New Documents on the 1956 Revolution in Hungary
Soon after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was crushed by a Soviet invasion launched on November 4, the UN General Assembly set up a special committee to investigate both the uprising and its suppression. The digitized collection of the committee's secretary, Claire de Héderváry, is now fully accessible in our online Catalog, while the papers of Gábor Magos, one of witnesses testifying before the committee, and his wife, are available in the Research Room.
HU OSA 398 Claire de Héderváry Collection on the United Nations Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary
In January 1957, the UN General Assembly established a Special Committee on the problem of Hungary. Its purpose was to investigate the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the subsequent Soviet military intervention, and the circumstances and events leading up to the installation of the counter-revolutionary government led by János Kádár. The Special Committee heard 111 witnesses, amassed a considerable body of source material, and sought expert opinions, in order to produce its first comprehensive report in September 1957, followed by a supplementary report in July 1958, after the execution of Imre Nagy and his associates.
After the committee concluded its work in 1958, the documents were, according to the UN's records retention schedule at the time, supposed to have been destroyed after three years. This was prevented by Claire de Héderváry, the Special Committee's secretary, who first deposited the collection at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, then, in 1998, donated it to the National Széchényi Library in Budapest, Hungary. Already at this point, she contacted the Blinken OSA Archivum (then the Open Society Archives), which covered the cost of transport. By 2008, the condition of the documents had deteriorated considerably; at Héderváry's request, the Blinken OSA Archivum urgently digitized the collection.
The Claire de Héderváry Collection on the United Nations Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary is now fully accessible in our online Catalog. The first series contains more than 3,500 textual documents, including minutes, internal correspondence, press monitoring, and expert opinions, as well as the draft and final versions of the committee's reports. The second series contains the verbatim transcripts of the testimonies, while the third series contains their complete audio recordings; the latter are of particular value because, unlike the transcripts, which recorded the English interpretations only, the audio tapes also capture the original Hungarian testimonies and the questions. The fourth series is a collection of photographs focusing on Claire de Héderváry's persona and her work at the UN.
HU OSA 416 Magos-Gimes Family Papers
The collection contains the papers of Gábor Magos, an agricultural engineer, and his wife Judith Magos-Gimes, a teacher, librarian, and translator. Gábor Magos was a close colleague of Imre Nagy during the 1956 Revolution, who worked as foreign policy adviser and liaison between the revolutionary government and the police forces in Budapest; from November, he was involved in activities against the emerging Kádár government. The first series of the collection contains documents relating to the 1956 Revolution, including Magos's foreign policy papers, correspondence, his testimony before the UN Special Committee and similar bodies, and a compilation of domestic and international media coverage of the revolution.
The papers also provide an insight into the couple's years in exile, through documents on their emigration to and resettlement in Switzerland, including their surveillance case there. Various bulletins and correspondence outline the network and activity of Hungarian emigré groups in general. The fonds also comprises family and professional records, a collection of family and historical photographs, and various sound recordings. The documents were preserved and pre-arranged by Judith Magos-Gimes.
