Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor of History, University of Florida

Wilson Center Project

“Displaced Hungarian Jewish Identity, 1945-48.”

Project Summary

Hungary was a gateway to the west in perhaps the largest mass migration in European history, between World War II and closing down of the borders in 1948/49. It is generally assumed that the surviving Jewish populations left. However, Hungarian Jews were split in the decision to leave or not to leave. Of the 200,000 survivors, about half stayed, residing primarily in Budapest. This remains the largest Jewish community in Central Europe.

Major Publications

• Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1948-1914 was published by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press in 2000.
• co-edited a volume, East Europe Reads Nietzsche, with Peter Bergmann and Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Columbia U Press, 1998).

Previous Terms

1993-94, Alice Freifeld revised her Ph.D. dissertation (U.C. Berkeley 1992). The resulting book, Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1948-1914, was published by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press in 2000 and awarded the Barbara Jelavich book prize by the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies.