In 1920, Hungary introduced the first antisemitic law of the 20th century in Europe: the "numerus clausus." This law placed a restrictive quota of Jewish students at universities and led thousands of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to study abroad; it also set into motion a process of de-emancipating Jews, preceding the Third Reich by over a decade. Hungarian Students in Exile is an empirical study of over a thousand of these emigrant students, following them as they studied in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Fascist Italy, and Weimar Germany. Author Agnes Katalin Kelemen demonstrates how individual and communal agency enabled thousands of lower-middle-class youth to study abroad and thus resist the numerus clausus, as well as how, in addition to the law's blatant antisemitism, it also served as a tool to push Communists and women out of Hungarian academia. As Kelemen follows these exiles through the interwar period and beyond, readers see how they survived or perished in the Shoah and how survivors could finally return to professional careers in postwar Hungary. An important contribution to the study of Hungarian Jewish history, Hungarian Students in Exile brings into focus the people who were affected by this law both before and after the Shoah.
Agnes Katalin Kelemen is Assistant Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary-University of Jewish Studies (Budapest). She edited and annotated Feljegyzesek Gyuri fiam reszere. Naplo 1944-bol [Notes for My Son, Gyuri. A Diary from 1944] by Armin Balint, published in 2014.
Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: The University as a Site of Emancipation and De-Emancipation 1. Peregrination, Religious Others, and Women in the Long History of Universities Part II: Interwar Hungary's Unwanted Students on the Move 2. Jews 3. Leftists 4. Women Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
"Hungarian Students in Exile builds on earlier work about the numerus clausus law, and it adds to that literature by arguing that the numerus clausus was in addition to being an anti-Jewish law was legislation that targeted left wingers from Hungarian academia as well as women. Kelemen adds to the historiography by focusing on who were the targets of the law and not only the typical questions about the duration of the numerus clausus law and its connection to the Shoah in Hungary. . . . This book will appeal most obviously to readers interested in the history of the Shoah and the history of antisemitism in Hungary, but it has the added benefit of appealing to readers interested in the history of authoritarian regimes in interwar Europe, specifically the regime of Miklos Horthy."-John C. Swanson, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga "The purposes of this book are threefold: to provide a social historical analysis of the numerus clausus exiles from Hungary, to explore patterns of discrimination via questions of intersectionality, and to embed this part of interwar history in a longue duree history of universities and Jews at them. . . . [It] is certainly an important contribution to the study of Hungarian Jewish history."-Ferenc Laczo, Maastricht University
