Identity Statement

Reference Code

HU OSA 398

Title

Claire de Héderváry Collection on the United Nations Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary

Date(s)

1957 - 1961

Description Level

Fonds

Extent and medium (processed)

11 SDLT I, 0.37 linear meters
1 Archival photo box, 0.33 linear meters
12 Digital container, 0.01 linear meters

Context

Name of creator(s)

de Héderváry, Claire

Administrative / Biographical history

Claire de Héderváry (other form of her name: Héderváry Klára) was born in Budapest on August 15, 1920. She was the daughter of lawyer and member of parliament Lehel Héderváry de Hévízgyörk and Klára Radó. Her maternal grandfather, Sámuel Radó, was one of the founders of the Hungarian News Agency (Magyar Távirati Iroda, MTI).

Following her father's death in 1932, Claire de Héderváry's mother became the Paris correspondent for several French and Hungarian newspapers. Claire went to high school in Brussels and started her higher education at the University of Leuven. She completed her studies in the United States, first at Harvard University (MA in Economics and Public Administration), and then at Columbia University (PhD in Economics and International Law).

De Héderváry was recruited by the United Nations as an Economic Affairs Officer and was assigned to the Middle East section of the Technical Assistance administration for Developing Countries. Starting in January 1957, when the UN set up a Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary, de Héderváry has worked with the secretariat of the Committee in a variety of capacities, including the ones of researcher, analyst, and interpreter. When the Secretary General appointed a Special Envoy to underpin the work of the Committee, she became his advisor.

In 1962, the Hungarian question was removed from the UN agenda, but de Héderváry continued her career in the Political Department of the UN as Chief of the Peaceful Settlements and Political Assessments Division. She retired in 1981 from the Secretariat of the UN as one of the Directors of the Political Department.

Throughout her career at the UN, she organized, and participated in, numerous study groups and seminars. She was Co-founder and President of the Women's Group set up to improve the status of women officials in the UN and its specialized agencies, and she also presided over the Inter-agency Committee advising the Secretary General on Personnel and Administrative matters.

Claire de Héderváry maintained her working relationship with the UN even after retirement. From 1981 to 1984 she was a Member of the Belgian Delegation to the General Assembly, and in 1990-1991 she was Commissioner General and Special Representative of the Secretary General in Japan.

She was awarded, among others, the Commander Class of the Order of Leopold II, the Imre Nagy Memorial Plaque, and a special medal issued by the Hungarian government on the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

In her later years she lived in Belgium and served as President of the United Business Institutes, an institution of higher education.

Claire de Héderváry passed away on June 5, 2020, in Uccle/Ukkel, near Brussels, Belgium.

Archival history

Claire de Héderváry worked in various capacities with the UN Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary from 1957 until its dissolution in 1961. She was thus well acquainted with the amount, content, and historical value of the documentation of the Committee’s work. According to the UN’s records retention schedule, this documentation including draft reports, audio recordings of witness hearings, background materials, and secondary copies of official UN documents, should have been destroyed three years after the dissolution of the Special Committee. However, since Claire de Héderváry continued to work with the UN after the termination of the Special Committee, she had the opportunity to rescue from destruction a considerable portion of these documents. Upon her retirement in 1981, she secured her supervisor’s permission to remove the collection amounting to 22 full whiskey cases from the UN. Initially, she stored the documents in her New York apartment. Later, for security reasons, she deposited them at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. In 1998, considering that the documents should belong to the Hungarian people and that Hungary’s transition to democracy was now irreversible, Claire de Héderváry donated the collection to the Manuscript Department of the National Széchényi Library in Budapest. Blinken OSA Archivum partnered through the financing of the transatlantic transfer of the documents. The documents were first inventoried by historian Mihály Zichy, who at that time worked with the Manuscript Department at Széchényi Library. The Library restored and digitized 77 hours of audio recordings on tapes and discs for preservation purposes. The archiving of textual documents was, too, an urgent matter, as the condition of (acidic) paper documents was rapidly deteriorating. Also, the preparation of an English language catalogue necessitated broader cooperation. In 2007, Blinken OSA Archivum undertook to digitize the entire paper-based collection. By the end of the project in 2009, over 30,000 pages of textual documents had been digitized. The original paper documents were returned to the Manuscript Department of Széchényi Library; they constitute Fonds No. 523 there (Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Kézirattár, 523-as fond). It was proposed that the digitized version of the complete collection be published online on the Archivum's website, as part of its 1956 Digital Archive. Eventually, a curated collection of a few thousand items was published online. It is this curated collection that has now been catalogued by the Archivum.

Content and Structure

Scope and Content (Abstract)

The fonds contains documentation of the work and formal proceedings of the UN Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary compiled by former UN employee Claire de Héderváry in the course of her work with the Special Committee.

Scope and Content (Narrative)

On January 10, 1957, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 1132/XI and thereby established the UN Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary. Its purpose was the investigation of Hungary’s 1956 Revolution, the subsequent Soviet military intervention, and the circumstances and events that led to the installation of a counter-revolutionary government under János Kádár. Claire de Héderváry was an advisor and chief assistant to the Committee, who coordinated the Committee’s operations, and who also took part in the drafting of the Committee's Report.

The documents preserved and rescued by Claire de Héderváry offer a rare glimpse into the minute details of the formal proceedings of this UN Special Committee. They also testify to the vast and varied source material gathered and processed by its members in the process of investigating the events of October-November, 1956, in Hungary.

The first series consists of over 3500 selected documents on the activity of the Special Committee on Hungary. The second series is made up of 51 "verbatim records" of Committee meetings, at which witnesses were heard. The third series contains complete original audio-recordings of these witness testimonies. Series four is dedicated to a small collection of photographs portraying Claire de Héderváry and her work at the United Nations.

A more detailed description of this collection is available at archival series level.

Accruals

Not Expected

Conditions of Access and Use

Languages

English, Hungarian

Description Control

Archivist's note

Processed by József Bóné, Mark László-Herbert, Csaba Szilágyi, and Zsuzsa Zádori, October 22, 2024.