History of the Jews in Hungary

The history of the Jews in Hungary dates back to at least the Kingdom of Hungary, with some records even predating the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary and it is even assumed that several sections of the heterogeneous Hungarian tribes practiced Judaism. Jewish officials served the king during the early 13th century reign of Andrew II. From the second part of the 13th century, the general religious tolerance decreased and Hungary's policies became similar to the treatment of the Jewish population in Western Europe.

The Ashkenazi of Hungary were fairly well integrated into Hungarian society by the time of the First World War. By the early 20th century, the community had grown to constitute 5% of Hungary's total population and 23% of the population of the capital, Budapest. Jews became prominent in science, the arts and business. By 1941, over 17% of Budapest's Jews had converted to the Catholic Church.

Anti-Jewish policies grew more repressive in the interwar period as Hungary's leaders, who remained committed to regaining the territories lost at the peace agreement (Treaty of Trianon) of 1920, chose to align themselves with the governments of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy – the international actors most likely to stand behind Hungary's claims.

The 2011 Hungary census data had 10,965 people (0.11%) who self-identified as religious Jews, of whom 10,553 (96.2%) declared themselves as ethnic Hungarian. mostly concentrated in Budapest. There are many active synagogues in Hungary, including the Dohány Street Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest synagogue in the world after Temple Emanu-El of New York.

Early history

Before 1095

It is not definitely known when Jews first settled in Hungary. According to tradition, King Decebalus (ruled Dacia 87–106 CE) permitted the Jews who aided him in his war against Rome to settle in his territory. Dacia included part of modern-day Hungary as well as Romania and Moldova and smaller areas of Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Serbia. Prisoners of the Jewish-Roman Wars may have been brought back by the victorious Roman legions normally stationed in Provincia Pannonia (Western Hungary). Marcus Aurelius ordered the transfer of some of his rebellious troops from Syria to Pannonia in 175 CE. These troops had been recruited partly in Antioch and Hemesa (now Homs), which still had a sizable Jewish population at that time. The Antiochian troops were transferred to Ulcisia Castra (today Szentendre), while the Hemesian troops settled in Intercisa (Dunaújváros). A Latin inscription, the epitaph of Septima Maria, discovered in Siklós (southern Hungary near Croatian border), clearly refers to her Jewishness ("Judaea"). Hungarian tribes settled the territory 650 years later. In the Hungarian language, the word for Jew is zsidó, which was adopted from one of the Slavic languages.

The first historical document relating to the Jews of Hungary is the letter written about 960 CE to King Joseph of the Khazars by Hasdai ibn Shaprut, the Jewish statesman of Córdoba, in which he says that the Slavic ambassadors promised to deliver the message to the King of Slavonia, who would hand the same to Jews living in "the country of Hungarin", who, in turn, would transmit it farther. About the same time Ibrahim ibn Jacob says that Jews went from Hungary to Prague for business purposes. Nothing is known concerning the Jews during the period of the grand princes, except that they lived in the country and engaged in commerce there. Although King Louis had initially shown tolerance to the Jews during the early years of his reign, following his conquest of Bosnia, during which he tried to force the local population to convert from the "heretic" Bogomil Christianity to Catholicism, King Louis attempted to impose conversion on Hungarian Jews as well. However, he failed in his attempt to convert them to Catholicism, and expelled them. They were received by Alexander the Good of Moldavia and Dano I of Wallachia, the latter who afforded them special commercial privileges. turned back after the battle, in 1541 it again invaded Hungary to help repel an Austrian attempt to take Buda. By the time the Ottoman Army arrived, the Austrians were defeated, but the Ottomans seized Buda by ruse.

While some of the Jews of Hungary were deported to Anatolia, others, who had fled at the approach of the sultan, sought refuge beyond the frontier or in the free royal towns of western Hungary. The widow of Louis II, the queen regent Maria, favored the enemies of the Jews. The citizens of Sopron (Ödenburg) began hostilities by expelling the Jews of that city, confiscating their property, and pillaging the vacated houses and the synagogue. The city of Pressburg (Bratislava) also received permission from the queen (9 October 1526) to expel the Jews living within its territory, because they had expressed their intention of fleeing before the Turks. The Jews left Pressburg on November 9. But the community of Judaizing Szekler Sabbatarians, which had existed in Transylvania since 1588, was persecuted and driven underground in 1638.

On 26 November 1572, King Maximilian II (1563–1576) intended to expel the Jews of Pressburg (Bratislava), stating that his edict would be recalled only in case they accepted Christianity. The Jews, however, remained in the city, without abandoning their religion. They were in constant conflict with the citizens. On 1 June 1582 the municipal council decreed that no one should harbor Jews, or even transact business with them. The feeling against the Jews in that part of the country not under Turkish rule is shown by the decree of the Diet of 1578, to the effect that Jews were to be taxed double the amount which was imposed upon other citizens.

The government could not, however, check the large immigration; for although strict laws were drafted in 1727, they could not be enforced owing to the good-will of the magnates toward the Jews. The counties either did not answer at all, or sent reports bespeaking mercy rather than persecution.

The Jews also had to pay heavier bridge-and ferry-tolls than the Christians; at Nagyszombat (Trnava) they had to pay three times the ordinary sum, namely, for the driver, for the vehicle, and for the animal drawing the same; and in three villages belonging to the same district they had to pay toll, although there was no toll-gate. Jews living on the estates of the nobles had to give their wives and children as pledges for arrears of taxes. In Upper Hungary they asked for the revocation of the toleration-tax imposed by the chamber of Zips County (Szepes, Spiš), on the ground that otherwise the Jews living there would have to pay two such taxes; and they asked also to be relieved from a similar tax paid to the Diet. Finally, they requested that Jewish artisans might be allowed to follow their trades in their homes undisturbed.

Toleration and oppression (1790–1847)

thumb|left|[[Neoclassical architecture was used for this Synagogue in Szeged.]]

