The Children’s Republic of Gaudiopolis: The History and Memory of a Budapest Children’s Home for Holocaust and War Orphans Gergely Kunt, trans., Maya J Lo Bello

Abstract

The Children’s Republic of Gaudiopolis illuminates the little-known story of Gábor Sztehlo and his rescue efforts in Budapest during and after the Second World War. Kunt’s analysis is two part; the first focuses on the home’s brief history as an educational experiment, and the second, through the lens of the film Somewhere in Europe, strives to place the home in Hungary’s broader collective memory of the postwar period and beyond. In scrutinizing both the school and the larger postwar context, he adds new perspective to the growing canon of works about European children’s role in the politics of postwar nation building and identity. The book’s first (of four) sections begins with “The History of Child Rescue in Hungary.” Here the author introduces Gábor Sztehlo, a Lutheran minister and chief protagonist of the story. He also emphasizes that until 1944, however, Sztehlo was clearly a bystander to the treatment of Hungarian Jewry, working in his small town with no Jewish population. The reasons for Gábor Sztehlo’s previous passivity are unclear, but this changes dramatically in 1944 when his bishop assigns him to represent the Lutheran Church in its collaboration with the Good Shepherd Society. The latter was working to rescue Christian children, who, according to Nazi laws, qualified as Jews. Once identified, they were placed in special children’s homes. The International Red Cross protected the growing number of homes under the right of extraterritorial entities. According to Sztehlo, by February 1, 1945, there were twenty-eight sites protecting about two thousands people. As a result, in 1972 Yad Vashem bestowed the “Righteous Among the Nations” award on Sztehlo.