ShoahLab IFDT is organizing an online lecture by Zoltán Dévavári titled “Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Emigration – Jews is Subotica 1918–1948“ The lecture will present research and conclusions of the monograph on the Jews of Szabadka/Subotica „An untold story Shifts of empire, Holocaust, emigration – History of ideas and politics of Jewry in Szabadka/Subotica (1918–1945)“.

The lecture will present conclusions of the monograph on the Jews of Szabadka/Subotica and Bácska/Bačka Jewery, „An untold story Shifts of empire, Holocaust, emigration – History of ideas and politics of Jewry in Szabadka/Subotica (1918–1945)“ based on the basic archival research conducted between 2013 and 2019 on the Hungarian, Serbian and Croatian press at the time, and the Hungarian, South Slavic and international literature. This chronological framework includes three periods of empire change: the first change in 1918/1920 – in this context the period of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, from the 1941 to the 1944 – the World War II era until deportation, and finally the third border change, the first year of the development of state-socialist Yugoslavia. The lecture will deal with the analysis and presentation of the Jewish policy of the Belgrade and Budapest governments, as well as the current local administrations; the background of the anti-Jewish measures of the first South Slavic state and their considerations; the Szabadka/Subotica ghetto and events of 1944; as well as political climate and consequences in the years following the end of World War II.

Zoltán Dévavári was born on September 15, 1977 in Szabadka/Subotica. He finished elementary- and high school in his hometown, then obtained a BA degree in History from Eötvös Loránt University in Budapest (2001) and a Master’s degree in history from Pázmány Péter Catholic University (2004). He received his doctorate from the University of Szeged in 2012 with summa cum laude. Between 2007 and 2015 he was a teacher at the Philological Grammar School Kosztolányi Dezső in Szabadka/Subotica, from 2014 he was an assistant professor at the Hungarian Language Teacher Training Faculty of the University of Novi Sad in Szabadka/Subotica, then an associate professor. Since 2017, he has been a research fellow at the VERITAS Historical Research Institute and Archives in Budapest. His main fields of research are: the history of ideas and politics of the Hungarians of Vojvodina in the 20th century, the history of politics of the first South Slavic state (1918–1941), the history of ideas and politics of the Jews of Szabadka/Subotica and Vojvodina.