The Jews of Hungary handed a petition, in which they boldly presented their claims to equality with other citizens, to King Leopold II (1790–1792) at Vienna on November 29, 1790. He sent it the following day to the chancelleries of Hungary and Moravia for their opinions. The question was brought before the estates of the country on December 2, and the Diet drafted a bill showing that it intended to protect the Jews. This decision created consternation among the enemies of the latter. Nagyszombat (Trnava) addressed a further memorandum to the estates (December 4) in which it demanded that the Diet should protect the city's privileges. The Diet decided in favor of the Jews, and its decision was laid before the king. bolstered by immigration due to the perception of royal tolerance.

In consequence of the petition of the Jews of Pest, the mover of which was Philip Jacobovics, superintendent of the Jewish hospital, the general assembly of the county of Pest drafted instructions for the delegates on June 10, 1839, to the effect that if the Jews would be willing to adopt the Magyar language they should be given equal rights with other Hungarian citizens.

At the sessions of the Diet subsequent to that of 1839–1840, as well as in various cities, a decided antipathy—at times active and at times merely passive—toward the Jews became manifest. In sharp contrast to this attitude was that of Baron József Eötvös, who published in 1840 in the Budapesti Szemle, the most prominent Hungarian review, a strong appeal for the emancipation of the Jews. This cause also found a friend in Count Charles Zay, the chief ecclesiastical inspector of the Hungarian Lutherans, who warmly advocated Jewish interests in 1846.

Brief emancipation and aftermath, 1849

Many Jews thought to pave the way for emancipation by a radical reform of their religious life. They thought this might ease their way, as legislators in the Diets and articles printed in the press suggested that the Jews should not receive equal civic rights until they reformed their religious practices. This reform had been first demanded in the session of 1839–1840. From this session onward, the press and general assemblies pushed for religious reform. Several counties instructed their representatives not to vote for the emancipation of the Jews until they desisted from practising the externals of their religion.

The decade of absolutism in Hungary (1849–1859) resulted in Jews establishing schools, most of which were in charge of trained teachers. Based on the Jewish school fund, the government organized model schools at Sátoraljaújhely, Temesvár (Timișoara), Pécs, and Pest. In Pest the Israelite State Teachers' Seminary was founded in 1859, the principals of which have included Abraham Lederer, Heinrich Deutsch, and József Bánóczi. 1.9% as Slovak, 0.8% as Romanian, and 0.2% as Ruthenian.

Austria-Hungary (1867–1918)

thumb|Romantic style Great Synagogue in Pécs, built by [[Neolog Judaism|Neolog community in 1869.]]

thumb|[[Szeged Synagogue]]

Family names

Most Jews did not have family names before 1783. Some family names were recorded for Jewish families:

1050: Jászkonti
1263: Farkas
1350: Hosszú
16th century: Cseh, Jakab, Gazdag, Fekete, Nagy, Kis
1780: Bárány, Csonka, Horpács, Jónap, Kohányi, Kossuth, Kosztolányi, Lengyel, Lőrincz, Lukács, Szarvas, Szabó, Varga.

Emperor Joseph II believed that Germanization could facilitate the centralization of his empire. Beginning in 1783, he ordered Jews to either choose or be given German family names by local committees. The actions were dependent on local conditions.

With the rise of Hungarian nationalism, the first wave of Magyarization of family names occurred between 1840 and 1849. After the Hungarian revolution, this process was stopped until 1867. After the Ausgleich, many Jews changed their family names from German to Hungarian.

In 1942 during World War II, when Hungary became allied with Germany, the Hungarian Defense Ministry was tasked with "race validation." Its officials complained that no Hungarian or German names were "safe," as Jews might have any name. They deemed Slavic names to be "safer", but the decree listed 58 Slavic-sounding names regularly held by Jews.

Population statistics

1890 / 1900 / 1910 census summaries

{| class="wikitable"

! 1890

! 1900

! 1910

| Total population of Hungary, without Croatia

| 15,162,988

| 16,838,255

| 18,264,533

| Emigration to the US in the previous decade, '00–'09

| 164,119

| 261,444

| 1,162,271

| Jewish population, again without Croatia

| 707,961

| 831,162

| 911,227

| Increase of the total population in the previous decade

| 10.28%

| 11.05%

| 8.47%

| (Emigration to the US in the previous decade, '00–'09) / population at previous census

| 1.19%

| 1.72%

| 6.90%

| Increase of the Jewish population in the previous decade

| 13.31%

| 17.40%

| 9.62%

| Jewish/Total

| 4.67%

| 4.94%

| 4.99%

Almost a quarter (22.35%) of the Jews of Hungary lived in Budapest in 1910. Some of the surviving large synagogues in Budapest include the following:

File:Dohany Street Synagogue Pest Hungary.jpg|Interior of Dohány Street Synagogue

File:Hegedus Gyula Utca Synagogue Pest Hungary.jpg|Hegedus Gyula Utca Synagogue

File:Rumbach St Synagogue Pest Hungary 2.jpg|Rumbach Street Synagogue

File:Vasvari Pal St Synagogue Pest Hungary.jpg|Vasvari Pal Street Synagogue

File:Kazinczy St Orthodox Synagogue Pest Hungary.jpg|Kazinczy Street Orthodox Synagogue

</gallery>

1910 census

According to the 1910 census, the number of Jews was 911,227, or 4.99% of the 18,264,533 people living in Hungary (In addition, there were 21,231 Jews in autonomous Croatia-Slavonia). This was a 28.7% increase in absolute terms since the 1890 census, and a 0.3% increase (from 4.7%) in the overall population of Hungary. At the time, the Jewish natural growth rate was higher than the Christian (although the difference had been narrowing), but so was the emigration rate, mainly to the United States. (The total emigration from Austria-Hungary to the U.S. in 1881–1912 was 3,688,000 people, including 324,000 Jews (8.78%). In the 1880–1913 period, a total of 2,019,000 people emigrated from Hungary to the US. Thus, an estimated 177,000 Jews emigrated from Hungary to the US during this total period.)

