Geschichte der Juden in Ungarn

Juden haben in Ungarn eine lange Geschichte, einige Aufzeichnungen waren sogar vor der ungarischen Eroberung des Karpatenbeckens im Jahr 895 um 600 Jahre vor Christus. Schriftliche Quellen belegen, dass jüdische Gemeinden im mittelalterlichen Königreich Ungarn lebten, und es wird sogar davon ausgegangen, dass mehrere Teile der ungarischen ungarischen Stämme Judentum praktizierten. Jüdische Beamte dienten dem König während der Regierungszeit von Andreas II. Im 13. Jahrhundert. Ab der zweiten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts nahm die allgemeine religiöse Toleranz ab und Ungarns Politik ähnelte der Behandlung der jüdischen Bevölkerung in Westeuropa.

Die Juden Ungarns waren zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkriegs ziemlich gut in die ungarische Gesellschaft integriert. Zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts war die Gemeinde auf 5% der Gesamtbevölkerung Ungarns und 23% der Bevölkerung der Hauptstadt Budapest angewachsen. Juden wurden in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Wirtschaft immer wichtiger. Bis 1941 waren über 17% der Budapester Juden römisch-katholisch conversos . ^[7]

Die antijüdische Politik wurde in der Zwischenkriegszeit immer repressiver, als die ungebundenen Führer in der Zwischenkriegszeit engagiert waren Um die durch den Friedensvertrag (Trianon-Vertrag von 1920) verlorenen Gebiete wiederzugewinnen, entschied er sich, sich mit den Regierungen von Nazi-Deutschland und dem faschistischen Italien zu vereinigen - den internationalen Akteuren, die am ehesten hinter den Behauptungen Ungarns stehen. ^[8] Ab 1938 Ungarn Unter Miklós verabschiedete Horthy eine Reihe von antijüdischen Maßnahmen zur Nachahmung der Nürnberger Gesetze. Die überwiegende Mehrheit der 18.000 überwiegend ausländischen Juden, die in Ungarn eingesperrt und deportiert wurden, wurde am 27. und 28. August 1941 von der deutschen SS (Massaker von Kamianets-Podilskyi) massakriert. In den Massakern von Újvidék (Novi Sad) und in den umliegenden Dörfern wurden 2.550–2.850 Serben, 700–1.250 Juden und 60–130 weitere von der ungarischen Armee und der „Csendőrség“ Gendarmerie im Januar 1942 ermordet. Nach der deutschen Besetzung Ungarns im März 19, 1944, wurden Juden aus den ungarischen Provinzen außerhalb Budapests und seiner Vororte zusammengetrieben, und die ersten Transporte nach Auschwitz begannen Anfang Mai 1944 und setzten sich auch fort, als sich sowjetische Truppen näherten. Während der letzten Jahre des Zweiten Weltkrieges hatten sie zwischen 1941 und 1945 (420 bis 19009005) zwischen 1941 und 1945 (die Zahlen beziehen sich auf das ungarische Territorium von 1941) vor allem durch Deportation in deutsche Vernichtungslager . Ein im März 1944 auf dem ungarischen Land lebender Jude hatte in den folgenden 12 Monaten eine Überlebenschance von weniger als 10%. ^{[ Zitat erforderlich} In Budapest: Die Chance eines Juden für das Überleben der Juden Gleiche 12 Monate waren etwa 50%.

Bei den Volkszählungsdaten von Ungarn aus dem Jahr 2011 gab es 10.965 Personen (0,11%), die sich selbst als religiöse Juden identifizierten, von denen sich 10.553 (96,2%) als ethnisch Ungar bezeichneten. ^[5] Schätzungen der jüdischen Bevölkerung Ungarns im Jahr 2010 liegen zwischen 54.000 und 30.000 Menschen mehr als 130.000 ^[11] konzentrierten sich hauptsächlich auf Budapest, ^[12] Die Eheschließungsraten für ungarische Juden liegen bei etwa 60%. ^{[ Zitat benötigt} In Ungarn gibt es viele aktive Synagogen. einschließlich der Dohány Street Synagoge, der größten Synagoge in Europa und nach dem Emanu-El-Tempel in New York die zweitgrößte Synagoge der Welt. ^[13]

Früheste Referenzen vor 1095 [ edit ] 19659017] Es ist nicht eindeutig bekannt, wann sich Juden in Ungarn niederließen. Nach der Tradition erlaubte König Decebalus (regierte Dacia 87-106 uZ) den Juden, die ihm in seinem Krieg gegen Rom halfen, sich in seinem Gebiet niederzulassen. Dacia umfasste einen Teil des heutigen Ungarns sowie Rumänien und Moldawien und kleinere Gebiete in Bulgarien, der Ukraine und Serbien. Die Gefangenen der jüdischen Kriege wurden möglicherweise von den siegreichen römischen Legionen, die normalerweise in Provincia Pannonia (Westungarn, Ostösterreich) stationiert sind, zurückgebracht. Marcus Aurelius ordnete im Jahre 175 uZ den Transfer einiger seiner aufständischen Truppen von Syrien nach Pannonien an. Diese Truppen waren teilweise in Antiochia und Hemesa (jetzt Homs) rekrutiert worden, wo zu dieser Zeit noch eine beträchtliche jüdische Bevölkerung lebte. Die antiochenischen Truppen wurden nach Ulcisia Castra (heute Szentendre) verlegt, während sich die hemesischen Truppen in Intercisa (Dunaújváros) niederließen. Steininschriften, die sich auf Juden beziehen, wurden in Brigetio (jetzt Szőny), Solva (Esztergom), Aquincum (Óbuda), Intercisa (Dunaújváros), Triccinae (Sárvár), Savaria (Szombathely), Sopianae (Pécs) und an anderer Stelle in Pannonia gefunden. Eine lateinische Inschrift, das Epitaph von Septima Maria, das in Siklós (Südungarn nahe der kroatischen Grenze) entdeckt wurde, verweist eindeutig auf ihr Judentum ("Judäa"). Die Intercisa-Tafel wurde im Auftrag von "Cosmius, Chef des Zollhauses von Spondilla, Archisynagogus Iudeorum [head of the synagogue of the Jews]" während der Regierungszeit von Alexander Severus eingeschrieben. 2008 entdeckte ein Team von Archäologen ein AD-Amulett aus dem 3. Jahrhundert in Form einer goldenen Rolle mit den Worten des jüdischen Gebets Shema 'Yisrael, das in Féltorony (jetzt Halbturn, Burgenland, Österreich) darauf geschrieben ist.

Ungarische Stämme besiedelten das Gebiet 650 Jahre später. In ungarischer Sprache heißt das Wort für Jude zsidó das aus einer der slawischen Sprachen übernommen wurde.

Das erste historische Dokument, das sich auf die Juden Ungarns bezieht, ist der Brief, den Hasdai ibn Shaprut, der jüdische Staatsmann von Córdoba, an König Joseph der Chazaren schrieb, in dem er sagt, dass die slawischen Botschafter versprochen hätten, die Botschaft zu überbringen an den König von Slawonien, der dasselbe an die im "ungarischen Land" lebenden Juden weitergeben würde, die es wiederum weitergeben würden. Etwa zur gleichen Zeit sagt Ibrahim ibn Jacob, dass Juden aus geschäftlichen Gründen von Ungarn nach Prag gegangen sind. Über die Juden zu Zeiten der Großfürsten ist nichts bekannt, außer dass sie im Land lebten und dort Handel taten.

Im Jahr 1061 ordnete König Béla I. an, dass an Samstagen anstelle der traditionellen Sonntage Märkte stattfinden sollten (die ungarische Sprache hat den vorherigen Brauch erhalten, Sonntag = vasárnap [hu] = Markttag). In der Regierungszeit von St. Ladislaus (1077–1095) verfügte die Synode von Szabolcs (20. Mai 1092), dass Juden keine christlichen Ehefrauen haben oder christliche Sklaven halten dürfen. Dieses Dekret war seit dem 5. Jahrhundert in den christlichen Ländern Europas erlassen worden und wurde von St. Ladislaus lediglich in Ungarn eingeführt.

Die Juden Ungarns bildeten zunächst kleine Siedlungen und hatten keine gelehrten Rabbiner; aber sie beachteten streng alle jüdischen Gesetze und Gebräuche. Eine Tradition erzählt die Geschichte von Juden aus Regensburg (Regensburg), die an einem Freitag mit Waren aus Russland nach Ungarn kamen; das Rad ihres Wagens brach in der Nähe von Buda (Ofen) oder Esztergom (Gran), und als sie es repariert und die Stadt betreten hatten, verließen die Juden gerade die Synagoge. Die unbeabsichtigten Sabbatbrecher wurden mit einer Geldstrafe belegt. Das Ritual der ungarischen Juden spiegelte getreue deutsche Bräuche wider.

Frühgeschichte (1095–1349) [ edit ]

Eine ungarische jüdische Familie, die vor einem Lebensmittelgeschäft in den 1930er Jahren stand.

Coloman (1095–1116), Der Nachfolger des hl. Ladislaus erneuerte den Szabolcs-Erlass von 1092 und fügte weitere Verbote gegen die Beschäftigung von christlichen Sklaven und Hausangestellten hinzu. Er beschränkte die Juden auch auf Städte mit bischöflichen Vorstellungen - wahrscheinlich, um sie unter ständiger Aufsicht der Kirche zu haben. Bald nach der Verkündung dieses Dekrets kamen die Kreuzfahrer nach Ungarn; aber die Ungarn sympathisierten nicht mit ihnen, und Coloman widersetzte sich ihnen sogar. Die wütenden Kreuzfahrer griffen einige Städte an, und wenn man glaubt, dass Gedaliah ibn Yaḥya glaubt, haben die Juden ein ähnliches Schicksal erlitten wie ihre Glaubensgenossen in Frankreich, Deutschland und Böhmen.

Die Grausamkeiten, die den böhmischen Juden zugefügt wurden, veranlassten viele von ihnen, in Ungarn Zuflucht zu suchen. Es war wahrscheinlich die Einwanderung der reichen böhmischen Juden, die Coloman kurz darauf veranlasste, Handels- und Bankgeschäfte zwischen Juden und Christen zu regulieren. Er ordnete unter anderem an, dass, wenn ein Christ, der von einem Juden entlehnt wird, oder ein Jude von einem Christ, sowohl christliche als auch jüdische Zeugen bei der Transaktion anwesend sein müssen.

Während der Regierungszeit von König Andrew II. (1205–1235) gab es jüdische Kammerherren und Münz-, Salz- und Steuerbeamte. Die Adligen des Landes veranlaßten den König jedoch in seiner Goldenen Bulle (1222), die Juden dieser hohen Ämter zu berauben. Als Andrew 1226 Geld brauchte, brachte er die königlichen Einnahmen den Juden zu, was Anlass zu großer Beschwerde gab. Der Papst (Papst Honorius III.) Exkommunizierte ihn daraufhin, bis er den päpstlichen Botschaftern im Jahr 1233 versprochen hatte, die gegen die Juden und die Sarazenen gerichteten Verordnungen des Goldenen Bullen durchzusetzen (zu diesem Zeitpunkt hatte sich das Papsttum geändert. und der Papst war jetzt Papst Gregor IX., er würde dafür sorgen, dass sich beide Völker durch Abzeichen von den Christen unterschieden, und es würde sowohl Juden als auch Sarazenen verbieten, christliche Sklaven zu kaufen oder zu halten.

