The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL ARCHIVES OF NATIONAL COLLECTION - The Archives of Military History Budapest by Jolán Szijj

First of all, we should mention our special relationship with Kriegsarchiv of Vienna, which has now existed for decades. Our branch office in Vienna performs unique and valuable tasks there. The two employees of the branch office do work based on established practice. They do special collection work for the whole HIM and they also do cultural-political activities, as well. After the existing relationship with Military Archives of Freiburg, we formed a working relationship with the Roman Military Archives and we have started to form a relationship with the Slovakian military public collection as well. The Archives of Military History participated in the programme of Open House between 1997 and 2 000 initiated and financed by Historical Office of the Department of Defence of the United States of America. The attendant institutions of Poland and Romania could also participated. The aim of the programme was partly to help to preserve the documents of the Cold War and partly to do the research and to make records more accessible. The former was achieved by taking microfilms on the Cold War and the latter by loading them on the Internet web site of the Congressional Library of Washington DC. The documents of the Ministry of Defence originating from between 1949 and 1956 and the written material of the 1956 revolution were recorded on microfilms. All of the documents can be found at our archives which amount to about 300. 000 pages. As a closure of the programme, the Department of Defense of the USA and the Congressional Library organized a conference in Washington in June, 2 000 where our Archives were active participants.