------------------------------------------- Please note: This article is stored in a private account and has no relationship to the computer system in which it is stored. Any comments regarding it CONTENT, please contact the author, whose address is given below. Any comments regarding its storage, please contact the archive maintainer at: jewstudies@shamash.org Thank you ------------------------------------------- JEWS in HUNGARY -> Peter I. Hidas (PHIDAS@runt.dawsoncollege.qc.ca) Peter I. Hidas, Ph.D., Dawson College, Montreal WAR-TIME STATISTICS According to the census of 1941, the population of Hungary numbered 9.3 million of which 825,000 were Jews. Following the Nazi occupation of Poland, about 100,000 Poles sought and received refuge in Hungary. A significant number of them were Jewish. In 1941 the Hungarian government decided to reevaluate its refugee policies. About 18,000 Jews who could not prove their Hungarian citizenship were deported to Galicia where 16,000 of them were butchered by the SS Eisatzgruppen and their Ukrainian and Hungarian collaborators. A year later the infamous Ujvidek raid took place. In search of Yugoslav partisans, the Hungarian army murdered 4,000 civilians amongst them 1,000 Jews in a southern Hungarian town. Before the German occupation, that is before 19 March 1944, fifty to sixty thousand Jewish men were enrolled in labour battalions. By the said date 15,000 of them were dead and another 10,000 died before the end of the war. Of the 25,000 who were captured by the Russians hardly any survived the war. THE ROAD TO AUSCHWITZ The road to Auschwitz was opened in March 1944. The German army occupied Hungary and General Horthy was forced to appoint a pro-German government. There was no resistance. Soon Adolf Eichmann appeared with his small team to organize the deportation of all Hungarian Jews to death camps. The Hungarian genocide began in the spring of 1944. According to Veesenmayer, Hitler's plenipotentiary in Budapest, whose data is confirmed by other sources, 437,402 persons were deported from Hungary with the full cooperation of the new government, the civil service, the gendarmerie and the Jewish Council. Copies of the Auschwitz Protocol, information about the planned extermination of the Jews of Hungary was passed on to the Allies, to the Hungarian government, the Jewish Council, Horthy and the head of the Catholic Church, yet there was no public protest. The British government forbade Palestinian Jewish commandoes to parachute into Hungary and arouse the Jews. The Americans refused to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz. The Canadian government declined to take in Hungarian Jewish children. The Allies disallowed trading trucks for lives earnestly offered by the SS. FINAL LIQUIDATION The Pope addressed a personal plea to Horthy on June 25, 1944, which was followed by the warnings of President Roosevelt on June 26, and that of King Gustav of Sweden on June 30. Horthy prohibited further deportations. By then, however, all the Jews from the countryside were gone and the gas chambers of Auschwitz were working over capacity, with the overload thrown into constantly burning open pits. In Hungary the respite was only temporary. Eichmann, continued his work with the help of the Hungarian Nazis - the Arrow Cross Party, who were put into power in October1944, including the killing of another 50,000 from Budapest. The number would have been 15,000 higher if not for the heroic activities of Raul Wallenberg. During the next six months another 15,000 Jews died within Hungary, mainly as a result of the Arrow Cross attrocities. Despite severe decimation, a majority of the Jews of Budapest, survived. During the Holocaust, 310,000 Hungarian Jews fell victim to genocide, and another 50,000 who survived the Holocaust in Germany never returned to Hungary. POST-WAR STATISTICS In mid-1945, 141480 Hungarian citizens declared themselves Jews by religion, 1.6% of all Hungarians. Among these survivors, women outnumbered men by 37%, in Budapest by 65%, while 80% of Hungaria Jewish children perished. The surviving elite left for the USA, Canada, Australia and France, and the Jewish middle classes was virtually non-existent. In 1946 the American J.O.I.N.T. stated that 90 to 95% of the Hungarian Jews needed aid. Many of the former craftsmen, merchants and industrial workers went to work in factories. Youth congregated at the universities, while others joined the army, the police, the civil service. Most joined the communist party or the social democrats, in part, as a safe haven from nationalist parties. THE