Das Jahr 1240 schloss das fünfte Jahrtausend der jüdischen Ära ab. Zu dieser Zeit erwarteten die Juden das Aufkommen ihres Messias. Die Invasion der Mongolen im Jahr 1241 schien den Erwartungen zu entsprechen, da die jüdische Fantasie erwartete, dass die glückliche messianische Periode durch den Krieg von Gog und Magog eingeleitet würde. Béla IV. (1235–1270) ernannte einen jüdischen Mann mit dem Namen Henul in das Amt eines Kammerjägers (die jüdische Teka hatte dieses Amt unter Andrew II. Ausgefüllt); und Wölfel und seine Söhne Altmann und Nickel hielten die Burg von Komárom mit ihren Domänen in Pfand. Béla hat auch die Juden mit der Münze betraut; und hebräische Münzen dieser Zeit sind noch in Ungarn zu finden. Im Jahre 1251 gewährte Béla seinen Privaten seinen jüdischen Untertanen, was im wesentlichen derselbe war, wie es Herzog Friedrich II. Den Streitenden den österreichischen Juden im Jahre 1244 verlieh, den Béla jedoch an die ungarischen Bedingungen anpaßte. Dieses Privilegium blieb bis zur Schlacht von Mohács (1526) in Kraft.

Auf der Budapester Synode (1279), die unter König Ladislaus IV. Von Ungarn (1272–1290) stattfand, wurde in Anwesenheit des päpstlichen Botschafters beschlossen, dass jeder Jude, der in der Öffentlichkeit auftauchte, die Kleidung tragen sollte linke Seite seines Obergewandes ein Stück rotes Tuch; dass alle christlichen Geschäfte, die Geschäfte mit einem nicht so gekennzeichneten Juden tätigen oder zusammen mit einem Juden in einem Haus oder an Land leben, der Zutritt zu den Gottesdiensten verweigert werden soll; und dass ein Christ, der einem Juden ein Amt anvertraut, exkommuniziert werden sollte. Andrew III (1291–1301), der letzte König der Árpád-Dynastie, erklärte in seinem Privilegium das er der Gemeinde Posonium (Bratislava) gewährte, dass die Juden in dieser Stadt alle Freiheiten genießen sollten von Bürgern.

Vertreibung, Rückruf und Verfolgung (1349–1526) [ edit ]

Die orthodoxe Synagoge von Sopron, Ungarn, stammt aus den 1890er Jahren.

Mittelalterliche Keramikartefakte im Inneren des Sopron Synagoge Museum.

Unter den ausländischen Königen, die nach dem Aussterben des Hauses Arpad den ungarischen Thron besetzten, erlitten die ungarischen Juden viele Verfolgungen. In der Zeit des Schwarzen Todes (1349) wurden sie aus dem Land vertrieben. Obwohl die Juden sofort wieder aufgenommen wurden, wurden sie erneut verfolgt und 1360 von König Ludwig dem Großen von Anjou (1342–1382) erneut vertrieben. Obwohl König Louis in den ersten Jahren seiner Regierungszeit zunächst Toleranz gegenüber den Juden gezeigt hatte, versuchte er nach der Eroberung Bosniens, während dessen er versuchte, die örtliche Bevölkerung zu zwingen, vom "ketzerischen" Bogomil-Christentum zum Katholizismus zu konvertieren, den Zwang Bekehrung der ungarischen Juden. Bei seinem Versuch, sie zum Katholizismus zu bekehren, scheiterte er jedoch, und vertrieb sie. ^[14] Sie wurden von Alexander dem Guten von Moldawien und Dano I. von der Walachei, dem letzteren, der ihnen besondere kommerzielle Privilegien bot, empfangen.

Einige Jahre später, als sich Ungarn in finanziellen Schwierigkeiten befand, wurden die Juden zurückgerufen. Sie stellten fest, dass der König während ihrer Abwesenheit den Brauch von Tödtbriefe eingeführt hatte, das heißt, dass er mit einem Federstrich auf Antrag eines Subjekts oder einer Stadt die Notizen und Hypotheken der Juden stornierte . Ein wichtiges Amt, das von Louis geschaffen wurde, war das des "Richters aller in Ungarn lebenden Juden", der unter den Würdenträgern des Landes, den Palatinen und Schatzmeistern ausgewählt wurde und einen Stellvertreter hatte, der ihm helfen konnte. Es war seine Pflicht, die Steuern der Juden zu erheben, ihre Privilegien zu schützen und auf ihre Klagen zu hören, die zuletzt seit der Regierungszeit von Sigismund Luxemburg (1387–1437) häufiger wurden.

Die Nachfolger von Sigismund: Albert (1437–1439), Ladislaus Posthumus (1453–1457) und Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490) bestätigten ebenfalls das Privilegium von Béla IV. . Matthias gründete das Büro des jüdischen Präfekten in Ungarn. Die Zeit nach dem Tod von Matthias war für die ungarischen Juden eine traurige Zeit. Er wurde kaum begraben, als die Menschen auf sie fielen, ihr Eigentum konfiszierten, sich weigerten, Schulden zu zahlen, und sie im Allgemeinen verfolgten. Der Prätendent John Corvinus, der uneheliche Sohn von Matthias, verbannte sie aus Tata, und König Ladislaus II. (1490–1516), der immer Geld brauchte, setzte hohe Steuern auf sie. Während seiner Regierungszeit wurden Juden zum ersten Mal auf dem Scheiterhaufen verbrannt, viele wurden 1494 in Nagyszombat (Trnava) hingerichtet, weil der Verdacht auf einen Ritualmord bestand.

Die ungarischen Juden beantragten schließlich Schutz bei dem deutschen Kaiser Maximilian. Anlässlich der Hochzeit Ludwigs II. Mit der Erzherzogin Maria (1512) übernahm der Kaiser mit Zustimmung Ladislaus den Präfekten Jacob Mendel von Buda zusammen mit seiner Familie und allen anderen ungarischen Juden unter seinem Schutz. ihnen zufolge alle Rechte seiner anderen Untertanen. Unter Ladislaus Nachfolger Ludwig II. (1516–1526) war die Judenverfolgung ein gewöhnliches Ereignis. Das erbitterte Gefühl gegen sie wurde teilweise dadurch verstärkt, dass der getaufte Emeric Szerencsés, der stellvertretende Schatzmeister, die öffentlichen Gelder unterschlagen hat.

Krieg gegen die Osmanen (1526–1686) [ edit

Die Osmanen besiegten die Ungarn in der Schlacht von Mohács (29. August 1526), ​​woraufhin Louis II. Verlor sein Leben auf dem Schlachtfeld. Als die Nachricht von seinem Tod die Hauptstadt erreichte, flohen Buda, der Hof und die Adligen mit einigen reichen Juden, darunter auch der Präfekt. Als der Großwesir Ibrahim Pascha, der Sultan Suleiman I. vorausging, mit seiner Armee in Buda ankam, wirkten die Vertreter der Juden, die in der Stadt geblieben waren, in Trauerkleid vor ihm und überreichten ihm die Schlüssel verlassenes und ungeschütztes Schloss als Zeichen der Unterwerfung. Der Sultan selbst trat am 11. September in Buda ein; Am 22. September ordnete er an, dass alle in Buda, Esztergom und anderswo beschlagnahmten Juden, mehr als 2.000, unter den Städten des Osmanischen Reiches verteilt werden sollten. Sie wurden nach Konstantinopel, Plevna (Pleven) und Sofia geschickt, wo sie mehrere Jahrzehnte lang ihre eigene Gemeinschaft unterhielten. In Sofia gab es in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts vier jüdische Gemeinden: Romaniote, Ashkenazi, Sephardi und "Ungarus". Der Überlauf der ungarischen Juden aus Sofia ließ sich später auch in Kavala nieder.

Obwohl die Osmanische Armee nach der Schlacht zurückkehrte, fiel sie 1541 erneut in Ungarn ein, um einen österreichischen Versuch zu unterstützen, Buda einzunehmen. Bei der Ankunft der osmanischen Armee wurden die Österreicher besiegt, aber die Osmanen eroberten Buda.

Während einige der ungarischen Juden nach Anatolien deportiert wurden, suchten andere, die auf die Annäherung des Sultans geflüchtet waren, außerhalb der Grenze oder in den freien Königsstädten Westungarns Zuflucht. Die Witwe von Ludwig II., Königin Maria, bevorzugte die Feinde der Juden. Die Bürger von Sopron (Ödenburg) begannen die Feindseligkeiten, indem sie die Juden der Stadt vertrieben, ihr Eigentum konfiszierten und die freigewordenen Häuser und die Synagoge plünderten. Die Stadt Pressburg (Bratislava) erhielt auch die Erlaubnis der Königin (9. Oktober 1526), ​​die in ihrem Gebiet lebenden Juden zu vertreiben, weil sie ihre Absicht geäußert hatten, vor den Türken zu fliehen. Die Juden verließen Pressburg am 9. November.

Am selben Tag wurde die Diät in Székesfehérvár eröffnet, bei der János Szapolyai (1526–1540) in Opposition zu Ferdinand zum König gekrönt wurde. Während dieser Sitzung wurde festgelegt, dass die Juden sofort aus allen Teilen des Landes vertrieben werden sollten. Zápolya hat diese Gesetze jedoch nicht ratifiziert. und der im Dezember 1526 in Pressburg abgehaltene Landtag, bei dem Ferdinand von Habsburg zum König (1526–1564) gewählt wurde, annullierte alle Dekrete der von Székesfehérvár, einschließlich der Wahl Zápolyas zum König.

Als der Herr von Bösing (Pezinok) gegenüber den Juden verschuldet war, wurde 1529 gegen diese unbequemen Gläubiger eine blutige Anklage erhoben. Obwohl Mendel, der Präfekt und die Juden in ganz Ungarn protestierten, wurden die Angeklagten im Pfahl verbrannt . Jahrhunderte später war es Juden verboten, in Bösing zu leben. Die Juden von Nagyszombat (Trnava) hatten bald ein ähnliches Schicksal. Sie wurden zuerst wegen angeblichen rituellen Mordes bestraft und anschließend aus der Stadt vertrieben (19. Februar 1539).

Die in den vom Osmanischen Reich besetzten Teilen Ungarns lebenden Juden wurden weit besser behandelt als die unter den Habsburgern lebenden. In den Jahren 1546-1590 und 1620-1680 florierte die Gemeinde Ofen (Buda).

Die folgende Tabelle zeigt die Anzahl der jüdischen Jizya-Steuer zahlenden Haushaltsoberhäupter in Buda während der Osmanenherrschaft:

1546	1559	1562	1590	1627	1633	1660
50	44	49	109	11	20	80

Am Ende der osmanischen Zeit verehrten die rund eintausend in Buda lebenden Juden drei Synagogen: eine Ashkenazi, eine Sephardi und eine Syrische.