The schism in Hungarian Jewry saw the development of three religious denominations. Budapest, the South and West had a Neolog majority (related to modern US Conservative and Reform Judaism – the kipah and organ were both used in religious worship in the synagogues). Traditionalists ("Status quo ante") were the smallest of the three, mainly in the North. The East and North of the country were overwhelmingly Orthodox (more orthodox than "status quo ante"). In broad terms, Jews whose ancestors had come from Moravia in the 18th century tended to become Neolog at the split in 1869; those whose ancestors were from Galicia identified as Orthodox.

The net loss for Judaism due to conversions was relatively low before the end of the Great War: 240 people/year between 1896 and 1900, 404 between 1901 and 1910, and 435 people/year between 1911 and 1917. According to records, 10,530 people left Judaism, and 2,244 converted to Judaism between 1896 and 1917.

The majority (75.7%) of the Jewish population reported Hungarian as their primary language, so they were counted as ethnically Hungarian in the census. The Yiddish speakers were counted as ethnically German. According to this classification, 6.94% of the ethnic Hungarians and 11.63% of the Germans of Hungary were Jewish. In total, Hungarian speakers made up a 54.45% majority in Hungary; German speakers (including those who spoke Yiddish), made up 10.42% of the population.

Population of the capital, Budapest, was 23% Jewish (about the same ratio as in New York City). This community had established numerous religious and educational institutions. Pest was more Jewish than Buda. The prosperity, cultural, and financial prominence of Budapest's large Jewish community attested to its successful integration. Indeed, commentators opined in 1911 that Hungary had "absorbed" their Jews and "it has come to pass that there is no anti-Semitism in Budapest, although the Hebrew element is proportionately much larger (21% as compared to 9%) than it is in Vienna, the Mecca of the Jew-baiter" At that time Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna referred to the capital as Judapest, alluding to the high proportion of Jews. Budapest had the second largest Jewish population among the world's cities, after New York.

Before the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Jews in Hungary were prevented from owning land, which resulted in many going into business. In 1910, 60.96% of merchants, 58.11% of the book printers, 41.75% of the innkeepers, 24.42% of the bakers, 24.07% of the butchers, 21.04% of the tailors, and 8.90% of the shoemakers of Hungary were Jewish. 48.5% of the physicians in the country (2701 out of 5565) were Jewish. In the 1893–1913 period, Jews made up roughly 20% of the students of the gimnázium high school (where classical subjects were emphasized) students and 37% of reál high school (where practical subjects were emphasized).

The strong class divisions of Hungary were represented in the Jewish population. About 3.1% of the Jews belonged to the "large employer" and "agricultural landowner of more than 100 hold, i.e. 57 hectares" class, 3.2% to the "small (<100 hold) landholder" class, 34.4% to the "working", i.e. wage-earning employee class, while 59.3% belonged to the self-employed or salary-earning middle class.

Stephen Roth writes, "Hungarian Jews were opposed to Zionism because they hoped that somehow they could achieve equality with other Hungarian citizens, not just in law but in fact, and that they could be integrated into the country as Hungarian Israelites. The word 'Israelite' () denoted only religious affiliation and was free from the ethnic or national connotations usually attached to the term 'Jew'. Hungarian Jews attained remarkable achievements in business, culture and less frequently even in politics. By 1910 about 900,000 religious Jews made up approximately 5% of the population of Hungary and about 23% of Budapest's citizenry. Jews accounted for 54% of commercial business owners, 85% of financial institution directors and owners in banking, and 62% of all employees in commerce, 20% of all general grammar school students, and 37% of all commercial scientific grammar school students, 31.9% of all engineering students, and 34.1% of all students in human faculties of the universities. Religious Jews were accounted for 48.5% of all physicians, and 49.4% of all lawyers/jurists in Hungary. During the cabinet of pm. István Tisza three Jewish men were appointed as ministers. The first was Samu Hazai (Minister of War), János Harkányi (Minister of Trade) and János Teleszky (Minister of Finance). By 1910 22% of the Members of Parliament were Jews (45% in the governing National Party of Work).

While the Jewish population of the lands of the Dual Monarchy was about five percent, Jews made up nearly eighteen percent of the reserve officer corps. Thanks to the modernity of the constitution and to the benevolence of emperor Franz Joseph, the Austrian Jews came to regard the era of Austria-Hungary as a golden era of their history.

In absolute numbers, Budapest had by far the largest number of Jews (203,000), followed by Nagyvárad (Oradea) with 15,000, Újpest and Miskolc with about 10,000 each, Máramarossziget (Sighetu Marmaţiei), Munkács (Mukachevo), Pozsony (Bratislava), Debrecen with 8,000, Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca), Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare), Temesvár (Timișoara), Kassa (Košice) with about 7,000 each.

Interwar period (1918–1939)

Population

thumb|right|[[Hungarians|Magyar Jewish tzedaka box, possibly for donations to the Keren Kayemet/JNF.]]Using data from the 1910 census, 51.7% of the Hungarian Jews lived in territories that stayed inside the "small" Hungary after 1921, 25.5% (232,000) lived in territories that later became part of Czechoslovakia, 19.5% (178,000) became part of Romania, 2.6% (23,000) became part of Yugoslavia, 0.5% (5,000) became part of Austria and finally 0.2% (2,000) lived in Fiume, which became part of Italy after 1924. According to the censuses of 1930–1931, 238,460/192,833/about 22,000 Jews lived in parts of Czechoslovakia/Romania/Yugoslavia formerly belonging to Hungary, which means that the overall number of people declaring themselves Jewish remained unchanged in the Carpathian basin between 1910 and 1930 [a decrease of 26,000 in the post-WWI Hungary, a 6,000 increase in Czechoslovakia and a 15,000 increase in Romania].