RISE OF POST-WAR ANTISEMITISM As a result of war crime trials, the leaders of the Arrow Cross Movement were hanged and close to 60,000 others were found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. So-called Certification Committees began probing past activities of civil servants, however, the shear volume of people implicated led to a balcklash against the remaining Jewish community. In an effort to gain popularity, newly-formed or reconditioned political parties welcomed the _small Nazis_ in their ranks. At the same time the government refused to admit national responsibility for the Hungarian Holocaust, even often refusing the restoration of property. The so-called _Jewish Question_, re-entered vogue among gentile intellectuals. Peter Veres, in charge of the land reform, was soon accused of introducing an unwritten law preventing Jews from aquiring land. In the fight against inflation, newspapers began printing caricatures of blackmarketeers that could have easily been confused with drawings of Jews in the Sturmer during the Nazi era. Both Cardinal Mindszenty and the head of the Calvinist Church began to arouse anti-semitic sentiment among their followers. In 1946 there were several pogroms. 21 May 1946, Kunmadaras. Peasants murder two Jews, eighteen are wounded. 1 August 1946. Miskolc. Industrial workers stage a progrom. Two Jews are lynched. The Jewish community now became openly critical of the government. For some of the Jews the hope for a new world in Hungary had disappeared. Over the next two years at least 4,000 Jews left for Israel. The remaining years of thee decade continued to hold hardships for Hungarian Jews, including anti- Zionist campaigns staged by the Soviet Union. In 1948 and1949, over ten thousand Hungarian Jews arrived in Israel. SOVIET ERA As in other countries with communist rule and under Soviet occupation , popular anti-Semitism was no longer tolerated, and only the Bolshevik state was allowed to practice anti-Semitism. During the first show trial, the Rajk trial, three out of the eight accused were Jews. In 1950/51 another 3693 Jews left for Israel. The rest embarked on the old road of assimilation, unconditional support of the regime, or a retreat into private life. When Stalin initiated a vicious anti-Semitic campaign a few months before his death, his pupil in Hungary, Matthias Rakosi, began preparing an anti-Semitic show trial. The case fizzled out with Stalin's death but communist party Jews were gradually removed from responsible positions and the Jewish head of the secret police was imprisoned. The expulsion of the Jews from public life was completed during the Kadar regime. In 1956 when the people of Hungary rose up against their domestic and foreign oppressors, Jews fought on both sides of the barricades. A smattering of anti-Semitic incidents in north-eastern Hungary led to the last massive wave of emigration. Over 5000 Jews left for Israel, over 20,000 for other countries, including about 8,000 who came to Canada. The Jews disappeared from public life until the mid-1970s when Jewish life began to experience a renaissance. Under a new leadership from the Rabbinical Seminary, assimilated young Jews developed an interest in their past, in their ancestors, and religion. POST COMMUNIST HUNGARY When the communist state disintegrated, popular anti- Semitism surfaced again at football matches, in the high schools, and in the press. The populist wing of the new governing party was led by the anti-Semitic poet, Istvan Csurka. On October 23, 1992, on the anniversary of the Revolution of 1956, neo-Nazi thugs wearing SS caps and flying Arrow Cross flags jeered the president of the republic. Yet, forty years of communist rule had some positive effects. The nation was educated and Europeanized. The peasants of Hungary evolved into farmers and a middle class, based on private enterprise, emerged. Pope John XXIII attempted to alter the public attitude of the Catholic Church towards the Jews and this development had its impact on the Hungarian Church. Anti-Nazi demonstrations have attracted hundreds of thousands of marchers. As the country tries to make an smooth transition to the European market economy, Hungary's 80 thousand remaining Jews are hoping that this current wave of calm lasts. Peter I. Hidas PhD, Montreal --------------------------------- --------------------------------------- ------------------------------------ PHIDAS@runt.dawsoncollege.qc.ca Jews of Hungary A Brief Outline of the History of the Jews of Hungary (PART ONE) A speech delivered on 13 December 1992 at the Temple Emanu-El Beth