Green Light for Fellowship and Training Programme

Last week, the European Commission announced that EHRI would receive new funding from the Research and Innovation Programme Horizon2020 to sustain and further develop its main resources and services. Already in the process of transforming from a project into a permanent body for international Holocaust research, EHRI now, with this new funding, can maintain and expand its successful resources, such as the fellowships, training activities and the EHRI Portal. Hence, over the next 4 years, EHRI will follow two paths: developing into a permanent infrastructure and progressing as a longstanding, active project. Having both streams of funding is especially good news for our user community as it means that they can keep on using EHRI’s new and improved services, while behind the scene, foundations for a stable organization are being built.

On August 19, 1944, a quite extraordinary thing happened in Hungary, which had been under German occupation for five months already. Dr János Benedek, the leading civil servant of the Kiskőrös district, ordered the internment of István Velich, the agricultural officer of the district and local functionary of the Eastern Frontline Companions’ Association. This fascist, paramilitary organization – comprising of 200 members –, which had been founded in 1942 by veterans who had served at the Russian front, was infamous for its extreme anti-Semitic and anti-communist conviction and the obsession with remaining loyal to the Germans until the end. Until March 19, 1944, the time of the German occupation, it operated illegally, afterwards, they stepped up openly. The members organized unexpected attacks on Jews and leftist workers, as a result of which they earned the dubious reputation of one of the most dreaded organizations.