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András Kovács (1947-) is a sociologist and one of the most significant researchers on the Hungarian Jewish community and Antisemitism in Hungary. He was a member of the democratic opposition and an active participant in the anti-communist movements and the dissemination of samizdat publications. He joined the project launched by Ferenc Erős and András Stark on second-generation Holocaust survivors and played a decisive role in the creation of this interview collection.

Kovács studied philosophy and history and completed his PhD in sociology at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. With his colleagues, he intended to renew the organizations of the Communist Youth League in the Faculty of Humanities in the early 1970s. Kovács was one of the intellectuals who was initially Marxist, but who became disillusioned in 1968, when the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded Prague to halt reforms. These young undergraduates no longer believed that the communist system could be reformed, and they gave voice to this opinion. The authorities launched proceedings against Kovács, charging him anti-state incendiarism because of his participation in the reform movement at the university.

After completing his degree, he worked in the editorial office of the Kossuth Publishing House. He continued his activity as a member of the intellectual opposition movement, and he attended numerous seminars held in private apartments. In 1977, the first significant samizdat-book, entitled Marx a negyedik évtizedben (“Marx in the fourth decade”) was published at his initiative. In this manuscript collection, 21 intellectuals gave voice to their (mainly negative) opinion of the relevance of Marx and Marxist philosophy. As a consequence, he was fired. Beginning in the late 1970s, he earned a livelihood by doing ad hoc translation and editing work. He was one of the figures of the important anti-regime movements, so among the authors of the so-called “Bibó Memory Book” and signatories to the Charta 77 statement, which was a protest against the suppression of and reprisals taken against the opposition in Prague.  

Because of his Jewish family origins, he was interested in the issue of the Jewish community after World War II, the suppression of the memory of the Holocaust, and the ways in which the traumas of the Holocaust was passed on from one generation to the next within families. He was also motivated in his career as a scholar by fellowships and a research trip abroad. Kovács had opportunities to pursue research and teaching in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the USA. In the mid-1980s, he began to study Jewish communities and Antisemitism. He joined the project launched by Ferenc Erős and András Stark, and he became a key figure of the interview project on second-generation Holocaust survivors. Kovács has been active in this work since 1984. The interviews which were done on this officially taboo topic had an effect on the interviewers and the interviewees, but also on the larger aim to bring taboos to the foreground and foster discussion among professional audiences and the wider public on issues which were suppressed by the regime.

Sociologist Gyula Kozák (1941–) was the founder and, until 1999, the head of the Oral History Archives. In 1981, together with András Hegedűs B. (1930–2001), he began to do oral history interviews with participants in and witnesses to the 1956 Revolution, which was considered the number one taboo in public discourse in Hungary at the time.

Kozák was born to a well-off bourgeois family in Budapest, though World War II and his parents’ early divorce shook the family. He witnessed 1956 as an adolescent, and the revolution had a deep impact on his mentality and his emotions. As a fifteen-year-old boy, he wandered around the city watching the events of the revolution: the demonstrations and street fights. In late November 1956, he left home and, together with the great flood of Hungarian refugees, managed to get to Vienna, but a month later, he returned to Budapest. In 1958, together with some friends, he found some hidden guns, and he resolved to start the fight against the regime again, but he and his friends were caught before could take action. He was arrested by the police and was held in custody for a month, but was then released. He had some trouble in school when he returned, and he was almost prohibited from being allowed to pass his matriculation exam.