According to the census of December 1920 in the "small" Hungary, the percentage of Jews increased in the preceding decade in Sátoraljaújhely (to 30.4%), Budapest (23.2%), Újpest (20.0%), Nyíregyháza (11.7%), Debrecen (9.9%), Pécs (9.0%), Sopron (7.5%), Makó (6.4%), Rákospalota (6.1%), Kispest (5.6%) and Békéscsaba (to 5.6%), while decreased in the other 27 towns with more than 20 thousand inhabitants. Overall, 31.1% of the Jewish population lived in villages and towns with less than 20 thousand inhabitants.

In 1920, 46.3% of the medical doctors, 41.2% of the veterinarians, 21.4% of the pharmacists of Hungary were Jewish, as well as 34.3% of the journalists, 24.5% of performers of music, 22.7% of the theater actors, 16.8% of the painters and sculptors. Among the owners of land of more than 1000 hold, i.e. 570 hectares, 19.6% were Jewish. Among the 2739 factories in Hungary, 40.5% had a Jewish owner.

! 1869

! 1880

! 1890

! 1900

! 1910

! 1920

! 1930

! 1941

! 1949

! 2001 (Greater)

! 2011 (Greater)

| Total

| 178,062

| 270,476

| 355,682

| 486,671

| 703,448

| 880,371

| 928,996

| 1,006,184

| 1,164,963

| 1,057,912

| 1,777,921

| 1,729,040

| Jewish

| 26,887 (15.1%)

| 44,890 (16.6%)

| 70,227 (19.7%)

| 102,377 (21.0%)

| 166,198 (23.6%)o

| 203,687 (23.1%)

| 215,512 (23.2%)

| 204,371 (20.3%)

| 184,453 (15.8%)

| 96,537 (9.1%)

| 9,468 (0.5%)

| 7,925 (0.5%)

In 1926, the districts I, II, III of Buda were Jewish 8%,11%,10% respectively. The 19,000 Jews of Buda constituted about 9.3% of both the total population of Buda and the entire Jewish population of Budapest. On the left (Pest) side of the Danube, downtown Pest (Belváros, district IV then) was 18% Jewish. Districts V (31%), VI (28%), VII (36%), VIII (22%), IX (13%) had large Jewish populations, while district X had 6%. The four Neolog communities of Budapest (I-II, III, IV-IX, X) had a total of 66,300 members paying their dues, while the Orthodox community had about 7,000 members paying religious taxes.

In the countryside of the post-WWI Hungary, the Orthodox had a slight edge (about 49%) over the Neolog (46%). Budapest and countryside combined, 65.72% of the 444,567 Jews belonged to Neolog communities, 5.03% to status quo ante, while 29.25% were Orthodox in 1930. The Jewish communities suffered a 5.6% decline in the 1910–1930 period, on the territory of the "small" Hungary, due to emigration and conversion.

The Jews of Hungary were fairly well integrated into Hungarian society by the time of the First World War. Class distinction was very significant in Hungary in general, and among the Jewish population in particular. Rich bankers, factory owners, lower middle class artisans and poor factory workers did not mingle easily. In 1926, there were 50,761 Jewish families living in Budapest. Of that number, 65% lived in apartments that contained one or two rooms, 30% had three or four rooms, while 5% lived in apartments with more than 4 rooms.

{| class="wikitable"

! # of households

! max 1 room

! 2 rooms

! 3 rooms

! 4 rooms

! 5 rooms

! min 6 rooms

| Jewish= 50,761

| 25.4%

| 39.6%

| 21.2%

| 9.2%

| 3.1%

| 1.5%

| Christian = 159,113

| 63.3%

| 22.1%

| 8.4%

| 3.8%

| 1.4%

| 1.0%

Education. The following chart illustrates the effect of the 1920 "numerus clausus" Law on the percentage of Jewish university students at two Budapest Universities.

{| class="wikitable"

! Jewish students

! 1913

! 1925 Spring

| Budapest University of Sciences

| 34.1%

| 7.7%

| Budapest University of Technology and Economics

| 31.9%

| 8.8%

With the defeat and dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary would be forced by the Allies to adhere to the Treaty of Trianon, which ceded to neighboring nations fully two-thirds of Hungary's imperial territory and two-thirds of its population, including a third of its ethnically Magyar citizens and many Jews. These losses provoked deep anger and hostility in the remaining Hungarian population.

The first post-war government was led by Mihály Károlyi, and was the first modern effort at liberal democratic government in Hungary. But it was cut short in a spasm of communist revolution, which would have serious implications for the manner in which Hungarian Jews were viewed by their fellow-countrymen.

In March 1919, Communist and Social Democrat members of a coalition government ousted Karolyi; soon after (March 21), the Communists were to take power as their Social Democrat colleagues were willing neither to accept nor to refuse the Vix Note to cede a significant part of the Great Plains to Romania and the communists took control of Hungary's governing institutions. While popular at first among Budapest's progressive elite and proletariat, the so-called Hungarian Soviet Republic fared poorly in almost all of its aims, particularly its efforts to regain territories occupied by Slovakia (although achieving some transitional success here) and Romania. All the less palatable excesses of Communist uprisings were in evidence during these months, particularly the formation of squads of brutal young men practicing what they called "revolutionary terror" to intimidate and suppress dissident views. All but the one Sándor Garbai, the revolution's leaders, including Béla Kun, Tibor Szamuely, and Jenő Landler – were of Jewish ancestry. As in other countries where Communism was viewed as an immediate threat, the presence of ethnic Jews in positions of revolutionary leadership helped foster the notion of a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. This series of pogroms directed at Jews, progressives, peasants and others is known as the White Terror. Horthy's personal role in these reprisals is still subject of debate (in his memoirs he refused to disavow the violence, saying that "only an iron broom" could have swept the country clean). Tallying the numbers of victims of the different terror campaigns in this period is still a matter of some political dispute but the White Terror is generally considered to have claimed more lives than the repressions of the Kun regime by an order of magnitude, thousands vs hundreds.

Interwar years

thumb|upright|left|A Jewish Hungarian country girl around 1930.

