Institute for Holocaust Research

Jews from Koszez awaiting deportation train
Jews moving into a ghetto, Hungary
Jews during selection at Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944

Dr. Laszlo Tauber z”l established in March 2002 the Fund for Research of the Holocaust in Hungary and Hungarian Jewish History at Yad Vashem in honor of his daughter Dr. Ingrid Tauber, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco and a member of the Executive Committee of the American Society of Yad Vashem.  A Hungarian immigrant, surgeon and Holocaust survivor, Dr. Laszlo Tauber was born in Budapest. During WWII, he was chief of surgery at a makeshift hospital in Nazi-occupied Hungary, where he treated many Jews. Later on he became a renowned physician and philanthropist in the United States. Dr. Laszlo Tauber passed away on 28 July 2002.

From the Fund’s establishment to the end of 2003, Mrs. Sári Reuveni, Holocaust scholar, survivor and rescuer from Budapest, played in integral part of the research conducted by the Fund.  She was a member of the steering committee and an important member of the research team.  One of her highest dreams was to have the Kasztner Report translated and made into a scientific publication.  Her dream is at last becoming a reality.  The Kasztner Report is slated to be published next year.

On 18 March 2004, a one day-symposium entitled Sixty Years Since the Hungarian Holocaust was hosted by the fund at Yad Vashem.  The gathering was an enormous success with over 600 persons in attendance. The concluding lecture was presented by historian and survivor Mr. László Varga.  

Research projects recently supported by the fund include:

• Jewish Refugees in Hungary After Hitler’s Rise to Power, 1933-1945
• The Hungarian Labor Service – The Munkaszogalat – The Eastern Front
• The Holocaust in Jewish Newspapers in the Hungarian Language in Areas Annexed to Neighboring Countries
• Religious Life in Hungary During the Holocaust
• Translation into English of the German Sections of the Kastner Report that deal with rescue and the helping committee, including an introduction

Publications supported by the fund:

• Kinga Frojimovics. I have been a stranger in a strange land:  The Hungarian State and Jewish Refugees in Hungary 1933-1945. Jerusalem:  Yad Vashem, 2007.

  Pre-dating the German occupation and the appearance of Eichmann Commando, a Hungarian state “dejewification commando”, the National Central Alien Control Office affiliated with the Ministry of Interior, was already in operation.  It regarded the 20,000-25,000 foreign Jews residing in Hungary as a category that could be enlarged to include all Jews deemed “undesirable” by the state.  This policy led to the Galician deportations resulting in the first five-digit massacre of Jews during World War II.

• Anna Szalai, Rita Horváth, Gábor Balázs. Previously Unexplored Sources on the Holocaust in Hungary:  A Selection from Jewish Periodicals, 1930-1944. Jerusalem:  Yad Vashem, 2007.

  Six studies scrutinize a few relatively unknown periodicals and selected themes from the Hungarian-language Jewish press during the interwar period in formerly Hungarian territory.  Articles include an examination of topics that interested editors, journalists, and readers of the Jewish papers form the 1930s to 1944; strategies Jews chose to address their fate; living in an antisemitic environment; reactions to the events of the war.

• Esther Farbstein. “Religious Life in Hungary During the Holocaust”, in Dan Michman, ed., Search and Research – Lectures and Papers, forthcoming

Other projects on Hungary and Hungarian Jewry that have recently been conducted at the Institute include:

• Dr. Rita Horváth’s research – Comparing Jewish Survivors’ Testimonies taken by the National Relief Committee for Deportees in Hungary and Other Large-Scale Historial-Memorial Projects of She’erit Hapletah in the Immediate Aftermath of the Holocaust (1945-1948)
• Dr. Judit Molnár’s research – Editing the Diary that Ottó Komoly Kept in 1944.