Während die Osmanen in Ungarn herrschten, ging es den Juden von Siebenbürgen (damals ein unabhängiges Fürstentum) ebenfalls gut. In der Instanz von Abraham Sassa, einem jüdischen Arzt von Konstantinopel, gewährte Prinz Gabriel Bethlen von Siebenbürgen den spanischen Juden aus Anatolien einen Privilegienbrief (18. Juni 1623). Die seit 1588 in Siebenbürgen existierende Gemeinschaft jüdischer Szekler-Sabbatarier wurde jedoch 1638 verfolgt und in den Untergrund getrieben. ^[15]

Am 26. November 1572, König Maximilian II. (1563–1576) beabsichtigte, die Juden von Pressburg (Bratislava) zu vertreiben, und erklärte, sein Edikt werde nur dann zurückgerufen, wenn sie das Christentum akzeptierten. Die Juden blieben jedoch in der Stadt, ohne ihre Religion aufzugeben. Sie standen in ständigem Konflikt mit den Bürgern. Am 1. Juni 1582 ordnete der Gemeinderat an, dass niemand Juden aufnehmen oder Geschäfte mit ihnen tätigen sollte. Das Gefühl gegen die Juden in diesem Teil des Landes, das nicht unter türkischer Herrschaft steht, zeigt das Dekret des Landtages von 1578, wonach Juden doppelt so viel besteuert werden sollten wie andere Bürger. ^[19459472

Gemäß Artikel XV des Gesetzes, das vom Landtag von 1630 verkündet wurde, war es den Juden verboten, den Zoll zu übernehmen; und dieses Dekret wurde vom Landtag von 1646 mit der Begründung bestätigt, dass die Juden von den Privilegien des Landes ausgeschlossen wurden, dass sie Ungläubige waren und kein Gewissen hatten (19459004) veluti jurium regni behindert, Ungläubige, et nulla conscientia praediti ). ^[16] Die Juden mussten eine besondere Kriegssteuer zahlen, als sich die kaiserlichen Truppen gegen Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts auf den Weg machten, um Buda von den Osmanen zurückzuerobern. Die Budaer-Gemeinde hatte während dieser Belagerung viel zu leiden, ebenso wie die von Székesfehérvár, als die kaiserlichen Truppen im September 1601 die Stadt besetzten. Viele ihrer Mitglieder wurden entweder getötet oder gefangengenommen und in die Sklaverei verkauft, wobei ihre Erlösung später von den deutschen, italienischen und osmanischen Juden ausgeführt wurde. Nach dem Friedensschluss, zu dessen Verwirklichung die Juden beigetragen hatten, wurden die Gemeinden teilweise wieder aufgebaut. Die weitere Entwicklung im Gebiet der Habsburger wurde jedoch verhaftet, als Leopold I. (1657–1705) die Juden vertrieb (24. April 1671). Einige Monate später (20. August) widerrief er sein Dekret. Während der Belagerung von Wien im Jahre 1683 wurden die in diese Stadt zurückgekehrten Juden erneut misshandelt. Die Osmanen plünderten einige Gemeinden in Westungarn und deportierten die Mitglieder als Sklaven.

Habsburgische Herrschaft [ edit ]

Weitere Verfolgung und Vertreibungen (1686–1740) [ edit ]

Die kaiserlichen Truppen eroberten Buda auf Am 2. September 1686 wurden die meisten jüdischen Einwohner ermordet, einige gefangengenommen und später für Lösegeld freigelassen. In den folgenden Jahren kam ganz Ungarn unter die Herrschaft des Hauses Habsburg. Da das verwüstete Land neu besiedelt werden musste, riet Bischof Graf Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch, später Erzbischof von Esztergom und Primas von Ungarn, dem König an, den deutschen Katholiken den Vorzug zu geben, damit das Land rechtzeitig deutsch und katholisch wird. Er vertrat die Ansicht, dass die Juden nicht sofort ausgerottet werden könnten, sondern dass sie nach und nach aussortiert werden müssten, da schlechte Münzen allmählich aus dem Verkehr gezogen würden. Das Dekret des Landtages von Pressburg (1687–1688) verabschiedete die Juden mit Doppelbesteuerung. Juden durften keine Landwirtschaft betreiben, keine Immobilien besitzen oder christliche Diener halten.

Dieser Ratschlag trug bald Früchte und wurde teilweise umgesetzt. Im August 1690 ordnete die Wiener Regierung an, dass Sopron die aus den österreichischen Bundesländern eingewanderten Juden ausweisen sollte. Die Regierung, die den Erlass des letzten Landtags durchsetzen wollte, verfügte kurz darauf, dass die Juden aus dem Amt des Sammlers entfernt werden sollten. Die Anordnung erwies sich jedoch als unwirksam; Die Beschäftigung jüdischer Zollbeamter wurde fortgesetzt. Sogar der Schatzmeister des Reiches setzte das Gesetz ein, indem er (1692) Simon Hirsch zum Zollbauer in der Leopoldstadt (Leopoldov) ernannte; und bei Hirschs Tod übertrug er das Büro an Hirschs Schwiegersohn.

Der Aufstand des Kuruc unter Franz II. Rákóczi verursachte den Juden in Ungarn viel Leid. Die Kuruc nahmen die Juden gefangen und töteten sie, deren Wut durch die Partei des Königs entstanden war. Die Juden von Eisenstadt suchten zusammen mit denen der Gemeinde Mattersdorf Zuflucht in Wien, Wiener-Neustadt und Forchtenstein. die von Holics (Holíč) und Sasvár (Šaštín) nach Göding (Hodonín) verteilt; während andere, die ihren Betrieb in dieser Zeit der Not nicht verlassen konnten, ihre Familien an sichere Orte schickten und selbst der Gefahr trotzen. Obwohl nicht viele Juden während dieser Revolte ihr Leben verloren haben, hat es in ihrem Reichtum großen Schaden angerichtet, vor allem im Bezirk Sopron, wo mehrere reiche Juden lebten. Der König gewährte denjenigen, die durch den Aufstand ruiniert worden waren, Schutzbriefe und verlangte die Befriedigung der Verletzten. aber als Gegenleistung für diese Gefälligkeiten befahl er den Juden, die notwendigen Summen zur Verfügung zu stellen, um den Aufstand zu unterdrücken.

Nach der Wiederherstellung des Friedens wurden die Juden aus vielen Städten vertrieben, die ihre Konkurrenz fürchteten; So hat Esztergom sie im Jahre 1712 ausgewiesen, mit der Begründung, dass die Stadt, in der der Stephanus geboren wurde, nicht von ihnen entweiht werden darf. Aber die auf dem Land lebenden Juden auf dem Gut ihrer Gutsbesitzer waren im Allgemeinen allein gelassen.

Unter der Herrschaft von Leopolds Sohn Karl III. (1711–1740) wurde die Zahl der Juden nicht verbessert. Er teilte der Regierung (28. Juni 1725) mit, dass er beabsichtige, die Zahl der Juden in seinem Gebiet zu verringern, und die Regierung wies daraufhin die Grafschaften an, Statistiken über die hebräischen Einwohner zu erstellen. 1726 verordnete der König, dass in den österreichischen Bundesländern ab dem Tag der Veröffentlichung des Dekrets nur ein männliches Mitglied pro jüdischer Familie heiraten darf. Dieses Dekret, das die natürliche Zunahme der Juden einschränkt, hat die jüdischen Gemeinden in Ungarn erheblich beeinflusst. Alle Juden in den österreichischen Bundesländern, die dort nicht heiraten konnten, gingen nach Ungarn, um Familien zu gründen. somit war Ungarn mit dem Überlauf der österreichischen Juden bevölkert. Diese Einwanderer ließen sich hauptsächlich in den nordwestlichen Landkreisen nieder, in Nyitra (Nitra), Pressburg (Bratislava) und Trencsén (Trenčín).

Die mährischen Juden lebten weiterhin als mährische Untertanen in Ungarn; Selbst diejenigen, die dorthin gingen, um zu heiraten und sich niederzulassen, versprachen vor dem Verlassen, dass sie die gleichen Steuern zahlen würden wie die in Mähren lebenden. Im Jahr 1734 haben sich die Juden von Trencsén durch einen geheimen Eid gebunden, dass sie sich in all ihren kommunalen Angelegenheiten nur dem jüdischen Gericht in Ungarisch-Brod (Uherský Brod) unterwerfen würden. Im Laufe der Zeit weigerten sich die Einwanderer, Steuern an die österreichischen Bundesländer zu zahlen. Die mährischen Juden, die unter der starken Auswanderung gelitten hatten, brachten dann Klage ein; Maria Theresia ordnete an, dass alle jüdischen und christlichen Untertanen, die nach 1740 ausgewandert waren, ausgeliefert werden sollten, während diejenigen, die vor diesem Zeitpunkt ausgewandert waren, aus ihrer mährischen Treue entlassen werden sollten.

Die Regierung konnte jedoch die große Einwanderung nicht kontrollieren; denn obwohl strenge Gesetze im Jahre 1727 ausgearbeitet wurden, konnten sie wegen des guten Willens der Magnaten gegenüber den Juden nicht durchgesetzt werden. Die Bezirke antworteten entweder gar nicht oder schickten eher Gnade als Verfolgung.

Inzwischen versuchte der König, die Bergbaustädte von den Juden zu befreien - eine Arbeit, die Leopold I. bereits 1693 begonnen hatte. Die Juden siedelten sich jedoch weiterhin in der Nähe dieser Städte an; sie stellten ihre Waren auf den Messen aus; und mit Erlaubnis des Gerichts errichteten sie sogar eine Gießerei in Ság (Sasinkovo). Als König Charles ihnen befahl zu gehen (März 1727), wurde das königliche Mandat an einigen Stellen ignoriert; in anderen gehorchten die Juden so langsam, dass er drei Monate später sein Edikt wiederholen musste.

Maria Theresia (1740–1780) [ edit ]

Im Jahr 1735 wurde eine weitere Volkszählung der Juden des Landes mit dem Ziel der Verringerung ihrer Zahl getroffen. Zu dieser Zeit lebten in Ungarn 11.621 Juden, von denen 2.474 männliche Familienoberhäupter und 57 Frauenköpfe waren. Von diesen Familienoberhäuptern erklärten sich 35,31 Prozent für Ungarn; der Rest war eingewandert. Von den Einwanderern stammten 38,35 Prozent aus Mähren, 11,05 Prozent aus Polen und 3,07 Prozent aus Böhmen. Die größte jüdische Gemeinde mit 770 Personen war die von Pressburg (Bratislava). Die meisten Juden waren im Handel oder in der Industrie tätig, die meisten waren Kaufleute, Händler oder Ladenbesitzer; Nur wenige verfolgten die Landwirtschaft.

Während der Regierungszeit von Königin Maria Theresia (1740–1780), der Tochter Karls III., Wurden die Juden aus Buda (1746) vertrieben, und die ungarischen Juden wurden mit der "Toleranzsteuer" belegt. Am 1. September 1749 versammelten sich die Delegierten der ungarischen Juden mit Ausnahme derjenigen aus dem Kreis Szatmár in Pressburg und trafen eine königliche Kommission, die ihnen mitteilte, dass sie aus dem Land vertrieben würden, wenn sie diese Steuer nicht zahlen würden. Die verängstigten Juden waren sofort damit einverstanden; Die Kommission forderte daraufhin eine jährliche Steuer von 50.000 Gulden. Da diese Summe zu hoch war, protestierten die Delegierten. und obwohl die Königin 30.000 Gulden als Mindeststeuer festgesetzt hatte, konnte sie schließlich bei der Zahlung von 20.000 Gulden pro Jahr für einen Zeitraum von acht Jahren einen Kompromiss eingehen. Die Delegierten sollten diesen Betrag auf die Distrikte aufteilen; die Bezirke, ihre jeweiligen Summen unter den Gemeinden; und die Gemeinschaften, ihre unter den einzelnen Mitgliedern.