Jews represented one-fourth of all university students and 43% percent at Budapest Technological University. In 1920, 60 percent of Hungarian doctors, 51 percent of lawyers, 39 percent of all privately employed engineers and chemists, 34 percent of editors and journalists, and 29 percent of musicians identified themselves as Jews by religion.

Resentment of this Jewish trend of success was widespread: Admiral Horthy himself declared that he was "an anti-Semite", and remarked in a letter to one of his prime ministers, "I have considered it intolerable that here in Hungary everything, every factory, bank, large fortune, business, theater, press, commerce, etc. should be in Jewish hands, and that the Jew should be the image reflected of Hungary, especially abroad."

Unfortunately for Jews they had also become, by a quirk of history, the most visible minority remaining in Hungary (besides ethnic Germans and Gypsies); the other large "non-Hungarian" populations (including Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, and Romanians, among others) had been abruptly excised from the Hungarian population by the territorial losses at Trianon. That and the highly visible role of Jews in the economy, the media and the professions, as well as in the leadership of the 1919 Communist dictatorship left Hungary's Jews as an ethnically separate group which could serve as a scapegoat for the nation's ills.

Anti-Jewish measures

Anti-Jewish Laws (1938–1942)

Starting in 1938, Hungary under Miklós Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures in emulation of Germany's Nuremberg Laws.

The "First Jewish Law" (May 29, 1938) restricted the number of Jews in each commercial enterprise, in the press, among physicians, engineers and lawyers to twenty percent.
The "Second Jewish Law" (May 5, 1939), for the first time, defined Jews racially: individuals with two, three or four Jewish-born grandparents were declared Jewish.
The "Third Jewish Law" (August 8, 1941) prohibited intermarriage and penalized sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jews.
The "Fourth Jewish Law" (September 6, 1942) banned Jews from owning or purchasing land.

Their employment in government at any level was forbidden, they could not be editors at newspapers, their numbers were restricted to six per cent among theater and movie actors, physicians, lawyers and engineers. Private companies were forbidden to employ more than 12% Jews. 250,000 Hungarian Jews lost their income. Most of them lost their right to vote as well: before the second Jewish law, about 31% of the Jewish population of Borsod county (Miskolc excluded), 2496 people had this right. At the next elections, less than a month after this new anti-Jewish legislation, only 38 privileged Jews could vote.

In the elections of May 28–29, Nazi and Arrow Cross (Nyilas) parties received one quarter of the votes and 52 out of 262 seats. Their support was even larger, usually between 1/3 and 1/2 of the votes, where they were on the ballot at all, since

they were not listed in large parts of the country For instance, the support for Nazi parties was above 43% in the election districts of Zala, Győr-Moson, Budapest surroundings, Central and Northern Pest-Pilis, and above 36% in Veszprém, Vas, Szabolcs-Ung, Sopron, Nógrád-Hont, Jász-Nagykun, Southern Pest town and Buda town. The Nazi parties were not on the ballot mainly in the Eastern third of the country and in Somogy, Baranya, Tolna, Fejér. Their smallest support was in Békés county (15%), Pécs town (19%), Szeged town (22%) and in Northern Pest town (27%)

January 1941 census

According to Magyarország történelmi kronológiája, the census of January 31, 1941, found that 6.2% of the population of 13,643,621, i.e. 846,000 people, were considered Jewish according to the racial laws of that time. In addition, in April 1941, Hungary annexed the Bácska (Bačka), the Muraköz (Međimurje County) and Muravidék (Prekmurje) regions from the occupied Yugoslavia, with 1,025,508 people including 15,000 Jews (data are from October 1941). This means that inside the May 1941 borders of Hungary, there were 861,000 people (or 5.87%) who were at least half Jewish, and therefore were considered Jewish. From this number, 725,000 (or 4.94%) were Jewish in accordance with Jewish religious law (4.30% in pre-1938 Hungary, 7.15% in the territories annexed from Czechoslovakia and Romania in 1938–1940 and 1.38% in the territories annexed from Yugoslavia in 1941).

{| class="wikitable"

! year of annexation; from which country

! Region

! Jewish by religion in 1941

! Jewish by law but not by confessed religion

! Jewish

| pre-1938; Hungary || Budapest || 185,000 || 36,000–72,000 || 221,000–257,000

| pre-1938; Hungary || countryside || 216,000 || 16,000–38,000 || 232,000–254,000

| 1938; Czechoslovakia || southern Slovakia || 39,000 || 1,000–10,000 || 40,000–49,000

| 1938; Czechoslovakia || lower Carpatho-Ruthenia (lower Ung and Bereg counties) || 39,000 || – || 39,000

| 1939; Czechoslovakia || upper Carpatho-Ruthenia (ex-Czech part only) || 81,000 || – || 81,000

| 1940; Romania || Northern Transylvania || 151,000 || 3,000–15,000 || 154,000–166,000

| 1941; Yugoslavia || Bácska and other territories || 14,000 || 1,000 || 15,000

| Total || || 725,000 || 57,000–136,000 || 782,000–861,000

The following is from another source, a statistical summary written in the beginning of 1944 and referring to the 1941 census data:

{| class="wikitable"

! Region by year of annexation

! Yiddish+Hebrew by mother tongue in 1941

! Jewish by ethnicity in 1941

! Jewish by religion in 1941

! Jewish by religion in 1930

! Jewish by religion in 1910

| pre-1938 || 1,357+222 || 9,764 (0.10%) || 400,980 (4.30%) || 444,567 (5.12%) || 471,378 (6.19%)

| 1938 || 10,735+544 || 14,286 (1.35%) || 77,700 (7.32%) || 78,190 (7.56%) || 66,845 (7.69%)

| 1939 || 68,643+1,987 || 64,191 (9.25%) || 80,960 (11.67%) || 71,782 (12.11%) || 63,324 (12.75%)

| 1940 || 45,492+2,960 || 47,357 (1.84%) || 151,125 (5.86%) || 148,288 (6.20%) || 134,225 (6.14%)

| 1941 || 338+47 || 3,857 (0.37%) || 14,242 (1.38%) || ? || 17,642 (1.87%)

| Total || 126,565+5,760|| 139,455 (0.95%) || 725,007 (4.94%) || || 753,415 (6.22%)

