Randolph L. Braham facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Randolph L. Braham
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| Born |
Adolf Ábrahám
December 20, 1922 |
| Died | November 25, 2018 (aged 95) New York City, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
| Education | The City College of New York |
| Alma mater | The New School for Social Research |
| Known for | Specialist in comparative politics and Holocaust studies |
| Awards | Jewish National Book Award (two times), Order of Merit Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Republic, Medium Cross of the Hungarian Republic (returned), Order of the Star of Romania (returned), Order of Cultural Merit of Romania, Pro Cultura Hungarica award |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | History and political science |
| Institutions | City College, The Graduate Center of The City University of New York |
Randolph Lewis Braham (December 20, 1922 – November 25, 2018) was an American historian and political scientist. He was born in Romania and became a highly respected professor at the City College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Professor Braham was an expert in comparative politics (studying how different countries' governments work) and the Holocaust (the terrible event where millions of Jewish people were killed during World War II). He helped start the academic committee for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. In 1979, he also founded The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. He wrote or edited over 60 books, mostly about the Holocaust in Hungary. His most famous work is a two-volume book called The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, first published in 1981.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Growing Up in Romania
Randolph Braham was born Adolf Ábrahám into a Jewish family in Bucharest, Romania. He grew up in a small town called Dej in Transylvania, where his family was very poor.
During World War II, from 1943 to 1945, he was forced to work in special labor units of the Hungarian army in Ukraine. These units were made up of Jewish men who were forced to do hard labor. As the war ended, Braham managed to escape and travel secretly back home through German-occupied Hungary.
A Daring Escape
During his escape, in a Hungarian village called Nyíri, a Christian farmer named István Novák bravely saved Braham and four other people from the Hungarian police, who were working with the Nazi SS. Years later, in 1985, István Novák was honored by Yad Vashem in Israel as a "Righteous Among the Nations" for his courage.
Even though he was a survivor, Braham rarely spoke about his own experiences in his writings. However, in his major book, The Politics of Genocide, he included a photo of his own military dog tag, which was a subtle way of sharing his personal connection. In a 1997 interview, he shared more about the difficult times his unit faced during the war, including how some men had to march barefoot in winter.
Moving to America
After the war, Braham went to the American Zone in Berlin and worked as a translator for the U.S. Army. Most of his family was killed in Auschwitz, a concentration camp, but his older sister survived.
In early 1948, Braham moved to America. Even though he wasn't allowed to attend high school in Hungary because he was Jewish, he quickly earned several degrees in the U.S. He received a bachelor's degree in economics and government in 1948, a master's degree in education in 1949, and a Ph.D. in political science in 1952. The next year, he became an American citizen and changed his name to Randolph Lewis Braham.
Career and Research
Teaching and Research Roles
Randolph Braham started teaching at The City College of New York in 1962. He became the head of the political science department and, in 1987, was named a distinguished professor, which is the highest rank at the City University of New York (CUNY). He stopped teaching full-time in 1992 but continued his research as a professor emeritus.
He was an important member of the Academic Committee for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) until 2005. He also advised the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and Yad Vashem in Israel. His books were used as important evidence in courts around the world, including in Canada, Germany, Israel, and the United States, for cases about war crimes and getting back property taken during the war.
Braham's personal memories, written in 2013, are kept at the USHMM archives. They include stories about how difficult it was for historians to get information from countries that were part of the Soviet Union, as these countries often hid documents about the Holocaust.
His Important Writings and Speeches
In 1990, during a war-crimes trial, Braham explained his goal: "My function is to pursue the truth... I try to comprehend the incomprehensible." This shows his deep commitment to understanding and sharing the truth about the Holocaust. In 2014, he wrote an open letter explaining why he returned honors from the Hungarian government. He said, "As a survivor whose parents and many family members were among the hundreds of thousands of murdered Jews, [I] cannot remain silent." He felt it was his duty to make sure the history of the Holocaust was remembered correctly.
In 1998, Braham appeared in The Last Days, an Oscar-winning documentary about the Holocaust in Hungary. He helped explain the historical background in the film. There's also a documentary about him called Retracing a Nightmare.
In 2014, Braham returned his medals from Hungary and resigned from an important Hungarian order. He did this because he felt the Hungarian government was trying to change history and make the wartime leader, Horthy, seem better than he was. He also refused to let his name be used with the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest due to government interference. He had previously resigned from a Romanian honor in 2005 for similar reasons.
Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who also survived the Holocaust in Hungary and was a long-time friend of Braham, wrote in the foreword to one of Braham's books: "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." This highlights the importance of Braham's work. In 2017, Braham gave his last lecture in Budapest. Just two months before he passed away, he wrote an open letter about the Hungarian government's decision to build a "competing" Holocaust museum.
Even two nights before he went into the hospital in 2018, Braham was still working on his writings. He had to cancel his final speech, which was titled "The Struggle between the History and Collective Memory of the Twentieth Century: The Holocaust vs. Communism." This speech was planned for the Rosenthal Institute, which he had founded 39 years earlier.
Awards and Recognition
Randolph Braham received many awards for his important work. His two-volume book, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, won the National Jewish Book Award (USA) in 1981. This book was also recognized by the New York State Assembly and the Congressional Record.
In 2013, he won another National Jewish Book Award for his three-volume work, The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary.
Other honors he received include:
- The Order of Merit Officer's Cross of the Republic of Hungary (1995)
- The Pro Cultura Hungarica award from the Hungarian Ministry of Culture (2002)
- The Science for Society award from the Hungarian Academy of Science (2004)
- The Order of the Star of Romania, Officer Rank (2004; returned in 2005)
- The Order of Cultural Merit of Romania, Commander Rank
- The Medium Cross of the Republic of Hungary (2011; returned in 2014)
Selected Works
Randolph Braham wrote and edited many important books about the Holocaust, especially in Hungary. Some of his key works include:
- 1963: The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry: A Documentary Account
- 1977: The Hungarian Labor Service System, 1939-1945
- 1981 (and later editions): The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary
- 1997 (with Attila Pók): The Holocaust in Hungary: Fifty Years Later
- 2006 (with Brewster S. Chamberlin): The Holocaust in Hungary: Sixty Years Later
- 2007 (with Zoltán Tibori Szabó): A magyarországi holokauszt földrajzi enciklopédiája (The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary)
- 2011 (with William J. vanden Heuvel): The Auschwitz Reports and the Holocaust in Hungary
- 2013 (with Zoltán Tibori Szabó): The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary (English edition)
