Good Citizens or Nazi Spies?

Background of an FBI Inquiry Against a Hungarian American Family

Authors

  • Eszter Rakita Eszterhazy Karoly Catholic University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/ahea.2025.598

Keywords:

Hungarian-Americans, immigrant, investigation, denaturalization, discrimination, fifth column, twentieth-century history

Abstract

The United States entered the Second World War following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. During the war, Japanese Americans faced persecution and even imprisonment due to their national heritage. The primary objective of this paper is to highlight that it was not only U.S. citizens of Japanese or German descent, but also Hungarian Americans, who could become targets of American authorities, albeit not to the same severe extent. The wartime atmosphere was so tense that the FBI responded to even the slightest rumors, launching investigations against law-abiding citizens who had no intention of undermining the American war effort. This paper examines the case of one Hungarian immigrant family—the Gondos family—as an illustrative example of how U.S. wartime intelligence targeted American citizens of “enemy alien” descent based solely on unsubstantiated rumors. Analyzing this case offers valuable insight into the experiences of wartime minorities in the United States. Therefore, the findings contribute to the historiography of twentieth-century American history, Hungarian migration history, and the academic field of American Studies.

Author Biography

Eszter Rakita, Eszterhazy Karoly Catholic University

Eszter Rakita is a historian and a research associate in the Institute of History at Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Eger, Hungary. She holds Bachelor’s Degrees in American Studies and in Communication. She also holds a Master’s Degree in History. She has a PhD in Modern History. Her research focuses on the Hungarian Immigrant experience in the United States in the 1st half of the 20th century, with a special focus on middle-class immigrants.

 

References

Ambrus, László. “Austria-Hungary and the American Belligerence in World War One.” Pro&Contra: Central European Studies in the Humanities, vol. 2, 2018, pp. 5–24.

“Az amerikai zsarolási pör [The American Blackmail Trial].” Pesti Napló [Pest Journal], 6 Dec. 1915.

“Bridgeport Editors Face Attempted Extortion Charge.” The Arizona Republican, 13 Nov. 1915, p. 3.

“Brothers Held as Blackmailers in Bomb Plot.” New York Tribune, 11 Nov. 1915, p. 3.

“Claim to Have Located Center of Conspiracy.” Albuquerque Morning Journal, 11 Nov. 1915, pp. 1–2.

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America. Harper Perennial, 2002.

“Editors Jailed for Extortion.” The Pensacola Journal, 13 Nov. 1915, p. 1.

“Egy üldözött lány szenvedései [Tribulations of a Maid Harassed].” Pesti Hírlap [Pest Herald], 19 May 1911, p. 13.

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Gondos, Victor Sr., Denaturalization Proceedings, Washington, DC, 1943. FBI Inquiry Files. From the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Gondos Family Papers, 1895–ca. 1978.

Ford, Nancy Gentile. The Great War and America: Civil-Military Relations during World War I. Praeger Security International, 2008.

“Gondos Bros. Confess, Say N. Y. Police.” The Bridgeport Evening Farmer, 10 Nov. 1915, p. 1.

“Gondosékat elítélték [Gondoses Have Been Sentenced].” Magyarország [Hungary], 24 Feb. 1916, p. 9.

Gondos, Robert Zoltan. Recollections of My Early Youth 1908–1921. C. 1977. Memoir. From The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Gondos Family Papers, 1895–1978.

Gondos, Victor Sr., Gondos Victor Jr., Gondos Zoltan and Gondos Irene. Family Correspondence, 1900–1953. Letters, postcards. From The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Gondos Family Papers, 1895–1978.

Gulyás, Pál. Magyar írók élete és munkái [Lives and Works of Hungarian Authors]. Vol. 11, Argumentum, 1992, p. 105.

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925. Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Hinnershitz, Stephanie. Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor During World War II. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.

Keegan, John. The Second World War. Hutchinson, 1989.

“Két magyar ember kalandja Amerikában [Two Hungarian Men’s Adventure in America].” Délmagyarország [Southern Hungary], 10 Dec. 1915, p. 8.

MacDonnell, Francis. Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front. Oxford University Press, 1995.

Nora, Pierre, et al., editors. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. Columbia University Press, 1996.Puskás, Julianna. Ties That Bind, Ties That Divide: 100 Years of Hungarian Experience in the United States. Holmes & Meier, 2000.

Rakita, Eszter. “A Story of Persistence and Diligence: The Life of Victor Gondos Jr.” Pro&Contra: Central European Studies in Humanities, vol. 6, 2023, pp. 25–47.

---. “Bevándorlás, asszimiláció, akkulturáció a 20. századi Egyesült Államokban egy amerikai magyar család történetének tükrében [Immigration, Assimilation, Acculturation in the 20th Century United States as Reflected in a Hungarian Family’s Story].” PhD dissertation, Eger, Hungary, 2024.

Sowell, Thomas. Ethnic America: A History. Basic Books, 1981.

Szilassy, Sándor. Az amerikai magyarság a második világháborúban [Hungarian Americans in the Second World War]. Nyelvünk és Kultúránk, no. 111, July–Sept. 2000.

The New York Tribune. 8 Sept. 1918.

Várdy, Béla, and Ágnes Várdy Huszár. Újvilági küzdelmek: Az amerikai magyarság és az óhaza [Foreign tribulations. Hungarian-Americans and the old country]. Mundus Kiadó, 2005.

Várdy, Béla. Magyarok az Újvilágban [Hungarians in the New World]. Magyar Nyelv és Kultúra Nemzetközi Társasága, 2000.

Weiner, Tim. Enemies: A History of the FBI. Random House, 2013.

Downloads

Published

2025-08-25

Issue

Vol. 18 (2025)

Section

General Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Eszter Rakita

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.