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Gabor Boritt | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Boritt in 2014 | |
| Born | Róth-Szappanos Gábor (1940-01-26)January 26, 1940 Budapest, Hungary |
| Died | February 2, 2026(2026-02-02) (aged 86) |
| Children | 3, includingJake andBeowulf |
| Awards | National Humanities Medal |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Yankton College University of South Dakota Boston University |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Historian |
| Sub-discipline | American Civil War andAbraham Lincoln specialist |
| Institutions | Gettysburg College University of Michigan |
| Website | www |
Gabor Szappanos Boritt (néRóth-Szappanos Gábor; January 26, 1940 – February 2, 2026) was a Hungarian-born American historian. He was the Robert Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of theCivil War Institute at Gettysburg College. Born and raised in Hungary, he participated as a teenager in theHungarian Revolution of 1956 before escaping to America, where he received his higher education and became a scholar ofAbraham Lincoln and theAmerican Civil War. He was the author, co-author, or editor of 16 books about Lincoln or the Civil War. Boritt received theNational Humanities Medal in 2008 from PresidentGeorge W. Bush.
Boritt was born as Róth-Szappanos Gábor on January 26, 1940 to a Jewish family inBudapest, Hungary at the start ofWorld War II.[1] TheNazis forced his family to live in a single room in a hospital on theghetto's edge, where he played on bloodstained floors. As his father helped lead resistance against the Nazis, his grandfather's family was deported from the countryside and murdered inAuschwitz. By the end of the war,Budapest was in ruins and Hungary inStalin's grip. In the years that followed, Boritt's mother died, his father and brother were imprisoned, and he was sent to an orphanage. In 1956 sixteen-year-old Boritt joined the1956 Hungarian Revolution. He remembered the initial euphoria: "We thought it was a whole new world. Anything was possible." Days later, 3,000 Soviet tanks crushed those possibilities, and Boritt and his sister Judith headed for the Austrian border. In darkness, they hiked through wooded hills before coming to ano man's land guarded by men in watchtowers with machine guns. Freedom lay on the other side. Together, they started running.
After months at an Austrian refugee camp, Boritt came to the U.S. with just one dollar in his pocket, arriving in the "dirtiest city" he had ever seen:New York City. Advised to "go west", Boritt headed toSouth Dakota.[2] He changed his surname to Boritt upon arriving in America, and kept a part of his original surname, Szappanos, as his middle name.[1] Wanting to learn English, he picked up a free booklet ofAbraham Lincoln's writings. Captivated by Lincoln's mastery of the language and his rise from poverty to the presidency, Boritt began studying American history and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree fromYankton College in 1962 and a master's degree from theUniversity of South Dakota in 1963, followed by a Ph.D. fromBoston University in 1968.
As an immigrant, he felt obliged to go toVietnam, where he taught soldiers about theAmerican Civil War. In 1978 after deciding to pursue the study of Lincoln from the economic angle, he published his first bookLincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, which placed what Boritt called "the right to rise" at the center of Lincoln's outlook.[2] One of a handful of books on Lincoln published in the 1970s, a 1995 survey of leading experts byCivil War Times lists it as one of the 10 most important books ever written about Lincoln.
After teaching at theUniversity of Michigan, in 1981 Boritt came toGettysburg College, founding theCivil War Institute, where the school created for him the nation's first fully funded chair for the study of the Civil War.[3] He helped create the $50,000Lincoln Prize, widely considered the most coveted award for the study of American history.[4] He also helped create theGilder Lehrman Institute, which is focused on improving the teaching of history in schools.[5]
Boritt served on the boards of the Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation and theAbraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, appointed by Congress. His bookThe Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech Nobody Knows (2006) was featured on the cover ofU.S. News & World Report and called "fascinating" byThe New York Times.[6] In September 2008 Boritt gave a tour of the Gettysburg battlefield to President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and a group including White House AdvisorKarl Rove, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.[7]
On November 17, 2008, President George W. Bush awarded Boritt theNational Humanities Medal from theNational Endowment for the Humanities "for a distinguished career of scholarship on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era. His life's work and his life's story stand as testaments to our nation's precious legacy of liberty".[8] His life story is the subject of a feature-length documentary film titledBudapest to Gettysburg (2007), directed by his sonJake Boritt.[9] In 2009 he retired.[10]
Gabor Boritt was inducted as a Laureate ofThe Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 2009 as a Bicentennial Laureate.[11] In 1996, Boritt received The Lincoln Forum'sRichard Nelson Current Award of Achievement.[12]
Boritt and his wife Liz lived in an 18th-century farmhouse on the edge of theGettysburg battlefield, which they restored with their own hands. It served as both a stop on theUnderground Railroad and as a Confederate hospital. Together they raised three sons:Beowulf Boritt is a set designer (and streaming video ad star) in New York City,Jake Boritt is a filmmaker who lives inHarlem, and Daniel Boritt is a biologist specializing in birds who lives inIndianapolis, Indiana.
Gabor Boritt died inChambersburg, Pennsylvania, of complications of dementia on February 2, 2026, at the age of 86.[1][13]
