A Case Study on Trianon

The Jewish population of pre-Trianon Hungary enjoyed greater legal security, social acceptance and economic well-being than the Jewish communities of other East Central European states. However, anti-Semitism was present and affected, with varying degrees of intensity, all strata of society. It ranged from the cultural snobbery of the aristocracy to the crude popular stereotyping of the lower classes. During the last decades of the Dual Monarchy, to the more traditional, religion-based prejudice was added a politically motivated anti-Semitism that was the product of the reaction to the modernization that was slowly changing the character of society.

The century before World War I witnessed the rapid and fundamental improvement of the condition of the Jews of Hungary. The legislations promulgated, the economic opportunities created, the general absence of anti-Jewish agitation, the enlightened attitude of the ruling circles, all created a propitious atmosphere for growth for the Jewish community. This was noted in neighboring lands.¹ There was a massive migration of Jews into Hungary, primarily from Galicia. The estimated number of Jews in Hungary in 1787 was only 93,000. At the time of the Revolution of 1848, Jews numbered 336,000, by 1869, 542,000, and the census of 1910 showed the presence of 911,227 out of a total population of 18,265,493 in Hungary proper. This was a spectacular increase, an eloquent testimony of Hungary's appeal to the generally persecuted and shunned Jews of East Central Europe.

Numerical increase was accompanied by official acts leading toward legal equality. The Act of Emancipation was granted by the revolutionary government in 1849. In 1867 legal equality between Christian and Jews was promulgated, and in 1895 Judaism was granted the status of a "received religion," a designation that entitled it to governmental support and, ironically, a designation that was withheld from a number of Christian denominations.²

There were a number of factors that played a role in producing a favorable climate for Jews in Hungary. The Dual Monarchy was a multinational empire, a hopeless amalgamation of nationalities large and small, with conflicting aims and programs, and with limited appreciation for the accomplishments and aspirations of neighboring groups. The national question, in the Age of Nationalism, was a simmering volcano ready to erupt and jeopardize not only the tranquillity of the state, but the state itself. The two nationalities in power, when not preoccupied with their own conflict, were engaged in a perennial balancing act, with a constantly shifting program of concessions and threats vis-a-vis their minorities, to preserve the status quo. The Census of 1910, the last one held in Austria-Hungary, identified 54.5% of the population of Hungary as Hungarian. This majority status, extremely important for political as well as psychological reasons, was gained with the cooperation of Jews who were not classified as a separate national group and who overwhelmingly opted for Hungarian nationality. Jews constituted only 5% of the population, but it was the difference between a majority or a minority position for the Hungarians. A Hungarian-Jewish alliance was formed.

Jewish self-identification as Hungarians was only partially motivated by the advantages such declaration produced. A large segment of the Jewish community enthusiastically and voluntarily submitted to the process of Magyarization. Jews in Hungary spoke the Hungarian language, championed the Hungarian culture, assimilated, intermarried and energetically supported the objectives of Hungarian nationalism.³ This process of Jewish acculturation was encouraged and rewarded by the Hungarian establishment. In addition to offering badly needed numerical extension, it also confirmed the claim of Hungarian cultural superiority. It could, and did, serve as an example for the other minorities.

The Hungarian-Jewish alliance was a natural one, based on self-interest. The Hungarian squirearchy was primarily concerned about the perpetuation of its dominant political position, and it appreciated Jewish support. It was also very comfortable with this support, for the Jews could never mature into a threatening partner, with a political program calling for autonomy or separate existence. Simultaneously, the emergence of a Jewish capitalist class, and Jewish economic pursuits in general, received official encouragement. The Hungarian gentry was not overly attracted to these

activities and Jewish penetration was preferred to that of any other ethnic group, including, or perhaps especially, that of the German minority.

The Hungarian-Jewish partnership was an effective combination for it blended political authority with economic power. The city of Budapest may be seen as the symbol of this viable and productive alliance. The city was the capital of a large, heterogeneous state ruled over by Hungarians, who controlled all the institutions and instruments of political power. Budapest was also the home of a large Jewish community, comprising almost a quarter of the population. The city and its environments were in the process of being developed into the industrial heartland of the state by a predominantly Jewish entrepreneurial class. Budapest was also the center of a secularized and magyarized Jewish intelligentsia that played a very active role in the cultural life of the nation. It was a city where the social barriers separating Christian and Jew (especially in the upper segments of each group) were lowered, and many Jews completely abandoned their Jewish legacy and embraced a Hungarian identity.⁴

Anti-Semitism, and particularly its more violent and uncontrollable impulses, was frowned upon by the ruling establishment. The ruling circles perceived themselves as a part of the liberal tradition that endorsed the concept of toleration, and sensed that any attack on their junior partners was an attack on the system and on a Hungarian hegemony tenuously maintained. It may be suggested, already at this early point, that the chief component of the Hungarian policy toward Jews was not a very strong philosophical conviction, but rather a pragmatic understanding of national/class interest.