Solom, Westmount, Quebec, Canada THE FIRST JEWS OF HUNGARY The Byzantine Emperor Constantine tells us, that some of the tribes of the Khazar nation rebelled against their rulers. The insurgents consisted of three tribes, who were called Kavars or Kabars. The Government prevailed; some of the rebels were slaughtered but some fled the country and settled with the Hungarians who lived at this time in the Ukraine. Amongst the dissident Kabar tribes were Jews, who ultimately settled permanently in Hungary by the 9th century. John Cinnamus, the Byzantine chronicler, mentions troops who observed the Jewish law fighting with the Hungarian army in Dalmatia in 1154. By that time there was a Jewish community in existence for a hundred and fifty years with its own synagogue and legal court in Esztergom, in the capital and commercial centre of Hungary. Jews at the time worked the land, practised trades and commerce along with other Hungarians. In other countries, 11th century crusaders murdered Jews on their way to the Holy Land, but King Coloman refused passage to these religious fanatics, instead allowing Jewish refugees from Austria, Bohemia and Moravia settle in Hungary. Despite papal decrees against the Jews in the early 13th century there is little evidence to their execution in Hungary, where Jews played an important role in finance and the management of the state. In 1251 they were declared servants of the Treasury. Jews participated in the founding of Buda and settled in all parts of the country unhampered until the fourteenth century, when religious intolerance hightened by a commercial downturn led to over-taxation, persecution, blood libels and expulsions. In 1421 the magistrate of Buda ordered the Jews to wear red caps, pointed hats and yellow markigs on their clothes. OTTOMAN AND PROTESTANT GOVERNANCE In some senses, the Turkish occupation of Hungary was a blessing for the impoverished Jewish community. The Ottoman rulers tended to tax heavily but evenly, while tolerating all religions, as did the Protestant Hungarians who ruled the Turkish satellite nation of Transylvania. Gabor Bethlen invited Sephardic Jews (1623) to settle on his lands. Buda flourished until the Habsburgs liberated Hungary, butchering many Jewish inhabitants. Hungary, during the eighteenth century, was marked by a slow socioeconomic reconstruction after a devastating series of conquests and civil wars. Once the Turks had been expelled and anti-Habsburg Magyar rebels suppressed, the government of Vienna proceeded with the domestic empire building. According to chronicler, Bishop Kolonics, following their withdrawal from Hungary, the Turks had left only the Greeks and the Jews inhabiting the country. While this was an exaggeration, Hungary had been reduced to less than 2.6 million souls by 1720. In the absence of a domestic bourgeoisie in Hungary, the Viennese Treasury, in order to attract settlers gave special trading privileges to foreign merchants, since the remaing native Magyars no longer had the skill to conduct trade. "It is well known," wrote Gyula Szekfu, "that a Hungarian did not stoop to trade in feudal Hungary. He yielded it to the aliens: Jews, Macedonians, Greeks, Armenians, Serbs." Jewish re-emigration to Hungary started at the end of the 17th century when refugees from Austria and Germany settled in western Hungary. During the first decade of the 18th century there were still only about 4,000 Jews in the country. When Charles III forbade young Jews to marry in Moravia, a new wave of Jewish immigrants left for Hungary where they were welcomed by the large landowners who needed merchants and tradesmen on their estates. While Germanic- Hungarian townsmen resented these non-Christian competitors, in the early part of the century the Germans were far more preoccupied with Greek competitors to cause much aggrivation to the Jews. This changed by the end of the century as the Greek populace assimilated into the main. All-the-while more Jewish refugees were arriving from Maria Theresia's newly conquered land, Galicia, increasing the Jewish population to 100,000 by 1800. THE MODERN PERIOD The French Enlightenment had its impact on the Habsburg Empire. The Habsburgs fancied themselves enlightened monarchs, the Hungarian nobles became modernising liberal-nationalists. In 1783 Joseph II partially emancipated the Jews. He let them pursue all trades and commerce, allowed them to settle in towns but asked them to acquire German names, speak German and go to schools. The Hungarian nobility had few objections. How could they modernise without a modern middle class? The