Die Königin bestätigte diese Vereinbarung der Kommission, mit Ausnahme der Acht-Jahres-Klausel, die den Zeitraum auf drei Jahre änderte, die sie anschließend fünf machte. Die so von der Königin ratifizierte Vereinbarung wurde am 26. November vor die Gerichte gebracht, die nicht in der Lage waren, die Juden von der Zahlung dieses Malkegelds Malkegeld wie sie es nannten, zu befreien.

Die von neuen Steuern belasteten Juden hielten die Zeit für reif, Schritte zu unternehmen, um ihre unterdrückenden Behinderungen zu beseitigen. Noch in Presburg hatten die Delegierten ihre Beschwerde vor der gemischten Kommission delegata in puncto tolerantialis taxae und gravaminum Judeorum commissio mixta eingebracht. Diese Beschwerden stellten die Not der Juden dieser Zeit dar. Sie durften nicht in Kroatien und Slawonien, in Baranya und Heves County oder in mehreren freien königlichen Städten und Orten wohnen; Sie dürfen auch nicht die Märkte dort besuchen. Bei Stuhlweissenburg (Székesfehérvár) mussten sie eine Umfragesteuer in Höhe von 1 Gulden, 30 Kreuzer zahlen, wenn sie tagsüber oder nur für eine Stunde in die Stadt kamen. An vielen Orten bleiben sie vielleicht nicht einmal über Nacht. Sie baten daher um Erlaubnis, sich in Kroatien und Slawonien und an den Orten niederzulassen, von denen sie infolge der Eifersucht der Griechen und der Kaufleute vertrieben worden waren, oder zumindest die Messen zu besuchen.

Die Juden mussten auch höhere Brücken- und Fährgebühren zahlen als die Christen; In Nagyszombat (Trnava) mussten sie das Dreifache der gewöhnlichen Summe zahlen, nämlich für den Fahrer, für das Fahrzeug und für das Tier, das dieses zeichnet; und in drei Dörfern, die zum selben Bezirk gehörten, mussten sie Maut zahlen, obwohl es keine Mautstelle gab. Juden, die auf dem Gut der Adligen lebten, mussten ihre Ehefrauen und Kinder als Verpflich- tungen für Steuerrückstände geben. In Oberungarn forderten sie die Aufhebung der von der Kammer des Zipser Bezirks (Szepes, Zips) verhängten Duldungssteuer mit der Begründung, dass ansonsten die dort lebenden Juden zwei derartige Steuern zahlen müssten; und sie baten auch darum, von einer ähnlichen, an den Landtag gezahlten Steuer befreit zu werden. Schließlich forderten sie, dass jüdische Kunsthandwerker ungestört ihrem Handwerk in ihren Häusern folgen dürfen.

Die Kommission legte diese Beschwerden der Königin vor und wies darauf hin, wie sie entlastet werden könnten; und ihre Vorschläge wurden später von der Königin gewollt und in ein Gesetz umgewandelt.

Die Königin befreite die Juden nur in Oberungarn von der Duldungssteuer. In Bezug auf die anderen Beschwerden ordnete sie an, dass die Juden sie detailliert spezifizieren sollten und dass die Regierung sie korrigieren sollte, sofern sie unter seine Zuständigkeit fielen.

The toleration-tax had hardly been instituted when Michael Hirsch petitioned the government to be appointed primate of the Hungarian Jews in order to be able to settle difficulties that might arise among them, and to collect the tax. The government did not recommend Hirsch, but decided that in case the Jews should refuse to pay, it might be advisable to appoint a primate to adjust the matter.

Before the end of the period of five years the delegates of the Jews again met the commission at Pressburg (Bratislava) and offered to increase the amount of their tax to 25,000 gulden a year if the queen would promise that it should remain at that sum for the next ten years. The queen had other plans, however; not only did she dismiss the renewed gravamina of the Jews, but rather imposed stiffer regulations upon them. Their tax of 20,000 gulden was increased to 30,000 gulden in 1760; to 50,000 in 1772; to 80,000 in 1778; and to 160,000 in 1813.

Joseph II (1780–1790)[edit]

Joseph II (1780–1790), son and successor of Maria Theresa, showed immediately on his accession that he intended to alleviate the condition of the Jews, communicating this intention to the Hungarian chancellor, Count Franz Esterházy as early as May 13, 1781. In consequence the Hungarian government issued (March 31, 1783) a decree known as the Systematica gentis Judaicae regulatiowhich wiped out at one stroke the decrees that had oppressed the Jews for centuries. The royal free towns, except the mining-towns, were opened to the Jews, who were allowed to settle at leisure throughout the country. The regulatio decreed that the legal documents of the Jews should no longer be composed in Hebrew, or in Yiddish, but in Latin, German, and Hungarian, the languages used in the country at the time, and which the young Jews were required to learn within two years.

Documents written in Hebrew or in Yiddish were not legal; Hebrew books were to be used at worship only; the Jews were to organize elementary schools; the commands of the emperor, issued in the interests of the Jews, were to be announced in the synagogues; and the rabbis were to explain to the people the salutary effects of these decrees. The subjects to be taught in the Jewish schools were to be the same as those taught in the national schools; the same text-books were to be used in all the elementary schools; and everything that might offend the religious sentiment of non-conformists was to be omitted.

A medal minted during the reign of Josef II, commemorating his grant of religious liberty to Jews and Protestants.

During the early years Christian teachers were to be employed in the Jewish schools, but they were to have nothing to do with the religious affairs of such institutions. After the lapse of ten years a Jew might establish a business, or engage in trade, only if he could prove that he had attended a school. The usual school-inspectors were to supervise the Jewish schools and to report to the government. The Jews were to create a fund for organizing and maintaining their schools. Jewish youth might enter the academies, and might study any subject at the universities except theology. Jews might rent farms only if they could cultivate the same without the aid of Christians.

Jews were allowed to peddle and to engage in various industrial occupations, and to be admitted into the guilds. They were also permitted to engrave seals, and to sell gunpowder and saltpeter; but their exclusion from the mining-towns remained in force. Christian masters were allowed to have Jewish apprentices. All distinctive marks hitherto worn by the Jews were to be abolished, and they might even carry swords. On the other hand, they were required to discard the distinctive marks prescribed by their religion and to shave their beards. Emperor Joseph regarded this decree so seriously that he allowed no one to violate it.

The Jews, in a petition dated April 22, 1783, expressed their gratitude to the emperor for his favors, and, reminding him of his principle that religion should not be interfered with, asked permission to wear beards. The emperor granted the prayer of the petitioners, but reaffirmed the other parts of the decree (April 24, 1783). The Jews organized schools in various places, at Pressburg (Bratislava), Óbuda, Vágújhely (Nové Mesto nad Váhom), and Nagyvárad (Oradea). A decree was issued by the emperor (July 23, 1787) to the effect that every Jew should choose a German surname; and a further edict (1789) ordered, to the consternation of the Jews, that they should henceforth perform military service.

After the death of Joseph II the royal free cities showed a very hostile attitude toward the Jews. The citizens of Pest petitioned the municipal council that after May 1, 1790, the Jews should no longer be allowed to live in the city. The government interfered; and the Jews were merely forbidden to engage in peddling in the city. Seven days previously a decree of expulsion had been issued at Nagyszombat (Trnava), May 1 being fixed as the date of the Jews' departure. The Jews appealed to the government; and in the following December the city authorities of Nagyszombat were informed that the Diet had confirmed the former rights of the Jews, and that the latter could not be expelled.

Toleration and oppression (1790–1847)[edit]

Móric Ullmann (1782-1847), Hungarian Jewish banker, trader, founder of the Pesti Magyar Kereskedelmi Bank (Pesti Hungarian Commercial Bank).

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.

The Jews, confidently anticipating the king's decision in their favor, organized a splendid celebration on November 15, 1790, the day of his coronation; on January 10, 1791, the king approved the bill of the Diet; and the following law, drafted in conformity with the royal decision, was read by Judge Stephen Atzel in the session of February 5:

"In order that the condition of the Jews may be regulated pending such time as may elapse until their affairs and the privileges of various royal free towns relating to them shall have been determined by a commission to report to the next ensuing Diet, when his Majesty and the estates will decide on the condition of the Jews, the estates have determined, with the approval of his Majesty, that the Jews within the boundaries of Hungary and the countries belonging to it shall, in all the royal free cities and in other localities (except the royal mining-towns), remain under the same conditions in which they were on Jan. 1, 1790; and in case they have been expelled anywhere, they shall be recalled."

Thus came into force the famous law entitled De Judaeiswhich forms the thirty-eighth article of the laws of the Diet of 1790–1791. The De Judaeis law was gratefully received by the Jews; for it not only afforded them protection, but also gave them the assurance that their affairs would soon be regulated. Still, although the Diet appointed on February 7, 1791, a commission to study the question, the amelioration of the condition of the Hungarian Jews was not effected till half a century later, under Ferdinand V (r. 1835–1848), during the session of the Diet of 1839–1840. It is estimated that the Jewish population in Hungary grew by about 80% between 1815-1840,^[17] 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 Dr. 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. From now on much attention was paid to the teaching of Hungarian in the schools; Moritz Bloch (Ballagi) translated the Pentateuch into Hungarian, and Moritz Rosenthal the Psalms and the Pirkei Avoth. Various communities founded Hungarian reading-circles; and the Hungarian dress and language were more and more adopted. Many communities began to use Hungarian on their seals and in their documents, and some liberal rabbis even began to preach in that language.

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 Szemlethe 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.

Although the session of the Diet convened on November 7, 1847, was unfavorable to the Jews, the latter not only continued to cultivate the Hungarian language, but were also willing to sacrifice their lives and property in the hour of danger. During the Revolution of 1848 they displayed their patriotism, even though attacked by the populace in several places at the beginning of the uprising. On March 19 the populace of Pressburg (Bratislava), encouraged by the antipathies of the citizens—who were aroused by the fact that the Jews, leaving their ghetto around Pressburg Castle (Bratislava Castle), were settling in the city itself—began hostilities that were continued after some days, and were renewed more fiercely in April.

At this time the expulsion of the Jews from Sopron, Pécs, Székesfehérvár, and Szombathely was demanded; in the last two cities there were pogroms. At Szombathely, the mob advanced upon the synagogue, cut up the Torah scrolls, and threw them into a well. Nor did the Jews of Pest escape, while those at Vágújhely (Nové Mesto nad Váhom) especially suffered from the brutality of the mob. Bitter words against the Jews were also heard in the Diet. Some Jews advised emigration to America as a means of escape; and a society was founded at Pest, with a branch at Pressburg, for that purpose. A few left Hungary, seeking a new home across the sea, but the majority remained.

Revolution and emancipation (1848–1849)[edit]

Jews and the Hungarian Revolution[edit]

Jews entered the national guard as early as March 1848; although they were excluded from certain cities, they reentered as soon as the danger to the country seemed greater than the hatred of the citizens. At Pest the Jewish national guard formed a separate division. When the national guards of Pápa were mobilized against the Croatians, Leopold Löw, rabbi of Pápa, joined the Hungarian ranks, inspiring his companions by his words of encouragement. Jews were also to be found in the volunteer corps, and among the honvéd and landsturm; and they constituted one-third of the volunteer division of Pest that marched along the Drava against the Croatians, being blessed by Rabbi Schwab on June 22, 1848.