Before Trianon, Jews needed Hungarian assistance to gain legal and social acceptance and economic advancement, but the Hungarians also needed the Jews to maintain their monopoly on political power. C. A. Macartney concludes that

The talent and industry of the Jewish industrial and financial bourgeoisie was indeed the most powerful prop to the ruling class, which could not otherwise have existed and developed as it did.⁵

Trianon was the watershed in the history of the Jews in Hungary. The pressure of domestic and international events that led to Trianon and its consequences destroyed the Hungarian-Jewish alliance

and gradually wiped out all the benefits and advantages that it bestowed on Hungarian Jewry. Trianon-Hungary was a compact and homogeneous state where the dominant nationality, the Hungarians, constituted approximately 90% of the population. The Jewish minority was not needed anymore to maintain a numerical superiority. In addition, Jews were now one of the two significant minorities in Hungary, the other being the Germans.

Trianon-Hungary was the Hungary of Miklos Horthy. The Horthy regime was established by military force after the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet primarily at the hands of a Romanian Interventionist Army. It was an authoritarian system of government, whose authoritarianism was unsuccessfully concealed by a facade of pseudo-parliamentarianism. It was not a totalitarian or fascist dictatorship: some opposition, in Parliament as well as in the Press, was tolerated. Horthy, as Regent, was the symbol and the final authority for a ruling group that was never monolithic in composition or with respect to its political orientation. It was a reactionary regime that moved ideologically further to the Right with the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship and the growth of German influence in international relations.

Anti-Semitism was a basic doctrine of Horthy-Hungary. It appeared consistently, though in a variety of forms and with varying degrees of intensity during the life-span of the regime. Anti-Semitism is usually the product of a number of factors; political, socioeconomic, religious or psychological, and the Hungarian version was no different. However, it is possible to isolate seven primary factors that produced the anti-Semitism of post-Trianon Hungary, and they were: the "Szeged idea"; domestic politicking; the identification of Jews with the dissemination of communist propaganda: the preponderance of Jewish capital in the economic life of the nation; the fear that the Jewish population was growing too rapidly and posed a threat to the character and identity of the nation; the belief that the Jews were an alien and unassimilable minority and the conviction that anti-Jewish acts at home would earn diplomatic support for foreign policy objectives.

The "Szeged idea"

Szeged, a large city in Southern Hungary, was the headquarters of the Horthy-led counter-revolutionary forces. The "Szeged idea" was

the philosophical underpinning of a movement that generally stressed action rather than thought. It was a program that envisioned specific and radical changes. It was the original program of the anti-democratic interests that sponsored and carried out the White Terror (Autumn 1919-Summer 1920), and established a dictatorship that ruled the state until the German military occupation in the final phase of World War II. The program, pre-dating the establishment of any fascist system of government, suggested a form of nascent fascism.⁶

Anti-Semitism was a central feature of the Szeged program. It expressed violent opposition to communism, and the Jews were identified as the prime supporters of that doctrine. The program promoted the idea of an exclusionary and racialist Hungarian state where Jews, by definition, could not fit in. It expressed hostility toward the feudal aristocracy that traditionally acted as both the ally and protector of the Jewish capitalist class. It promised jobs in the professions and commerce, where Jews predominated. It was a program appealing to Hungarians and directed against non-Hungarians, and in the long run against Magyarized non-Hungarians as well. There was a call for the radical transformation of Hungarian society, to a very great extent, at the expense of the Jewish community. It was essentially a class-oriented program with benefits offered to the middle classes, and it was also a classic right-radical manifesto, relying on revolutionary rhetoric-it promised fundamental changes, while at the same time making a commitment to preserve tradition. In practical terms little was offered to the urban and rural lower classes. The radical nature of the program was very much evident in the call for the solution of the Jewish problem. The idea was translated into action with promptness by the Order Detachments that conducted a bloody pogrom against the Jews in the countryside while Horthy was still in the process of consolidating his power. The anti-Semitic credentials of the regime were solidly established.

