Gabor Boritt, Refugee Who Became Expert on Lincoln, Dies at 86

Gabor S. Boritt, who survived the Holocaust and Communist rule in Hungary, arrived in New York as a penniless refugee in 1957 and became one of the world’s pre-eminent scholars on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. He died on Feb. 2 in Chambersburg, Pa., near Gettysburg College, where he taught for decades.

He was 86; his son Jake said the death, in a hospice facility, was from complications of dementia. At Gettysburg College, adjacent to the 1863 battlefield, Professor Boritt built a wide scholarly presence. He founded the Civil War Institute, which sponsored a summer program of lectures and tours, and helped establish the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York and its Lincoln Prize.

He wrote and edited numerous collections for Oxford University Press and received the National Humanities Medal in 2008. Born Gabor Roth-Szappanos on Jan. 26, 1940, in Budapest, he was the son of Pal, an economist and journalist, and Rozsa (Schwarz) Roth-Szappanos.

United States, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania

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