Oral History Archive - Budapest

The Oral History Archive (OHA) attached to the 1956 Institute in Budapest has been preserving and processing the recollections of more than a thousand witnesses. Its scholarly roots go back to the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. It became clear to many people at this time that personal testimony from those who had lived and suffered through the period formed the only available source for researching the history of Hungary’s communist period, including the 1956 revolution. There was no sign at that time of the archives eventually being opened, so that historians could also research traditional sources. In 1981, András B. Hegedűs and Gyula Kozák set about interviewing people who had played an important part in the revolution.

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