The "Szeged idea" was promoted by a host of officially sanctioned overt and covert organizations. There were patriotic and secret societies, professional organizations, student federations, veterans' groups, irredentist and racist associations. The common feature of all of these formations was the ineligibility of Jews to become members. Some of the associations exercised considerable power. The most potent group was the Hungarian Association of National Defense (Magyar Orszagos Vedero Egyesulet or MOVE), organized

by officers but including civilians as well. It operated behind the scenes and served as both a pressure group and as a mutual help society. Its success was ensured by the high positions many of its leading members occupied in the regime. In January of 1919 Gyula Gombos, the future Premier, was elected as the President. Militant anti-Semitism was a central feature of the movement. Gombos issued anti-Semitic pamphlets with racialist overtones years before that kind of literature became politically fashionable. The civilian inner core of MOVE received the appropriate designation of the Hungarian Scientific Race-Protecting Society (Magyar Tudomanyos Fajvedo Egyesulet).⁷ The middle class ambitions of the supporters were expressed by attempts to squeeze the Jews out of the professions. In 1920 legislation was enacted, the notorious numerus clausus, that restricted the number of Jewish students in higher education to 5%, the approximate percentage of Jews in the total population.

The government did not always pursue policies that were consistent with the spirit of Szeged. The "idea" was often toned down and diluted by successive waves of officials who were forced to govern under the pressures of domestic and international considerations. The numerus clausus was not enforced. The degrees earned by Hungarian Jewish students at foreign universities were acknowledged without difficulty by the authorities. But the "Szeged idea" remained, sometimes only as an abstraction, the ideological foundation of the regime.

Domestic politicking

The Szeged movement, from its very beginning, was a coalition of forces. It was an umbrella designation, for under its banners there were different interest groups with different backgrounds and orientations. There was tension and constant jockeying for positions, power struggles between zealous and lukewarm supporters of the (Szeged) program. The latter would pay lip service to the ideals without any strong desire to implement many aspects of it. This, more moderate, wing was more concerned with the establishment of conservative orderliness, and regarded the radical points of the pro-gram as sheer rhetoric. The militant wing, on the other hand, consisted of the true believers. There was also a class differentiation between the two groups. The lukewarm supporters of the program were led by representatives of the traditional upper classes, while the

militants had a more bourgeois identification. The extreme Szeged orientation had great appeal to the bitter refugees from the successor states, who had comfortable pasts but dim prospects for the future, to the junior officers of the Army who had limited promotional opportunities, to the many jobless diploma-holders, to the struggling Christian commercial interests and to ambitious politicians on the fringes of the establishment. Anti-Semitism was the cutting edge, for it identified and it differentiated. Even so, the Bethlen era (1921-1931) was characterized by the ascendancy of the moderate wing. In the 1920's the Jewish question was downplayed, the Bethlen program was dedicated to consolidation and normalization, and to the gaining of international support. Anti-Semitic acts did not fit into this scheme-the goals of the government would have been jeopardized by them. Militants, like Gombos, felt betrayed. In 1923 the more resentful Szegedists temporarily seceded from the Government Party and organized an opposition group: the Party of Racial Defense (Fajvedo Part).

Tokenism on the Jewish question indicated indifference to the entire Szeged program. Attacks on the government on the Jewish question by supporters of the regime could mobilize support within the ruling establishment as well as attract popular support against policies and individual policy-makers. It is very much revealing of the ideological atmosphere prevailing in the Horthy establishment that even those individual officials who were not particularly anti-Semitic had to adopt an anti-Semitic posture to disarm potential critics. In the 1920's the government was controlled by "reasonable" anti-Semites. The Bethlenite definition of an anti-Semite as one who hates the Jews more than necessary exposed a mentality that tempered bias with doses of cynicism and pragmatism. The Jewish minority viewed the Bethlen period as an era of relief, a peaceful decade following the brutalities of the White Terror. In the 1930's the more militant Szegedists gained the upper hand and the consequences were inevitably harsh for the Jews.

The Jewish question, freely discussed in Parliament as in the Press, enabled opponents of the regime to agitate and to challenge the legitimacy of the system. Demands for anti-Semitic action served as a generally understood code-word for the dismantling of the existing system and substituting a radically reorganized Hungarian society. Supporters of the New Order indicted the anti-Semitic Horthy regime for not taking drastic action against the Jews. Radical

anti-Semitism, therefore, was not only an attack on the Jews, but also on the regime itself. The government tried to outflank the opposition by becoming more militant on the Jewish question. The First Jewish Law passed in 1938 and the Second Jewish Law, enacted a year later, attempted to undercut the growing strength of the Radical-Right opposition. These anti-Jewish measures were denounced as inadequate by political leaders seeking power. Former Premier Bela Imredy accused the government of not being genuinely anti-Semitic, at the very time anti-Jewish laws were promulgated by it. Ferenc Szalasi and the Arrow Cross movement spotlighted the cordial relationships that continued to exist between leading members of the regime, including the Regent, and Jewish capitalists.