Many Jews throughout the country joined the army to fight for their fatherland; among them, Adolf Hübsch, subsequently rabbi at New York City; Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy, afterward lecturer at the University of Cambridge; and Ignatz Einhorn, who, under the name of "Eduard Horn," subsequently became state secretary of the Hungarian Ministry of Commerce. The rebellious Serbians slew the Jews at Zenta who sympathized with Hungary; among them, Rabbi Israel Ullmann and Jacob Münz, son of Moses Münz of Óbuda The conduct of the Jewish soldiers in the Hungarian army was highly commended by Generals Klapka and Görgey. Einhorn estimated the number of Jewish soldiers who took part in the Hungarian Revolution to be 20,000; but this is most likely exaggerated, as Béla Bernstein enumerates only 755 combatants by name in his work, Az 1848-49-iki Magyar Szabadságharcz és a Zsidók (Budapest, 1898).

The Hungarian Jews served their country not only with the sword, but also with funds. Communities and individuals, Chevra Kadisha, and other Jewish societies, freely contributed silver and gold, armor and provisions, clothed and fed the soldiers, and furnished lint and other medical supplies to the Hungarian camps. Meanwhile, they did not forget to take steps to obtain their rights as citizens. When the Diet of 1847–1848 (in which, according to ancient law, only the nobles and those having the rights of nobles might take part) was dissolved (April 11), and the new Parliament — at which under the new laws the delegates elected by the commons also appeared — was convened at Pest (July 2, 1848), the Jews hopefully looked forward to the deliberations of the new body.

Brief emancipation and aftermath, 1849[edit]

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.

For the purpose of urging Jewish emancipation, all the Jews of Hungary sent delegates to a conference at Pest on July 5, 1848. It chose a commission of ten members to lobby with the Diet for emancipation. The commission delegates were instructed not to make any concessions related to practicing the Jewish faith. The commission soon after addressed a petition to the Parliament for emancipation, but it proved ineffective.

The national assembly at Szeged granted emancipation of Jews on Saturday, the eve of the Ninth of Av (July 28, 1849). The bill, which was quickly debated and immediately became a law, fulfilled the hopes of the Reform party. The Jews obtained full citizenship. The Ministry of the Interior was ordered to call a convention of Jewish ministers and laymen for the purpose of drafting a confession of faith, and of inducing the Jews to organize their religious life in conformity with the demands of the time, for instance, business hours on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The bill included the clause referring to marriages between Jews and Christians, which clause both Lajos Kossuth and the Reform party advocated.

The Jews' civic liberty lasted for just two weeks. After the Hungarian army's surrender at Világos to Russian troops, which had come to aid the Austrians in suppressing the Hungarian struggle for liberty, the Jews were severely punished by new authorities for having taken part in the uprising. Field Marshal Julius Jacob von Haynau, the new governor of Hungary, imposed heavy war-taxes upon them, especially upon the communities of Pest and Óbuda, which had already been heavily taxed by Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz, commander-in-chief of the Austrian army, on his triumphant entry into the Hungarian capital at the beginning of 1849. Haynau punished the communities of Kecskemét, Nagykőrös, Cegléd, Albertirsa, Szeged, and Szabadka (now Subotica, Serbia) with equal severity. Numerous Jews were imprisoned and executed; others sought refuge in emigration.

Several communities petitioned to be relieved of the war taxes. The ministry of war, however, increased the hurden, requiring that the communities of Pest, Óbuda, Kecskemét, Czegléd, Nagykőrös, and Irsa should pay this tax not in kind, but in currency to the amount of 2,300,000 gulden. As the communities were unable to collect such monies, they petitioned the government to remit it. The Jewish communities of the entire country were ordered to share in raising the sum, on the grounds that most of the Jews of Hungary had supported the Revolution. Only the communities of Temesvár (now Timişoara, Romania) and Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia) were exempted from this order, as they remained loyal to the existing Austrian government. The military commission added a clause to tax requirements, to the effect that individuals or communities might be exempted from the punishment, if they could prove by documents or witnesses, before a commission to be appointed, that they had not taken part in the Revolution, either by word or deed, morally or materially. The Jews refused this means of clearing themselves. They declared to be willing to redeem the tax by collecting a certain sum for a national school fund. Emperor Franz Joseph remitted the war-tax (September 20, 1850), but ordered that the Jews of Hungary without distinction should contribute toward a Jewish school fund of 1,000,000 gulden; they raised this sum within a few years.^[18]

Struggles for a second emancipation (1859–1867)[edit]

Prominent newspaper editor and journalist Miksa (Maxmilian) Falk returned to Hungary from Vienna following the emancipation in 1867. He was a national-level politician from 1875 to 1905.

While the House of Habsburg controlled Hungary, emancipation of Jews was postponed. When the Austrian troops were defeated in Italy in 1859, activists pressed for liberty. In that year the cabinet, with Emperor Franz Joseph in the chair, decreed that the status of the Jews should be regulated in agreement with the times, but with due regard for the conditions obtaining in the several localities and provinces. When the emperor convened the Diet on April 2, 1861, Jews pushed for emancipation but the early dissolution of that body prevented it from taking action in the matter.

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 (Timişoara), 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.

When the Parliament dissolved in 1861, the emancipation of the Jews was deferred to the coronation of Franz Joseph. On December 22, 1867, the question came before the lower house, and on the favorable report of Kálmán Tisza and Zsigmond Bernáth, a bill in favor of emancipation was adopted; it was passed by the upper house on the following day. Although the Antisemitic Party was represented in the Parliament, it was not taken seriously by the political elite of the country. Its agitation against Jews was not successful (see Tiszaeszlár affair).

On October 4, 1877, the Budapest University of Jewish Studies opened in Budapest. The university is still operating, celebrating its 130th anniversary on October 4, 2007. Since its opening, it has been the only Jewish institute in all of Central and Eastern Europe.

In the 1890 Hungarian census, 64.0% of the Jewish population were counted as ethnic Hungarian by mother tongue, 33.1% as German (these were chiefly Yiddish speakers), 1.9% as Slovak, 0.8% as Romanian, and 0.2% as Ruthenian.

Austria-Hungary (1867–1918)[edit]

Family names[edit]

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.^[19]

Population statistics[edit]

1890 / 1900 / 1910 census summaries[edit]

	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:

1910 census[edit]

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 net loss for Judaism due to conversions was relatively low before the end of the Great War: 240 people/year between 1896-1900, 404 between 1901-1910, and 435 people/year between 1911-1917. According to records, 10,530 people left Judaism, and 2,244 converted to Judaism between 1896 and 1917.^[20]

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.^{[citation needed]}

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. Due to the prosperity and the large Jewish community of the city, Budapest was often referred to as the "Jewish Mecca"^[21] At that time Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna referred to the capital as Judapest, alluding to the high proportion of Jews. Budapest had the third largest Jewish population among the world's cities, after New York and Warsaw.

Jews in Hungary were long prevented from owning land, which resulted in many going into business. In 1910, 60.96% of merchants,^[22] 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.^[23]
48.5% of the physicians in the country (2701 out of 5565) were Jewish.^[24] 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.^[25]

There was also religious division, with three 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

Interwar (1918–1939)[edit]

Population[edit]

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.^[26] 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-WW1 Hungary, a 6,000 increase in Czechoslovakia and a 15,000 increase in Romania].^{[citation needed]}

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.^[27] 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.^[28] Among the owners of land of more than 1000 hold, i.e. 570 hectares, 19.6% were Jewish.^[29] Among the 2739 factories in Hungary, 40.5% had a Jewish owner.^[28]

The following table shows the number of people who declared to be Israelite (Jewish) at the censuses inside the post-WWI territory of Hungary. Between 1920 and 1945, it was illegal for Hungarians to fail to declare their religion A person's religion was written on their birth certificate, marriage license (except in 1919, during the short-lived Commune, see Hungarian Soviet Republic), and even on a child's school grade reports.

Census	12.31.1910 (inside 1937 borders)	12.31.1920	12.31.1930	01.31.1941 (inside 1937 borders)	1949	2001	2011
"izraelita"	471,355	473,310	444,567	400,981	133,861	12,871	10,965
% of total	6.19%	5.93%	5.12%	4.30%	1.45%	0.13%	0.11%

The net loss for Judaism due to official conversions was 26,652 people between 1919 and 1938, while 4,288 people converted into the faith, 30,940 left it. The endpoints of this period, 1919-1920 (white terror) and 1938 (anti-Jewish law) contributed to more than half of this loss; between 1921 and 1930, the net loss rested around pre-war levels (260 people/year).:^[20]

	1896-1900 (pre-WWI borders)	1901-1910 (pre-WWI borders)	1911-1917 (pre-WWI borders)	1919-1920	1921-1930	1931-1937	1938 alone
Total years	5	10	7	2	10	7	1
Converted from Judaism	1,681	5,033	3,816	9,103	5,315	7,936	8,586
Converted to Judaism	481	994	769	316	2,718	1,156	98

Population of Budapest	1851[30]	1869	1880	1890	1900	1910	1920	1930	1941	1949	2001 (Greater)	2011 (Greater)
Insgesamt	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%)[31]	7,925 (0.5%) [32]

^{[33][34][35][36]}

In 1926, the districts I, II, III of Buda were Jewish 8%,11%,10% respectively. The 19 thousand 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.^{[citation needed]}

In the countryside of the post-WW1 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

# 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%

^[37]

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

^[29][38]

Those who could afford went to study to other European countries like Austria, Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia.
In 1930, of all males aged six and older,^[39]

Schooling	>= 8 years	>= 12 years	university degree
General population	10.8%	5.8%	2.1%
Jews in the countryside	36.6%	17.0%	5.0%
Jews in Budapest	56.5%	31.7%	8.1%

Seven of the thirteen Nobel prize winners born in Hungary are Jewish. In sports, 55.6% of the individual gold medal winners of Hungary at the Summer Olympic Games between 1896 and 1912 were Jewish. This number dropped to 17.6% in the interwar period of 1924-1936.^{[citation needed]}

Period	1896-1912	1924-1936	1948-1956	1960-1972	1976-1992 (1984 excluded)	1996-2008
# of Olympics	5	4	3	4	4	4
Total Golds	442	482	440	684	903	1172
Hungarian Golds	11	22	35	32	33	26
Hungarian/total World	2.49%	4.56%	7.95%	4.68%	3.65%	2.22%
Hungarian Individual Gold	9	17	26	22	27	16
Hungarian Jewish Individual	5	3	6	4	0	0
Jewish/total individual Hungarian	55.56%	17.65%	23.08%	18.18%	0%	0%
Jews in Gold Teams	57.14% = 8/14	28.21%= 11/39
Jews in population	4.99% (1910)	5.12% (1930)	1.45% (1949)			0.13% (2001)

Revolution[edit]

More than 10,000 Jews died and thousands were wounded and disabled fighting for Hungary in World War I. But these sacrifices by patriotic Hungarian Jews may have been outweighed by the chaotic events following the war's end.

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.^[8]

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 (21 March), 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.^[8]

Kun's regime was crushed after four and a half months when the Romanian army entered Budapest; it was quickly followed by the reactionary forces under the command of the former Austro-Hungarian admiral, Miklós Horthy.

The sufferings endured during the brief revolution, and their exploitation by ultra-nationalist movements, helped generate stronger suspicions among non-Jewish Hungarians, and undergirded pre-existing anti-Semitic views.

Beginning in July 1919, officers of Horthy's National Army engaged in a brutal string of counter-reprisals against Hungarian communists and their allies, real or imagined.^[40] 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).^[41] Tallying the numbers of victims of the different terror campaigns in this period is still a matter of some political dispute^[42] 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.^[8][43][44]

The Holocaust[edit]

Interwar years[edit]

"There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world...."