German urban dwellers were guild oriented feudal type traders and merchants who opposed Magyarization. The Jews were modern businessmen able to market Hungarian agricultural products at home and abroad, able to raise capital for the building of railway lines and for the regulations of rivers. An unwritten aggreement existed between the Hungarian nobility and the Jewish elite during the first half of the nineteenth century, however, not without intermal oppossition. Religious Jews feared that emancipation would lead to assimilation, while many of the nobility and some bigoted Christians were far from enthusiastic about the developments. During the Hungarian War of Independence in 1848-49, German merchants and craftsmen who hated their Jewish competitors rioted and organised pogroms. Over 10,000 young Jewish men fought in Louis Kossuth's army. The revolution was put down but the Jews remained loyal Hungarians and the harbingers of the economic modernisation of Hungary. URBANIZATION Between 1830 and 1870 Hungary underwent rapid urbanisation universally in most major and minor urban centres of the country. Major population shifts occured when certain groups abandoned the towns and were replaced everywhere by prominent Jewish communities. The change was a rapid one, taking place in the 1850's and intensifying in the 1860's. There was no other group that participated in capitalist development to the extent of the Jews. The Jewish communities took a fundamental, if not exclusive role, in the general urbanisation of Hungary and, at the same time, provided the economy with the most important source of domestic capital accumulation, commerce. By 1867, when Hungarians began to direct their own political affairs again, they had in their midst a new middle class with whom they had a chance to build a modern economy. AVI The period from 1867 to the outbreak of the First World War was the golden age of Hungarian Jewry. Hard work in the establishing of the preconditions of industrialisation, experience in business, good international business connections, the proper use of new educational opportunities, assimilation, business alliance of the Jewish elite with the aristocracy as well as the constant and unconditional support of the liberal-nationalist political elite brought great dividends. Complete emancipation in 1968 opened all venues for Jews as long as they accepted the political leadership of the gentry and aided Magyar rule over the non-Magyar nationalities. Experience, education, capital and political protection provided an advantage for the Hungarian Jews that others could not overcome. By 1896 38 out of the 95 bank directors were Jewish. At the Stock Exchange 33 of the 39 members were Jewish. The Association of Industrialists had 49 members. 44 of them were Jewish. By 1910 In Budapest, Jews constituted 53% of all persons engaged in industry, 65% of those in trade and finance, 59% of all medical personnel and 62% of all individuals practising law. The Magyar nobility accepted the Jewish community massively in terms of intermarriage. A significant number, 346, of the Jewish elite was ennobled. The cultural elite and the scientific community was also heavily laden with Jewish talents and geniuses. They were in the forefront of the industrialisation and modernisation of Hungary. By the turn of the century the Hungarian economy was one of the fastest growing economies in Europe and Budapest became a world city where every fourth person was Jewish. Not all benefited from the economic boom. Some were left behind. The lower gentry and the country intelligentsia resented capitalism, the loss of their privileges and the advancement of Jews. Many Catholic priests opposed the emancipation of the Jews, Slovak peasants blamed the Hungarian-speaking Jews in their midst for their miseries. Thousands of Jews were left behind, too. So too were many poor Hungarians. Except for the Jews these groups began to look for scapegoats for their lack of success. In 1875 political anti-Semitism unfolded its flag in the National Assembly. At first it was laughed off by the Liberal-Nationalists but soon Jewish students were beaten up at a university and in 1882 a blood libel was pronounced at the village of Tiszaeszlar. These were no laughing matters. There were attacks on Jews all over the country. In Budapest the army had to be called out to prevent a pogrom. Sixteen candidates with an anti-Semitic programmes were sent to the National Assembly. But the Liberal-Nationalists were still in power. The Bishop of Kalocsa and the hero of 1848, Louis Kossuth, warned the