The question about Jewish grandparents was added late to the questionnaires at the census of 1941, when some of the sheets had already been printed. In addition, a lot of Christians of Jewish ancestry did not answer this question truthfully. So while about 62,000 Christians admitted some Jewish ancestry (including 38,000 in Budapest), their actual number was estimated at least 100,000:

{| class="wikitable"

! Religion

! 4 Jewish grandparents

! 3

! 2

! 1

| Jewish in Budapest || 175,651 || 448 || 7,655 || 699

| Christian in Budapest || 26,120 || 616 || 9,238 || 1,957

| Jewish in the entire country || 708,419 || 1,639 || 15,011 || 1,938

| Christian in the entire country || 38,574 || 888 || 18,015 || 4,071

First massacres

It is not clear whether the 10,000–20,000 Jewish refugees (from Poland and elsewhere) were counted in the January 1941 census. They and anyone who could not prove legal residency since 1850, about 20,000 people, were deported to southern Poland and either abandoned there or were handed over to the Germans between July 15 and August 12, 1941. In practice, the Hungarians deported many people whose families had lived in the area for generations. In some cases, applications for residency permits were allowed to pile up without action by Hungarian officials until after the deportations had been carried out. The vast majority of those deported were massacred in Kameniec-Podolsk (Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre) at the end of August.

In the massacres of Újvidék (Novi Sad) and villages nearby, 2,550–2,850 Serbs, 700–1,250 Jews and 60–130 others were murdered by the Hungarian Army and "Csendőrség" (Gendarmerie) in January 1942. Those responsible, Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner, Márton Zöldy, József Grassy, László Deák and others were later tried in Budapest during December 1943 and were sentenced, but some of them escaped to Germany.

During the war, Jews were called up to serve in unarmed "labour service" (munkaszolgálat) units which were used to repair bombed railroads, build airports or to clean up minefields at the front barehanded. Approximately 42,000 Jewish labour service troops were killed at the Soviet front in 1942–43, of which about 40% perished in Soviet POW camps. Many died as a result of harsh conditions on the Eastern Front and cruel treatment by their Hungarian sergeants and officers. Another 4,000 forced laborers died in the copper mine of Bor, Serbia. Nevertheless, Miklós Kállay, Prime Minister from March 9, 1942, and Regent Horthy resisted German pressure and refused to allow the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the German extermination camps in occupied Poland. This "anomalous" situation lasted until March 19, 1944, when German troops occupied Hungary and forced Horthy to oust Kállay.

The Holocaust

Germany invades Hungary

thumb|upright|Adolf Eichmann in 1942

On March 18, 1944, Adolf Hitler summoned Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy to a conference in Austria, where he demanded greater acquiescence from the Hungarian state. Horthy resisted, but his efforts were fruitless: German tanks rolled into Budapest while he attended the conference. On March 23, the government of Döme Sztójay was installed. Among his other first moves, Sztójay legalised the Arrow Cross Party, which quickly began organising. During the four days interregnum following the German occupation, the Ministry of the Interior was put in the hands of László Endre and László Baky, right-wing politicians well known for their hostility to Jews. Their boss, Andor Jaross, was another committed antisemite. Immediately after the occupation, the German and Hungarian authorities established Judenräte throughout Hungary.

A few days later, Ruthenia, Northern Transylvania, and the border region with Croatia and Serbia were placed under military command. On April 9, Prime Minister Sztójay and the Germans obliged Hungary to place at the disposal of the Reich 300,000 Jewish laborers. Five days later, on April 14, Endre, Baky, and Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of organising the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the German Reich, decided to deport all the Jews of Hungary.

Although in 1943, the BBC Polish Service broadcast about the exterminations, the BBC Hungarian Service did not discuss the Jews. A 1942 memo for the BBC Hungarian Service, written by Carlile Macartney, a British Foreign Office adviser on Hungary, said: "We shouldn't mention the Jews at all." Macartney believed that most Hungarians were antisemitic and that mentioning the Jews would alienate much of the population. Most of the Jews did not believe that the Holocaust might happen in Hungary: "This might be happening in Galicia to Polish Jews, but this can't happen in our very cultivated Hungarian state." According to Yehuda Bauer, when the deportations to Auschwitz began in May 1944, the Zionist youth movements organized smuggling of Hungarian Jews into Romania. Around 4,000 Hungarian Jews were smuggled into Romania, including the smugglers and those who paid them on the border. The Romanians agreed to let those Jews in, despite heavy German pressure. However, Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany from 1940 to 1944. Despite Romania not being under German occupation, during the dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, 380,000–400,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust in Romanian-controlled areas such as Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria.

Deportation to Auschwitz

thumb|upright=1.1|Hungarian Jews on the Judenrampe (Jewish ramp) at [[Auschwitz II-Birkenau after disembarking from the transport trains. To be sent to the right meant labor; to the left the gas chambers. Photo from the Auschwitz Album (May/June 1944)]]

thumb|upright=1.1|Hungarian Jews from [[Carpatho-Ruthenia arriving at Auschwitz]]

SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, whose duties included supervising the extermination of Jews, set up his staff in the Majestic Hotel and proceeded rapidly in rounding up Jews from the Hungarian provinces outside Budapest and its suburbs. The Yellow Star and Ghettoization laws, and deportation, were accomplished in less than 8 weeks, with the enthusiastic help of the Hungarian authorities, particularly the gendarmerie (csendőrség). The plan was to use 45 cattle cars per train, 4 trains a day, to deport 12,000 Jews to Auschwitz every day from the countryside, starting in mid-May; this was to be followed by the deportation of Jews of Budapest from about July 15.