Winston Churchill, July 11, 1944

In the first few decades of the 20th century the Jews of Hungary numbered roughly 5 percent of the population. This minority had managed to achieve great commercial success, and Jews were disproportionately represented in the professions, relative to their numbers.

In 1921 Budapest, 88% of the members of the stock exchange and 91% of the currency brokers were Jews, many of them ennobled. In interwar Hungary, more than half and perhaps as much as 90 percent of Hungarian industry was owned or operated by a few closely related Jewish banking families.

A Jewish Hungarian country girl around 1930.

Local customers in front of a Jewish grocery in Berzence, 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.^[45]

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."^[46]

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.^[8] The scapegoating began quickly. In 1920, Horthy's government passed a "Numerus Clausus", restricting the Jewish enrollment at universities to five percent or less, in order to reflect the Jewish population's percentage.

Anti-Jewish policies grew more repressive in the interwar period as Hungary's leaders, who remained committed to regaining territories lost in WW1, chose to align themselves (albeit warily) with the fascist governments of Germany and Italy – the international actors most likely to stand behind Hungary's claims.^[8] The inter-war years also saw the emergence of flourishing fascist groups, such as the Hungarian National Socialist Party and the Arrow Cross Party.

Anti-Jewish Laws (1938–1941)[edit]

Starting in 1938, Hungary under Miklós Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures in emulation of Germany's Nuremberg Laws. The first, promulgated on 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 anti-Jewish law (May 5, 1939), for the first time, defined Jews racially: individuals with two, three or four Jewish-born grandparents were declared Jewish. 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.^[47]

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^[48] 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%)^[49]

The "Third Jewish Law" (August 8, 1941) prohibited intermarriage and penalized sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jews.

January 1941 census[edit]

According to "Magyarország történelmi kronológiája",^[50] 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).

year of annexation; aus welchem ​​Land	Region	Jewish by religion in 1941	Jewish by law but not by confessed religion	jüdisch
pre-1938; Hungary	Budapest	185,000	36,000-72,000	221-257,000
pre-1938; Hungary	countryside	216,000	16,000-38,000	232-254,000
1938; Czechoslovakia	southern Slovakia	39,000	1,000-10,000	40-49,000
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	154-166,000
1941; Yugoslavia	Bácska and other territories	14,000	1,000	15,000
Total		725,000	57,000-136,000	782-861,000

The following is from another source, a statistical summary written in the beginning of 1944 and referring to the 1941 census data:^[51]

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%) [52]

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:^[53]

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[edit]

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.^[54][55]

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.

Nazis take over Hungary[edit]

Hungarian Jews on the Judenrampe (Jewish ramp) after disembarking from the transport trains, to be sent rechts! – to the right – meant labor; links! – to the left – the gas chambers. Photo from the Auschwitz Album (May 1944).

Hungarian Jewish Women and children from Carpatho-Ruthenia after their arrival at the Auschwitz deathcamp (May/June 1944). Photo from the Auschwitz Album.

On March 18, 1944, Adolf Hitler summoned Horthy to a conference in Austria, where he demanded greater acquiescence from the Hungarian state. Horthy resisted, but his efforts were fruitless – while he attended the conference, German tanks rolled into Budapest.^{[citation needed]}

On March 23, 1944, the government of Döme Sztójay was installed. Among his other first moves, Sztójay legalized the Arrow Cross Party, which quickly began organizing. 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 anti-Semite.^{[citation needed]}

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 Döme Sztójay and the Germans obligated Hungary to place at the disposal of the Reich 300,000 Jewish laborers. Five days later, on April 14, Endre, Baky, and Eichmann decided to deport all the Jews of Hungary.^{[citation needed]}

A Jew living in the Hungarian countryside in March 1944 had a less than 10% chance of surviving the following 12 months.^{[citation needed]} In Budapest, a Jew's chance of survival of the same 12 months was about 50%. Although from 1943, the BBC Polish Service was broadcasting about the exterminations, the BBC Hungarian Service had not mentioned Jews at all. After the German invasion in March 1944, the Hungarian Service did then broadcast warnings, but by then, it was too late. However, according to Professor Cesarani, although Jews who survived the deportations said that they had not been informed by their leaders, that no one had told them, there's plenty of evidence that the Hungarian Jews could have known.^[56] But 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."^[57]

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 Zionist youth movements that organized smuggling and those who paid individual smugglers on the border. The Romanians agreed to let those Jews in, despite heavy German pressure.^[58]

Deportation to Auschwitz[edit]

SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann,^[59] 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 15 June, and printed in The New York Times on 20 June.^[60] World leaders, including Pope Pius XII (25 June), President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 26 June, and King Gustaf V of Sweden on 30 June,^[61] subsequently pleaded with Horthy to use his influence to stop the deportations. Roosevelt specifically threatened military retaliation if the transports were not ceased. On 7 July, Horthy at last ordered the transports halted.^[62] According to historian Péter Sipos, the Hungarian government had already known about the Jewish genocide since 1943.^[63] Horthy's son and daughter-in-law both received copies of the Vrba-Wetzler report in early May, before mass deportations begn.^[a] The Vrba-Wetzler Report is believed to have been passed to Hungarian Zionist leader Rudolf Kastner no later than 28 April 1944; however, Kastner did not make it public.^[67]

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.^[68] 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),^[69] 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, 437,402 Jews had been deported, according to Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary Edmund Veesenmayer's official German reports.^[70] One hundred and forty-seven trains were sent to Auschwitz, where 75% of the people were exterminated on arrival. Because the crematoria couldn't cope with the number of corpses, special pits were dug near them, where bodies were simply burned. It has been estimated that one third of the murdered victims at Auschwitz were Hungarian.^[72]
For most of this time 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.^[73]

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.^[74]

Efforts to rescue Jews[edit]

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

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

Rome was liberated on June 4, D-day landing in Normandy was on June 6. But on June 15, the Mayor of Budapest designated 2,000 (5%) "starred" houses where every Jew (20%+) had to move together.^[75] The authorities thought that the Allies would not bomb Budapest because the "starred" houses were scattered around the town.

At the end of June, finally, the Pope in Rome, The King of Sweden, and, in strong terms, President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged the halt to the deportations. Admiral 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^[76]

According to Winston Churchill, in a letter to his Foreign Secretary dated July 11, 1944, "There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world...."^[77]

The Sztójay government rescheduled the date of deportation of the Jews of Budapest to Auschwitz to August 27.^[78] 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 [de]’s promise to see whether the Germans' demands would be met.^[79] Horthy finally dismissed Prime Minister Sztójay on August 29, the same day the Slovak National Uprising against the Nazis started.

In spite of the change of government, Hungarian troops occupied parts of Southern Transylvania, Romania, and massacred hundreds of Jews in Kissármás (Sărmăşel), Marosludás (Luduș) and other places starting September 4.

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

The "Arrow cross" rule[edit]

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.^[80] 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^[81] 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 Eichmann and 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.^[82]

Number of survivors[edit]

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 of the surviving deportees returned between May and December 1945, at least to check out the fate of their families. Their number was 116,000.^[83]

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% survival rate overall. According to another calculation, Hungary's Jewish population at the time of the German invasion was 800,000, of which 365,000 survived.^[84] The Hungarian Jewish population in Southern Transylvania fared much better, as Romania was not invaded by Germany and consequently did not have to deport Jews to Auschwitz, although 280,000 to 380,000 Jews perished at the hand of the Romanian authorities in other Romanian provinces or in Soviet territories under Romanian control.

Here are two very different estimates for the number of survivors of people considered Jewish (numbers are in thousands).

Region	1910.12. (religion)	1930.12. (religion)	1941.01. (religion)	1941.01. ("race")	1944.03. ("race")	[194512[85]	[194512[86]
Hu1= Budapest	204	204	185	257	-	–	151
Hu2= Countryside as of 1937	267	241	216	254	-	–	46
Hu1 + Hu2	471	445	401	511	-	270	197
Cz1= Carpatho Ruthenia, ex-Czech part only (1938+1939)				120	-	35	15
Cz2= Upper Hungary = Southern Slovakia (1938)				49	-	15	10
Cz1 + Cz2	130	150	159	169		50	25
Ro1= Northern Transylvania (1940)	134	148	151	166	-	41	30
Yu1= Lower Hungary = Vojvodina, Serbia (1941)	18	?	14	15	-	4	3
Total Hungarian ruled areas 1941–1944	753		725	861	800 [87]	365	255
Cz3= (Northern) Slovakia	102	88		89 [88]	30	-	10
Ro2= (Southern) Transylvania, Romania	44	45		41	40	-	39
Yu2= (Serbian part of) Banat, direct German rule	6	?		4	0[89]	-	0
At= Burgenland, annexed by Germany	5	5	0[90]		0	0	0
It= Fiume, Italy	1	?		?
Total pre-WW1 Hungary	911			995	870	-	304

The estimate of 995,000 people considered Jewish is not an exaggeration for 1941: the number of Jews was already 911,000 in the same territory three decades earlier; in addition, emigration was small in the 1920s and negligible in the 1930s.(From Hungary to the US, the total number of emigrants was 30,680 between 1921 and 1930 and 7,861 between 1931 and 1940).

Kastner Affair[edit]

Part of a series of articles on the Holocaust
Blood for goods
Writers Malchiel Gruenwald (Michtavim el haveray be'Mizrahiweekly pamphlet, 1952) Ben Hecht (Perfidy1961) Raul Hilberg (The Destruction of the European Jews1961) Rudolf Vrba (I Cannot Forgive1963) Randolph L. Braham (The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary1981) Motti Lerner (Kastner1985; The Kastner Trial1994) Jim Allen (Perdition1987) Yehuda Bauer (Jews for Sale?: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–19451994) Tuvia Friling (Arrows in the Dark1998) Ladislaus Löb (Rezső Kasztner2008) Anna Porter (Kasztner's Train2008) Gaylen Ross (Killing Kasztner2008) Jeremy Davidson (Tickling Leo2009) Paul Bogdanor (Kasztner’s Crime2016)

Rudolf Israel Kastner^[91] (1906–1957) was a Jewish-Hungarian journalist and lawyer who became known for his actions during the Holocaust in Hungary. He was one of the leaders of the Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah (Aid and Rescue Committee or Vaada), a small Jewish group in Budapest which helped Jewish refugees escape from Nazi-occupied territory into Hungary during World War II, and helped them escape after Hungary itself was invaded on 19 March 1944. Between May and July 1944, Hungary's Jews were being deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau at the rate of 12,000 people a day – for "resettlement," as the Nazis said. Kastner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann and Kurt Becher, both senior SS officers, to allow 1,685 of them to leave instead for Switzerland on what became known as the Kastner train, in exchange for money, gold, and diamonds.^[82] After the war, he testified in favor of Becher and other Nazis for the Nuremberg tribunal.^[92]

He later emigrated to Israel and was the subject of a famous 1954 libel casel regarding claims by Malchiel Gruenwald that Kastner had collaborated with the Nazi regime. Kastner allegedly knew deported Jews were being gassed at Auschwitz as early as April 1944 from the Vrba–Wetzler report but did little to warn the wider community. Through his inaction he helped the SS avoid the spread of panic, which would have slowed down the transports. The judge ruled in Gruenwald's favor, accusing Kastner of having "sold his soul to the devil." Kastner was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1957. Most of the decision was subsequently reversed by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1958, although a dissenting opinion agreed with the original judgement that Kastner had acted "knowingly and in bad faith, fulfilled the wishes ... of the Nazis, and thereby made it easier for them to perform the work of mass destruction." Kastner remains a controversial figure.

