Barnabas Balint

Research Fellow (03/2026 – 07/2026)

Reconceptualising Resistance: Zionist Networks of Rescue and Resistance in Wartime Hungary

This project explores the role of the Hungarian Zionist Association (Magyarországi Cionista Szövetség, MCSz) in resistance and rescue during the Holocaust in Hungary, and the relationship between Hungarian Jews and the occupying authorities. It reconceptualises resistance around pre-existing personal solidarities rather than political or national ideologies, revealing how it developed in response to and alongside persecution. Drawing on German-, English-, Hungarian-, and French-language sources, it examines resistance from both macro and micro perspectives. The research combines the vast national and transnational networks of Zionist movements across Central and Eastern Europe, and the global flows of ideas and money, with the local realities of communities where members lived and worked. It also traces lesser-known German occupation figures, exposing their role in persecution and in combating resistance and rescue. The project offers fresh insight into Jewish life and persecution in Hungary, while proposing a new approach to the history of resistance.

Barnabas Balint completed his doctorate in History at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. His thesis focused on a generation of Jewish youth in Hungary during the Holocaust. His postdoctoral research builds on this work to explore Jewish responses and resistance during the Holocaust. He has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, University of London’s Institute of Historical Research, European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (Yad Vashem), and USC Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He has published widely in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, European Review of History, Jewish Culture and History, and The Journal of Holocaust Research veröffentlicht.

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