Just before the deportations began, the Vrba-Wetzler Report reached the Allied officials. Details from the report were broadcast by the BBC on June 15, and printed in The New York Times on June 20. World leaders, including Pope Pius XII (June 25), President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 26, and King Gustaf V of Sweden on June 30, subsequently pleaded with Horthy to use his influence to stop the deportations. Roosevelt specifically threatened military retaliation if the transports were not ceased. On July 7, Horthy, at last, ordered the transports halted. According to historian Péter Sipos, the Hungarian government had already known about the Jewish genocide since 1943. Horthy's son and daughter-in-law both received copies of the Vrba-Wetzler report in early May before mass deportations began. The Vrba-Wetzler Report is believed to have been passed to Hungarian Zionist leader Rudolf Kastner no later than April 28, 1944; however, Kastner did not make it public.

The first transports to Auschwitz began in early May 1944, and continued, even as Soviet troops approached. The Hungarian government was solely in charge of the Jews' transportation up to the northern border. The Hungarian commander of the Kassa (Košice) railroad station meticulously recorded the trains heading to Auschwitz with their place of departure and the number of people inside them. The first train went through Kassa on May 14. On a typical day, there were three or four trains, with between 3,000 and 4,000 people on each train, for a total of approximately 12,000 Jews delivered to the extermination facilities each day. There were 109 trains during these 33 days through June 16. (There were days when there were as many as six trains.) Between June 25 and 29, there were 10 trains, then an additional 18 trains on July 5–9. The 138th recorded train (with the 400,426th victim) heading to Auschwitz via Kassa was on July 20. Another 10 trains were sent to Auschwitz via other routes (24,000+ people) (the first two left Budapest and Topolya on April 29, and arrived at Auschwitz on May 2), while 7 trains with 20,787 people went to Strasshof between June 25 and 28 (2 each from Debrecen, Szeged, and Baja; 1 from Szolnok). The unique Kastner train left for Bergen-Belsen with 1,685 people on June 30.

By July 9, 1944, 437,402 Jews had been deported, according to Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary Edmund Veesenmayer's official German reports. One hundred and forty-seven trains were sent to Auschwitz, where most of the deportees were murdered on arrival. Because the crematoria could not cope with the corpses, special pits were dug near them, where bodies were burned. It has been estimated that one-third of the murdered victims at Auschwitz were Hungarian.

For most of this period, 12,000 Jews were delivered to Auschwitz in a typical day, among them the future writer and Nobel Prize-winner Elie Wiesel, at age 15. Photographs taken at Auschwitz were found after the war showing the arrival of Jews from Hungary at the camp.

The devotion to the cause of the "final solution" of the Hungarian gendarmes surprised even Eichmann himself, who supervised the operation with only twenty officers and a staff of 100, which included drivers, cooks, etc.

Efforts to rescue Jews

thumb|Captured Jewish women in Wesselényi Street, Budapest, October 20–22, 1944

thumb|[[Shoes on the Danube Bank|Holocaust Shoe Memorial beside the Danube River in Budapest. The shoes represent Hungarian Jews who lost their lives in January 1945.]]

Very few Catholic or Protestant clergy members raised their voices against sending the Jews to their death. (Notable was Bishop Áron Márton's sermon in Kolozsvár on May 18). The Catholic Primate of Hungary, Serédi decided not to issue a pastoral letter condemning the deportation of the Jews.

On June 14, the Mayor of Budapest, Ákos Farkas, designated about 1,950 (5%) yellow-star houses where every Jew (20%+) had to move together. The authorities thought that the Allies would not bomb Budapest because the "starred" houses were scattered around the town. On June 15, American bombers dropped leaflets over Budapest threatening punishment for those involved in the deportation of Hungarian Jews. At the end of June, Pope Pius XII, Swedish King Gustav VI, and, in strong terms, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged for an immediate halt to the deportations. Horthy ordered the suspension of all deportations on July 6. Nonetheless, another 45,000 Jews were deported from the Trans-Danubian region and the outskirts of Budapest to Auschwitz after this day. "After the failed attempt on Hitler's life, the Germans backed off from pressing Horthy's regime to continue further, large-scale deportations, although some smaller groups continued to be deported by train. In late August, Horthy refused Eichmann's request to restart the deportations. Himmler ordered Eichmann to leave Budapest."

The Sztójay government rescheduled the date of deportation of the Jews of Budapest to Auschwitz to August 27. But the Romanians switched sides on August 23, 1944, causing huge problems for the German military. Himmler ordered the cancellation of further deportations from Hungary on August 25, in return for nothing more than Saly Mayer’s promise to see whether the Germans' demands would be met. Horthy finally dismissed Prime Minister Sztójay on August 29, the same day the Slovak National uprising against the Nazis started.

Despite the change of government, Hungarian troops occupied parts of Southern Transylvania, Romania, and massacred hundreds of Jews in Kissármás (Sărmașu; Sărmașu massacre), Marosludas (Luduș; Luduș massacre) and other places starting September 4.

thumb|A Memorial plaque for [[Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat who saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.]]

Arrow Cross rule

After the Nyilaskeresztes (Arrow Cross) coup d'état on October 15, tens of thousands of Jews of Budapest were sent on foot to the Austrian border in death marches, most forced laborers under Hungarian Army command so far were deported (for instance to Bergen-Belsen), and two ghettos were set up in Budapest. The small "international ghetto" consisted of several "starred" houses under the protection of neutral powers in the Újlipótváros district. Switzerland was allowed to issue 7,800 Schutzpasses, Sweden 4,500, and the Vatican, Portugal, and Spain 3,300 combined. The big Budapest ghetto was set up and walled in the Erzsébetváros part of Budapest on November 29. Nyilas raids and mass executions occurred in both ghettos regularly. In addition, in the two months between November 1944 and February 1945, the Nyilas shot 10,000–15,000 Jews on the banks of the Danube. Soviet troops liberated the big Budapest ghetto on January 18, 1945. On the Buda side of the town, the encircled Nyilas continued their murders until the Soviets took Buda on February 13.