Joel Brand[edit]

Joel Brand (April 25, 1906 – July 13, 1964) was a Hungarian Jew known for his role during the Holocaust in trying to save the Hungarian-Jewish community from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Described by historian Yehuda Bauer as a brave adventurer who felt at home in underground conspiracies and card-playing circles, Brand teamed up with fellow Zionists in Budapest to form the Aid and Rescue Committee, a group that helped Jewish refugees in Nazi-occupied Europe escape to the relative safety of Hungary, before the Germans invaded that country too in March 1944.^[93] Following the German occupation of Hungary, Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of organising the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the German Reich, informed Brand of an offer of the SS leadership in Berlin to the Western Allies: all the Jews of Hungary would be spared in exchange of 10,000 trucks, to be used exclusively on the Eastern Front. With German travel documents, Brand traveled to Turkey and to Palestine to transmit this offer to officials of the Jewish Agency and the British government. According to his testimony in the Jerusalem trial of Eichmann in 1961, he met with scepticism and disbelief on the part of his interlocutors. He was arrested and jailed by the British authorities in Cairo. The British government publicly denounced the German offer in the press. Brand was very bitter that his pleas to save Hungary's Jews were unanswered.^[94]

Hungarian Gold Train[edit]

The Hungarian Gold Train was the case of a Nazi-operated train during World War II that carried stolen valuables, mostly Hungarian Jewish persons' property, from Hungary towards Berlin in 1945. After seizure of the train by American forces, almost none of the valuables were returned to Hungary or their rightful owners or their surviving family members.^[95][96]

Raoul Wallenberg[edit]

Using his staff to prepare Protective Passports under the authority of the Swedish Legation, Raoul Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews, and according to some accounts a hundred thousand - the later by preventing the murder of 70,000 residents of the Ghetto. At one point, he appeared personally at the railway station, insisting that many Jews on the train be removed, and presenting the Arrow Cross guards with the Protective Passports for many on the train. Carl Lutz, of the Swiss Legation, also saved many people in a similar manner.

In 1952–53 there were preparations in Budapest for a Moscow directed antisemitic show trial, claiming that Wallenberg was murdered by Hungary's Jewish leaders in 1945. The Jewish leaders were arrested and severely tortured, along with two non-Jews who helped Wallenberg rescue Jews: Pál Szalai and Károly Szabó. It was Szalai's discussion with Major General Gerhard Schmidhuber, at Wallenberg's request, which saved the estimated 70,000 Jews in the Budapest Ghetto. The victims of the show trial were saved only by Stalin's death on 5 March 1953. Yet they never fully recovered from the torture, and one of the two died shortly after his release.^{[citation needed]}

Budapest named Wallenberg as an honorary citizen in 2003. Several sites honor him, including Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park, which commemorates those who saved many of the city's Jews from deportation to extermination camps, and the building that housed the Swedish Embassy in 1945.

Communist rule[edit]

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 anti-Semitic 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). People of Jewish origin dominated the post-war Communist regime until 1952–53 when many were removed in a series of purges.^[97] During its first years, the regime's top membership and secret police were almost entirely Jewish, albeit naturally anti-religious.^[97] Leaders like Mátyás Rákosi, Ernő Gerő and Peter Gabor repudiated Judaism and were strict atheists per Communist doctrine. They even sometimes expressed anti-Semitic attitudes themselves. Indeed, under Communist rule from 1948 to 1988, Zionism was outlawed and Jewish observance was curtailed. Moreover, members of the upper class, Jews and Christians alike, were expelled from the cities to the provinces for 6–12 months in the early 1950s.

Jews were on both sides of the 1956 uprising.^[97] Some armed rebel leaders like István Angyal, an Auschwitz survivor executed on December 1, 1958, were Jewish. Jewish writers and intellectuals such as Tibor Déry, imprisoned from 1957 to 1961, occupied the forefront of the reform movement.^[97] After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, about 20,000 or so Jews fled the country. For instance, an estimated 20% of the Hungarian refugees entering Canada in 1957 was Jewish.^[98] 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, but it was not followed by antisemitic campaigns as in Poland or the Soviet Union.

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.

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.^[99] Critics have asserted that the sums provided are trivial, however, and represent nothing more than a symbolic gesture.
"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",^[100] while offering 33 times this amount to relatives of the victims of the Communist era. The reparation offer was based on Law XXIX of 1997 so it was in fact passed under Gyula Horn's socialist-free democrat government (1994–1998).^[101]

Between 2002 and 2010 economic situation deteriorated. In 2007 extreme elements have established a paramilitary organization ("Hungarian Guard") with uniforms reminiscent to those of Nyilas Party in the 1930s and during WW2. However, this organisation was disbanded in 2009 by a court order. At the 2010 election, the openly antisemitic "Jobbik" party still received 16.7% of the vote. The economy has subsequently recovered under the centre-right Fidesz government - which maintains a friendly relationship with Israel's Likud Party - and Jobbik rescinded its antisemitic stance, entering into an election alliance with Hungary's leftist and Liberal parties. Its leader, Gábor Vona, publicly denounced the party's former antisemitism in Budapest's Spinoza Club, a cultural establishment frequented by Jewish intellectuals.

The 2001 Hungary census recorded 12,871 people declared Jewish religion. Other estimates about the number of Jews in Hungary range from 50,000 to 150,000 (no methodology or data collection method is given for these estimates); intermarriage rates are around 60%. T in the census of 2001). Hungary has a number of synagogues, including the Dohány Street Synagogue, which is the second largest synagogue in the world. Jewish education is well organised: there are three Jewish high schools (Lauder Javne, Wesselényi and Anna Frank). Hungary is also home to the Budapest University of Jewish Studies. There is a flourishing Jewish cultural life in Budapest, with regular festivals, concerts, literature events, conferences, etc., frequented not only by locals but by an international crowd as well. (For an upcoming event see: Jewish Summer Festival in Budapest)

Since the fall of Communism in 1989, there has been a modest spiritual revival of Jewish observance. In 2003, Slomó Köves (Chabad) became the first Orthodox Rabbi to be ordained in Hungary since the Holocaust. The ceremony was attended by Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, as well as the President of Hungary. At the other end of the spectrum a Reform congregation on Anglo-American lines, known as Szím Salómhas been established under the leadership of Rabbi Katalin Kelemen. The Hungarian government supports this spiritual revival, among others by funding the renovation of synagogues, the construction of a Jewish hospital and Jewish memorial centres, and subsidising Jewish schools, social institutions and cultural events. Between 2011 and 2018, these subsidies amounted to HUF 21 billion (EUR 65 million).

During 2011, 1,014,682 taxpayers of Hungary gave 1% of their 2010 taxes to religious denominations. The Jewish denominations received money from 7,849 taxpayers (0.77%): 6,001 people offered money to the Neologs, 1,120 to Chabad, 435 to the two Reform communities and 290 to the Orthodox communities.^[102] Two [three] years later, 6,835 [7,277] people gave 1% of their 2012 [2013] taxes to the Neologs, 1,551 [1,520] to Chabad and 286 [270] to the orthodox community. The reform communities were not allowed to get money from the taxes, since they became not officially recognized in 2011.^[103][104]

The following table shows the percentage of Jewish taxpayers and their weight in the tax base among those Hungarian taxpayers who voluntarily directed 1% of their personal income taxes to go to a religious denomination:

Tax year	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
# of Jewish denominations	2	2	4	4	4	4	5	5	5	3	3	3	3	3	3	3
% of taxpayers	1.17	1.07	1.10	1.04	0.97	0.88	0.79	0.78	0.77	0.75	0.79	0.88	0.86	0.95	1.04	1.07
% of taxes	2.33	2.14	2.21	2.06	1.95	1.74	1.62	1.62	1.72	1.34	1.31	1.36	1.26	1.42	1.50	1.46

In July 2011, the Hungarian government and legislature classified the religions into "recognized" (14 denominations) and "not recognized" (200+) categories.(In December 2011, the number of "recognized" denominations was increased to 31). Orthodox Jewish, Status quo ante (which is the same as Chabad since 2004), and Neolog denominations were recognized, while the Progressive "Szím Salóm" and the Reform "Bet Orim" communities fell into the "not recognized" category, therefore they are no longer in the table above, starting 2011.

Jews born after the Holocaust, i.e. in or after 1945, started to retire in 2007, and this causes rapid decline in the table above, since people on Social Security do not pay personal income taxes in Hungary at present.

Historical population (using current borders)[edit]

Historical Hungarian Jewish population
Year	Pop.	±%
1920	473,400	—
1930	444,567	−6.1%
1939	400,000	−10.0%
[1945	165,000	−58.8%
1951	130,000	−21.2%
1960	80,000	−38.5%
1970	70,000	−12.5%
1980	65,000	−7.1%
1990	57,000	−12.3%
2000	52,000	−8.8%
2010	48,600	−6.5%
Source:

Hungary's Jewish population (within its current borders) has 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 these massive declines, Hungary has the largest Jewish population in Eastern Europe outside of the former Soviet Union today.^[107]

See also[edit]

Individual people[edit]

1. ^ After the war, Horthy claimed that he did not know about the Final Solution until August, and that he thought the Jews were being sent to concentration camps for labor.^[65] Some historians accept this claim.^[66]
   

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19. ^ Decree to quicken the process of race validation, May 16, 1942 - quoted in Fegyvertelen álltak az aknamezőkön, 1962, edited by Elek Karsai, volume 2, page 8
    


20. ^ ^{a b} Magyar Statisztikai Szemle 1939-10, p.1115
    


21. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica 1911, Budapest article
    


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24. ^ Raphael Patai, Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology By p.435
    


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30. ^ "Pallas lexikona". Mek.iif.hu. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


31. ^ In addition, 35.6% of the people of Budapest were atheists, non-religious or did not want to answer the question about their religion
    


32. ^ "In addition, 56.8% of the people of Budapest were atheists, non-religious or did not want to answer the question about their religion" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2013-04-18. Retrieved 2013-03-28.
    


33. ^ Budapest Székesfőváros Statisztikai Évkönyve az 1944-1946. évekről, KSH, Budapest 1948, p. 14 (Hungarian)
    


34. ^ 1949. évi népszámlálás, 9. Demográfiai eredmények, KSH, Budapest 1950, p. 324 (Hungarian)
    


35. ^ 1949. évi népszámlálás, vallási adatok településenként, KSH, Budapest 1995, p. 17 (Hungarian)
    


36. ^ "Population by denomination, 2001 census". Nepszamlalas.hu. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


37. ^ Magyar Zsidó Lexikon. Budapest, 1929.
    


38. ^ Patai, Raphael. Jews of Hungary: history, culture, psychology. p. 474.
    


