Position: Research Fellow

Department: Contemporary History

Address: 1097 Budapest, 4 Tóth Kálmán Street

Room: B.5.42.

Phone: +36 1 224-6700/4685

Email:  

QUALIFICATIONS

Ph.D. in History, Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), Faculty of Humanities, 2021

M.A. in Historical Museology, Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), Faculty of Humanities, 2013

B. A. in History, Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), Faculty of Humanities, 2011

B. A. in Communication and Media Studies, Budapest College of Communication, 2010

RESEARCH EXPERTISE

Hungary, Communism, Holocaust, social history, ego document

PROJECTS

Heléna Huhák participated in the COURAGE (“Cultural Opposition – Understanding the CultuRal HeritAGE of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries”) Horizon2020 project as a researcher from 2018 to 2020.

She has published extensively on the history of everyday life, political participation, and propaganda on the local level in Hungary during the socialist period. Her book was published in 2022 entitled Agitátorok: kommunista mozgósítás a pártállam kiépítésének mindennapjaiban (1948–1953) [In Hungarian; Agitators: Communist mass mobilization and everyday life during the building of the party-state (1948–1953)]

Over the last few years, Heléna Huhák has interviewed Holocaust survivors and conducted research in several archives in Hungary, Germany, Israel, and the United States. Her main research interest is the personal sources of the Hungarian Holocaust (Hungarian Jewish camp diaries and early post-war memoirs), everyday life, and the social history of Hungarian deportees in concentration and forced labor camps.

PUBLICATIONS

A complete list of publications: mtmt.hu

List of selected publications:

• Agitátorok: kommunista mozgósítás a pártállam kiépítésének mindennapjaiban (1948–1953) [Agitators: Communist mass mobilization and everyday life during the building of the party-state (1948–1953)] Budapest: Jaffa, 2022
• “Door-to-door agitation: home as a political tool in the Stalinist Budapest (1948–1953)” Studia historica Brunensia 69, no. 1 (2022): 155–174.
• “Place Attachment in a Concentration Camp: Bergen-Belsen”. Hungarian Historical Review, 9/3 (2020) 430–451.
• Lóránt Bódi and Heléna Huhák, “The COURAGE Registry: A Gateway to the Cultural Heritage of Eastern European Nonconformism” Martor The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review, no. 26. (2021): 139–146.
• “Megfigyelés másképp: Házi agitáció és egy angyalföldi tanácstag lakólátogatásai” [Observation in a different way: Door-to-door agitation and the family visits of a councilor from Angyalföld]. Korall 21 (2020): 5–24.
• “Koncentrációs tábor mint tértapasztalat: Bergen-Belsen, 1944–1945” [Concentration camp as space experience: Bergen-Belsen, 1944–1945]. Századok, 153, no. 4 (2019): 641–656.
• “Bergen-Belsen a deportált magyar zsidók élettörténeteiben. A túlélők elbeszéléseinek helyközpontú vizsgálata” [Bergen-Belsen in the life stories of deported Hungarian Jews. A place-centered study of survivors ’narratives]. In Tanulmányok a holokausztról [Holocaust Studies] IX. Edited by Randolph L. Braham, 243–295. Budapest: Múlt és Jövő 2018
• Holländer, Margit. Lágerutazás. Holländer Margit feljegyzései a vészkorszakról és az újrakezdésről (1945–1946). [Lager journey. Margit Holländer’s Notes on the Holocaust and Starting Anew (1945–1946)], edited by Heléna Huhák and András Szécsényi. Budapest: Jaffa, 2017
• Kismama sárga csillaggal: Egy fiatalasszony naplója a német megszállástól 1945 júliusáig [Mather-to-be with a yellow star: A diary of a young woman from the German occupation to July 1945]. Edited by Heléna Huhák, András Szécsényi, and Erika Szívós. Budapest: Jaffa, 2015