Holocaust Scholar Returns Top Award to Hungary in Protest

PARIS — A prominent Hungarian-American Holocaust scholar, Randolph L. Braham, said on Sunday he is returning a high state award to Hungary to protest what he called the government’s efforts to whitewash the country’s collusion in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Second World War.

Mr. Braham, a Holocaust survivor and professor emeritus at the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, received Hungary’s Order of Merit in 2011 for his research, and his scholarship has been honored by the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest, where the library bears his name.

In an open letter addressed to executives of the memorial center, Mr. Braham, 91, said he was shocked by what he called an attempt by the government to downplay the role of Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s autocratic leader during most of the Second World War and a Hitler ally. Horthy’s defenders argue that Hungary was a relatively safe haven for Jews before the Nazi invasion in 1944. He said he was rejecting the government honor and asked the memorial center to remove his name from its library....