39. ^ Raphael Patai - The Jews of Hungary: history, culture, psychology, page 516
    


40. ^ Bodo, Bela, Paramilitary Violence in Hungary After the First World War, East European Quarterly, June 22, 2004
    


41. ^ Admiral Miklos Horthy: MemoirsU. S. Edition: Robert Speller & Sons, Publishers, New York, NY, 1957
    


42. ^ see Andrew Simon's annotations to Horthy's MemoirsEnglish Edition, 1957
    


43. ^ "Mihály Biró". Graphic Witness. Archived from the original on 2012-09-03. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


44. ^ "Mihály Biró". Graphic Witness. Archived from the original on 2012-08-10. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


45. ^ All these figures are from Slezkine, Yuri. The Jewish Century. Princeton, 2004. ISBN 0-691-11995-3
    


46. ^ Patai, Raphael, The Jews of Hungary, Wayne State University Press, pp. 546
    


47. ^ Braham, Randolph L., ed. (2007). A Magyarországi Holokauszt Földrajzi Enciklopediája [The Geographic Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary]. 1. Budapest: Park Publishing. ISBN 9789635307388.
    


48. ^ "VoksCentrum - a választások univerzuma". Vokscentrum.hu. Archived from the original on 2012-07-27. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


49. ^ "VoksCentrum - a választások univerzuma". Vokscentrum.hu. Archived from the original on 2012-02-13. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


50. ^ Volume 3, p. 979, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1982
    


51. ^ "Magyar Statisztikai Szemle Jan-March 1944". Ksh.hu. Archived from the original on 2012-11-14. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


52. ^ Statisztikai szemle 1941-11, p. 773
    


53. ^ Statisztikai szemle 1944 4-5, p. 96
    


54. ^ "degob.org". degob.org. 1941-08-28. Archived from the original on 2007-03-09. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


55. ^ Betekintő. "A few thousand of the deportees were simply abandoned by their captors in the areas surrounding Kaminets-Podolsk. Most subsequently perished with other Jewish residents of the area as a result of transports or aktions in the many ghettos that were established but a handful survived, either by returning to the area of their homes, or otherwise. The number of people deported over the Carpathians was 19,426 according to a document found in 2012". Betekinto.hu. Archived from the original on 2014-05-17. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


56. ^ Mike Thomson (13 November 2012). "Could the BBC have done more to help Hungarian Jews?". BBC (British broadcasting service). Archived from the original on 2018-06-21. Retrieved 2018-06-20. the BBC broadcast every day, giving updates on the war, general news, and opinion pieces on Hungarian politics. But among all these broadcasts, there were crucial things that were not being said, things that might have warned thousands of Hungarian Jews of the horrors to come in the event of a German occupation. A memo setting out policy for the BBC Hungarian Service in 1942 states: "We shouldn't mention the Jews at all." By 1943, the BBC Polish Service was broadcasting about the exterminations. And yet, his policy of silence on the Jews was followed right up until the German invasion in March 1944. After the tanks rolled in, the Hungarian Service did then broadcast warnings. But by then, it was too late. "Many Hungarian Jews who survived the deportations claimed that they had not been informed by their leaders, that no one had told them. But there's plenty of evidence that they could have known", said David Cesarani, Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London.
    


57. ^ Kathryn Berman and Asaf Tal. ""The Uneasy Closeness to Ourselves" Interview with Dr. Götz Aly, German Historian and Journalist". Yad Vashem, The International School for Holocaust Studies. Archived from the original on 2019-01-16. Retrieved 2019-01-16. the Hungarian Jews in 1944 knew all about it. They had a lot of information because there were Jewish refugees coming to Hungary, in 1942 and 1943, giving reports about what was happening in Poland, and what was the reaction from the Jews? This is Hungary. This might be happening in Galicia to Polish Jews, but this can’t happen in our very cultivated Hungarian state. It is impossible that even early in 1944, the Jewish leadership there didn’t have some information about what was happening. There were people escaping from the extermination camps just 80 km from the Hungarian border and there were letters and reports and of course the BBC. I think part of the problem of the Holocaust was that potential victims couldn’t believe the information. The idea that something so atrocious would come from Germany and from European civilized environment was so unimaginable that they didn’t take it for real, even when they received overwhelming reports from the death camps.
    


58. ^ Yehuda Bauer (1981). American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945. Wayne State University Press. p. 354. ISBN 0-8143-1672-7. Another major activity, which was financed chiefly by Palestinian funds but which also received some support from JDC, was the smuggling into Rumania of Hungarian Jews when the deportations to Auschwitz began in that country in May, 1944. It is not quite clear just how many Hungarian Jews managed to get across, but the number was in the neighborhood of 4,0(X). Most of them came by a route organized by the youth movements, though some paid individual smugglers on the border. In Istanbul, Alexander Cretianu, the Rumanian minister, agreed that these Jews should be let into his country. Filderman and Zissu obtained similar assurances in Bucharest, despite heavy German pressure.
    


59. ^ transcripts of his entire trial online: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/ Archived 2012-08-28 at WebCite
    


60. ^ Rees, Laurence, Auschwitz: A New HistoryPublic Affairs, 2005. ISBN 1-58648-357-9
    


61. ^ A holokauszt Magyarországon: A deportálások leállítása Archived 2006-07-09 at the Wayback Machine (in Hungarian; retrieved 11 September 2006)
    


62. ^ Szita, Szabolcs, Trading in Lives? Central European University Press, Budapest, 2005, pp. 50–54
    


63. ^ Péter Sipos, Horthy Miklós és Magyarország német megszállása Archived 2015-04-20 at the Wayback Machine, História (volume 04), 1994
    



64. ^ Horthy:, Admiral Nicholas (2000). Admiral Nicholas Horthy Memoirs. Nicholas Horthy, Miklós Horthy, Andrew L. Simon, Nicholas Roosevelt (illustrated ed.). Simon Publications LLC. p. 348. ISBN 0-9665734-3-9.
    


65. ^ Ilona Edelsheim-Gyulai, Becsület és kötelesség, part I, p. 264. Európa press, Budapest, 2001. ISBN 963-07-6544-6
    


66. ^ Gilbert 1981, pp. 201–205.
    


67. ^ "Death trains in 1944: the Kassa list". Degob.hu. 1944-05-15. Archived from the original on 2012-03-30. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


68. ^ "Auschwitz: Chronology". Ushmm.org. Archived from the original on 2013-04-19. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


69. ^ Veesenmayer's telegram to Wilhelmstrasse (German Foreign Ministry) on July 11. "The concentration and transportation of the Jews from Zone V and the Budapest suburbs was concluded with 55,741 Jews on July 9, as planned. The total result from Zones I-V and the Budapest suburbs has been 437,402." p. 881, document #697 in "Wilhelmstrasse és Magyarország", Budapest, Kossuth, 1968. Secondary source: Gabor Kadar, Zoltan Vagi "Self-Financing Genocide: The Gold Train – The Becher Case – The Wealth of Jews, Hungary" (Central European University Press, 2004) ISBN 978-963-9241-53-4
    



70. ^ Gábor Kádár – Zoltán Vági: Magyarok Auschwitzban. (Hungarians in Auschwitz) In Holocaust Füzetek 12. Budapest, 1999, Magyar Auschwitz Alapítvány-Holocaust Dokumentációs Központ, pp. 92–123.
    


71. ^ "The Auschwitz Album". yadvashem.org. Archived from the original on 2013-03-18. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


72. ^ "(Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottság)". Degob.hu. 1944-03-19. Archived from the original on 2012-02-15. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


73. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-04-11. Retrieved 2014-04-30.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
    


74. ^ Robert J. Hanyok (2004). "Eavesdropping on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939–1945" (PDF). National Security Agency, United States Cryptologic History:. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-10-29. In late July there was a lull in the deportations. After the failed attempt on Hitler's life, the Germans backed off from pressing Horthy's regime to continue further, large-scale deportations. Smaller groups continued to be deported by train. At least one German police message decoded by GC&CS revealed that one trainload of 1,296 Jews from the town of Sarvar in western Hungary Hungarian Jews being rounded up in Budapest (Courtesy: USHMM) had departed for Auschwitz on August 4.112 In late August, Horthy refused Eichmann's request to re-start the deportations. Himmler ordered Eichmann to leave Budapest.
    


75. ^ "Winston Churchill's The Second World War and the Holocaust's Uniqueness," Istvan Simon Archived July 26, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
    


76. ^ German embassy telegram sent by Grell [Horst Theodor Paul Grell, Legationsrat and SS Hauptsturmfuehrer] on August 19, 1944. The plan envisaged 6 trains with 20,000 people on August 27, then 3 trains with 9,000 people a day thereafter.
    


77. ^ Yehuda Bauer (1981). American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939–1945. Wayne State University Press. p. 415. ISBN 0-8143-1672-7. Himmler did in fact issue a definite order against it which reached Budapest on the night between August 24 and August 25, as Veesenmayer reported to Ribbentrop on the latter day. This order stood after Himmler received Becher’s cable. It seems, therefore, that in return for nothing more than Mayer’s promise to see whether the Germans’ demands would be met, Himmler was ready to desist from the deportation of Budapest Jewry.
    


78. ^ Jews of Hungary: history, culture, psychology By Raphael Patai, p. 585
    


79. ^ "Spared Lives: The Actions of Three Portuguese Diplomats During World War II". The Newark Public Library. August 24, 2000. Archived from the original on August 14, 2007. Retrieved 2009-07-28.
    


80. ^ ^{a b} Anna Porter. Kasztner's Train. 2007
    


81. ^ Braham, Randolph L. - Tibori Szabó, Zoltán, A Magyarországi Holokauszt Földrajzi Enciklopediája [The Geographic Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary]. Budapest: Park Publishing, 3 vol. (2006). Vol. 1, p. 91.
    


82. ^ Tamás Stark (1993). "A magyar zsidóság a vészkorszakban és a második világháború után" (PDF). Regio - Kisebbség, politika, társadalom. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2007-03-29. Retrieved 2009-05-27.
    


83. ^ "Tamás Stark: Hungarian Jewry during the Holocaust (Hungarian and English)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2014-03-11. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


84. ^ based on several sources, including Encyclopedia Judaica, 1971
    


85. ^ Veesenmayer's report on October 28, 1944, "Number of Jews on March 19 – 800,000. Delivered to Reich territory – 430,000. On forced labor – 150,000. In Budapest 200,000" p. 907, document #720 in "Wilhelmstrasse és Magyarország", Budapest, Kossuth, 1968
    


86. ^ Slovak census of December 15, 1940 found 88,951 Jews in Slovakia, quoted by Braham, chapter 28, footnote 39
    


87. ^ "Holocaust in Serbia - Semlin Judenlager - Open University". Open.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2013-02-16. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
    


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89. ^ He is also known as Rezső Kasztner, and Israel or Yisrael Kastner/Kasztner.
    


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91. ^ Bauer, Yehuda. Jews for Sale: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945Yale University Press, 1994, p. 194.
    


92. ^ Alex Weissberg: "Desperate Mission: Joel Brand’s Story", Borodino Books (July 11, 2017)
    


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Holocaust[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Braham, Randolph L. & Bock, Julia (2008), comp. & ed. The Holocaust in Hungary: a selected and annotated bibliography: 2000–2007. [New York]: Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center/City University of New York; Boulder : Social Science Monographs ISBN 0-88033-628-5


• Miron, Guy, "Center or Frontier: Hungary and Its Jews, Between East and West", Journal of Levantine Studies, vol. 1, Summer 2011, pp. 67-91


• Patai, Raphael, The Jews of Hungary: history, Culture, PsychologyDetroit, Michigan, Wayne State University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8143-2561-0


• Patai, Raphael, Apprentice in Budapest: Memories of a World That Is No More Lanham, Maryland, Lexington Books, 2000, ISBN 0-7391-0210-9

External links[edit]