He then went on to study at the Technical University Budapest, but he was far more interested in the social sciences than he was in engineering, sociology. However, higher education in sociology had been prohibited in 1949 by the communist system, and it was only reestablished in the early 1970s. Thus, instead of being able to acquire proper theoretical training, he was only able to participate in some sociological fieldwork. He took part as an assistant in surveys conducted by the National Cultural Institute and then by the Higher Educational Research Institute. In 1969, he managed to get a job for two years at the Social Science Research Institute, the strategic “think tank” of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Here he joined the preparatory works for new nationwide surveys which examined the circumstances in which industrial workers, Roma, and the poor lived. The surveys were done under the guidance of István Kemény, a pioneering researcher of Hungarian empirical sociology. Kemény exerted a strong influence on Kozák’s way of thinking and, indeed, the approaches and mentalities of many young scholars, as he forced them to confront social realities and the simple fact that there were major social problems in communist Hungary, including a lack of equal opportunity and sufferings under the socialist system of the time. This critical attitude was strengthened when, in the mid-1970s, Kozák began to contribute, as expert and script writer, to a good dozen documentary film projects being done by the Béla Balázs Studio (BBS) and Hungarian Televison (MTV).

At the same time, he took an active part in some underground art movements and alternative cultural initiations, working for a while e.g. as a light master for the University Theater of Budapest. He had also several good contacts among dissident writers and intellectuals.    

The activities in which he engaged brought him increasingly into conflict with the communist regime. In 1972, Kozák took part in the preparations for a conference on workers’ social problems. The conference itself was banned, and the book of relevant studies was confiscated by the police. In 1979, he also signed a declaration of solidarity with the members of the Czechoslovak Charta 77 movement who had been imprisoned, and he lost his job as a consequence of this. He was repeatedly harassed, threatened, and blackmailed by the secret police, which tried to force him to become an informant, but he resisted the pressure they put on him.

In 1981, Gyula Kozák began to work together closely with András Hegedűs B. They were both commissioned by the Economic Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science to do oral history interviews with Hungarian business managers. At the same time, they began to do research on their own concerning 1956. They collected data and produced a historical chronology of the events, and they also organized “Round-table talks on 1956.” and a series of group and individual interviews with one-time participants in the Hungarian revolution. This collective work led in 1985 to the creation of the Oral History Archive and in 1989 to the creation of the 1956 Research Institute. Kozák was a leading founder of both. He is also the author of a number of books and editor of several other books and studies published by the Institute.   

Radoslav Kratina was a Czech sculptor, graphic designer, industrial designer, photographer and painter, a representative of Czech neo-constructivism. He studied arts and crafts in Brno and worked as a textile designer. In the 1950s, he graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague and then worked as an industrial textile designer and toy designer. From 1962 he focused on his own fine art and his works were exhibited in the 1960s as part of group exhibitions. In 1967 he co-founded the “Concretists’ Club”, which originally brought together mainly Czech and Slovak (neo) constructivist artists. After the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 many members of the Concretists’ Club emigrated and the club ceased its activities in 1971. Radoslav Kratina, who stayed in Czechoslovakia, could not exhibit his work until 1989. His work was characteristically inspired by movement and colour – he created free-standing constructions and hanging relief structures made from simple colourful moving geometric bodies.

Aniza Kraus has been the curator of the Ukrainian Museum-Archives since 2007. She was the UMA’s first professional curator, working previously as a digitization and preservation specialist at Case Western Reserve University. She has been instrumental in organizing existing materials and managing new acquisitions, which come regularly from the surrounding Ukrainian community. She has attracted funds for various projects, like the grant received from the Ohio Humanities Council to publish a volume about the Hnatiuk textile collection.

Bronius Krivickas (1919–1952) graduated Biržai gymnasium in 1938, and began his studies at Vytautas Magnus University, later - Vilnius University. He was a member of literary organisations and networks, such as ‘Šatrijos meno kuopa’, led by the famous Lithuanian writer Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas. Krivickas was the editor of the journal Ateitis (Future) in 1938–1939, and later the editor of the newspaper Studentų dienos (Student Days). From 1944, he worked in the editorial offices of the journal Kūryba (Creative Work), and as a teacher at Biržai gymnasium. In 1945, he joined the anti-Soviet partisan movement. He became the editor of partisan newspapers such as Aukštaičių kova (The Struggle of the Aukštaičiai) and Partizanų kova (The Partisan Struggle). Krivickas was killed in 1952, during an operation by the Soviet state security service.