nation against intolerance.Soon aftewards all was well again - until the next crisis. Nevertheless, many Jews felt that the writing was on the wall and, in any case, thousands of them remained poor despite the economic boom. In the four decades following the Ausgleich of 1867 one hundred thousand Jews left Hungary. One million stayed. Magyarization and assimilation continued. Jews were now active in all walks of life. But this was not what the aristocrats, the gentry and the gentroid middle classes had in mind when they made the deal with the Jewish elite in 1867. Not even the over-representation of Jewish youth in the army and the appointment of a Jewish Minister of War during the First World War moderated their growing antipathy. Some Jewish intellectuals were also disappointed and began opposing the anti-democratic, socially oppressive regime. These Jews joined the left and participated in the revolutions of 1918 and 1919. At the end of the war the Habsburg Empire collapsed and the liberal-nationalist leadership was replaced by the right-wing nationalist wing of the nobility. The war brutalized people. The defeat led to the truncation of Hungary. The people were angry. The angry and brutalized population rebelled. Then Red Terror was followed by White Terror. There was a need for scapegoats and the fact that the Red Terror was instigated by Bela Kun, a communist of Jewish origin, served as a good excuse for the murder of hundreds of Jews in 1919 and 1920. The old unwritten contract had been torn up. Hungarian Jews were no longer considered Jewish Hungarians. Only the Jewish community insisted on the old fiction. Years later the new leader of the country, Nicholas Horthy told Hitler, that he was an anti-Semite well before the leader of the German National Socialist movement appeared on the politice scene. In 1920 Horthy introduced the quota system at the universities, restricting Jewish presence to a maximum of six percent of all students enrolled. The pogroms, however, were stopped. The regime needed respectibility to obtain western loans and, after all, the economy was still dominated by Jewish and converted Jewish businessmen. But the refugee civil servants from the lost territories along wih the gentile middle classes were by now determined to carry out a change of the guard in business while the populist writers were resolute to do the same in the field of culture. Anti-Semitic agitation went unabated in the press for the next 25 years. In 1933 the Prime Minister of Hungary was among the first to greet Hitler on his appointment as chancellor. They were both anti-Semites, revisionists and interested in economic recovery. For a partnership, however, Hitler demanded the subordination of the Hungarian economy to GermanyUs, the free operation of the extreme right in Hungary and the introduction of anti-Jewish measures. The first two demands were gradually agreed to, albeit reluctantly. The last demand was fulfilled as a kind of a payment for territories returned. The first anti-Jewish law was passed in 1938 with the approval of parliament and the blessing of the churches. The guard was changing, and the payment was made for southern Slovakia. Next year the second anti-Jewish law was introduced, this time in Nurenberg style, based on racial criteria. This law was for Ruthenia and Transylvania, a few more jobs taken from Jews, and possibly to regain the support of the growing number of voters, especially the petty bourgeoisie and the industrial workers, who recently cast their votes for fascist parties. In 1941 the third anti-Jewish law was to be the last payment to Hitler and their domestic friends. By the middle of 1942 the fortunes of war were not favouring the Axis powers. This was instantly recognized by HorthyUs new prime minister, Nicholas Kallay. He was determined to save Hungary from both the Germans and the Russians. Kallay and Horthy refused all demands of the Nazis for the branding, confinement and deportation of the Jews in Hungary. They promised to expel them from Hungary only after Hitler won the war. Hungarian Jews were protected abroad and negotiations started with the Allies. The butchers of Ujvidek, the officers who ordered the murder of Serbs and Jews, were arrested. Foreign Jewish refugees were tolerated. With the start of the Slovakian deportations more and more Jews sought refuge in the relative safety of Hungary. Soon the total number of foreign Jews in Hungary reached 50,000. But well before March 15th, 1944, when Hitler ordered the occupation of Hungary, the Jews were persecuted. ------------------------------