The names of some diplomats, Raoul Wallenberg, Carl Lutz, Ángel Sanz Briz, Giorgio Perlasca, Carlos Sampaio Garrido, and Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho deserve mentioning, as well as some members of the army and police who saved people (Pál Szalai, Károly Szabó, and other officers who took Jews out from camps with fake papers), an Interior Ministry official (Béla Horváth) and some church institutions and personalities. Rudolf Kastner deserves special attention because of his enduring negotiations with Adolf Eichmann and Kurt Becher to prevent deportations to Auschwitz, succeeding only minimally by sending Jews to still horrific labor battalions in Austria and ultimately saving 1,680 Jews in Kastner's train.

Number of survivors

thumb|Jewish wedding at the Hegedus Gyula Synagogue in Budapest in 1946

An estimated 119,000 Jewish people were liberated in Budapest (25,000 in the small "international" ghetto, 69,000 in the big ghetto, and 25,000 hiding with false papers) and 20,000 forced laborers in the countryside. Almost all the surviving deportees returned between May and December 1945, at least to check out the fate of their families. Their number was 116,000. It is estimated that from an original population of 861,000 people considered Jewish inside the borders of 1941–1944, about 255,000 survived. This gives a 29.6 percent survival rate. According to another calculation, Hungary's Jewish population at the time of the German invasion was 800,000, of which 365,000 survived.

Communist rule

At the end of World War II, only 140,000 Jews remained in Hungary, down from 750,000 in 1941. The difficult economic situation coupled with the lingering antisemitic attitude of the population prompted a wave of migration. Between 1945 and 1949, 40,000–50,000 Jews left Hungary for Israel (30,000–35,000) and Western countries (15,000–20,000). Between 1948 and 1951 14,301 Hungarian Jews immigrated to Israel, and after 1951 exit visas became increasingly expensive and restrictive. People of Jewish origin dominated the post-war Communist regime until 1952–53 when many were removed in a series of purges. During its first years, the regime's top membership and secret police were almost entirely Jewish, albeit naturally anti-religious. The Hungarian Jewish population declined both because of emigration and because of high levels of assimilation and intermarriage and low birth rates. The Jews with the strongest Jewish identities were typically the ones who emigrated. By 1967, only about 80,000–90,000 Jews (including non-religious Jews) remained in the country, with the number dropping further before the country's Communist regime collapsed in 1989.

Under the milder communist regime of János Kádár (ruled 1957–1988) leftist Jewish intelligentsia remained an important and vocal part of Hungarian art and sciences. Diplomatic relations with Israel were severed in 1967 following the Six-Day War, but it was not followed by antisemitic campaigns as in Poland or the Soviet Union.

From the 1990s

thumb|left|upright=1.2|The weeping willow monument in Budapest to Hungarian victims of the Holocaust. Each leaf is inscribed with the family name of one of the victims.

Hungary's Jewish population (within its current borders) decreased from nearly half a million after World War I and kept declining between 1920 and 2010, significantly between 1939 and 1945 (World War II and the Holocaust), and further between 1951 and 1960 (the Hungarian Revolution of 1956). Despite the decline, in 2010 Hungary had the largest Jewish population in Eastern Europe outside the former Soviet Union.

In the aftermath of the Cold War and during its democratic transition, Hungary played a pivotal role in supporting the emigration of Soviet Jews. From 1989 to 1991, more than 160,000 Soviet Jewish refugees passed through Hungary en route to Israel. This large-scale transit was made possible by a collaboration between the Jewish Agency and Malév Hungarian Airlines, which operated a makeshift air corridor from Moscow to Tel Aviv via Budapest. Hungary’s political elites — both outgoing Communists and emerging democrats — supported this operation as part of the country's realignment with Western democratic norms and its renewed relationship with Israel. Despite facing terrorist threats and domestic political tensions, Hungary maintained its role as a key transit hub during this period.

After the fall of communism, Hungary had two prime ministers of partial Jewish origin, József Antall (1990–1993) and Gyula Horn (1994–1998)

In April 1997, the Hungarian parliament passed a Jewish compensation act that returns property stolen from Jewish victims during the Nazi and Communist eras. Under this law, property and monetary payment were given back to the Jewish public heritage foundation and to Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Critics have asserted that the sums represent nothing more than a symbolic gesture. According to Randolph L. Braham: "The overshadowing of the Holocaust by a politically guided preoccupation with the horrors of the Communist era has led, among other things, to giving priority to the compensation of the victims of Communism over those of Nazism. To add insult to injury, an indeterminate number of the Christian victims who were compensated for properties nationalized by the Communist regime had, in fact, 'legally' or fraudulently acquired them from Jews during the Nazi era. Compounding this virtual obscenity, the government of Viktor Orbán sought in late 1998 to ease the collective conscience of the nation by offering to compensate survivors by paying approximately $150 for each member of their particular immediate families, assuming that they can prove that their loved ones were in fact victims of the Holocaust."

Notes

References

External links

Jewish Virtual Library articles on Hungary
Documents on the Holocaust in Hungary
Magyar Zsidó Lexikon
Heroes of the Hungarian Holocaust
Interview with István Domonkos, son of Miksa Domonkos, who died after the show trial preparations (Hungarian)
Chabad-Lubavitch Centers in Hungary
Hungarian Jewish Homepage
Jewish Budapest Map
Jewish Heritage Walking Tours in Budapest

History of the Jews in Hungary

Early history

Before 1095

Toleration and oppression (1790–1847)

Brief emancipation and aftermath, 1849

Austria-Hungary (1867–1918)

Family names

Population statistics

1890 / 1900 / 1910 census summaries

1910 census

Interwar period (1918–1939)

Population

Interwar years

Anti-Jewish measures

Anti-Jewish Laws (1938–1942)

January 1941 census

First massacres

The Holocaust

Germany invades Hungary

Deportation to Auschwitz

Efforts to rescue Jews

Arrow Cross rule

Number of survivors

Communist rule

From the 1990s

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links