The absence of a radical mass movement of the Left channeled the revolutionary impulses of the lower classes toward extremist right-wing parties, where the call for a radical overhaul of Hungarian society was expressed in politically and legally acceptable anti-Semitic terminology. The Arrow Cross, a violently anti-Semitic party, received massive support from the working classes. Its fanatical anti-Semitic slogans attracted the disenfranchised and the oppressed. In the 1939 election, despite an electoral system that was rigged against it, it gained 31 mandates. The Party did particularly well in industrial centers-in "red" Csepel for example. Indeed "The Arrow Cross performed a function that the socialists were unable to fulfill."⁸

The identification of Jews with the dissemination

of communist propaganda

Anti-communism was an ideological mainstay of the Horthy period. Hatred and fear of communism was the catalyst that produced the counter-revolutionary Szeged movement. The anti-communism of the regime, unlike so many of the other postures periodically embraced, had a pure and pristine quality. The short-lived Soviet that pre-dated its coming to power, as well as the looming shadow of the Soviet Union, combined to produce a rigid brand of political intolerance. The Communist Party was driven underground, vigorously and successfully persecuted. Its leadership was either imprisoned or driven into exile. The Party was never able to establish a viable internal apparatus. Its membership in December of 1929 was down to 1,000.⁹ The large majority of the population

genuinely endorsed this crusading anti-Bolshevism.

The event which imprinted the idea that there was a connection between Jews and communists into the Hungarian mentality was the organization of the Hungarian Soviet in 1919. Jews played a very active role in the communist dictatorship.¹⁰ As a group they made up a very small portion of the Jewish community, and they were all secularized, assimilated and Magyarized, but in the eyes of their opponents they were, first and foremost, Jews. The leader of the Soviet was Bela Kun, a Jew. The terror campaign against the opponents of the Revolution was conducted by Tibor Szamueli, a Jew. The Commissar of War and the organizer of the Red Army was Vilmos Bohm, a Jew. Most of the political commissars in the army and most of the judges and prosecutors of the revolutionary courts were Jewish. Leadership roles were played by such future communist (and Jewish) luminaries as Matyas Rakosi, the post World War II dictator, who served as Deputy Commissar of Commerce, Gyorgy Lukacs, Deputy Commissar of Public Education and Jozsef Revai, who was on the staff of the Voros Ujsag, the communist newspaper.

The population at large was receptive to a campaign that condemned the entire Jewish community as sympathetic to communism. The specter of Judeo-Bolshevism, a popular theme in many countries in the turbulent post-war years, was also raised in Hungary. The White Terror was directed against Jews in general, and most of the victims had nothing to do with the Soviet government. Organizations like the Awakening Magyars (Ebredo Magyarok) identified themselves as the champions of Hungarian nationalism in the face of Jewish promoted internationalist communism.

Horthy's anti-Semitism was also shaped by the Kun episode. In the safety of his asylum in authoritarian Portugal, he described his reaction to the communist interlude:

The atrocities of the Bolsheviks filled the land with horror. The Jews who had long been settled among us were the first to condemn the crimes of their co-religionists, in whose hands the new regime almost exclusively rested.¹¹

The Regent was less circumspect in a letter to Hitler written in July of 1940. He wrote "... when all decent men were on the front, the Jews engineered a revolution here and made Bolshevism."¹²

The preponderance of Jewish capital in the

economic life of the nation

In the interwar period Hungary was still a predominantly agricultural society, and in the absence of any meaningful land reform the economy had a semi-feudal character with large landholdings controlled by a few noble families, while at the same time there were over one million landless peasants in the land. Industry was developed and concentrated in a few areas, primarily in and around Budapest. The middle class was proportionately small and it included, in addition to the industrial bourgeoisie, the more traditional categories of merchants, professionals and civil servants.

Jews made up a large portion of the middle class. The Jewish community, for historic reasons, was more urbanized than the population at large. In a country where 2/3 of the population was still rural, the majority of the Jews (56%) resided in Budapest and in the ten major cities.¹³

The Treaty of Trianon crippled the economic order. Hungarian manufacturing establishments were deprived of their markets. Hungarian refugees in large numbers fled the successor states. They were generally members of the former ruling circles, property owners, Imperial bureaucrats without an Empire to administer, army officers, teachers and politicians. They played a prominent role in the counter-revolution and were a major pillar of support of the Horthy regime. And now they demanded their rewards, seeking "respectable" and salaried positions in a shrunken, crisis-plagued economy oversaturated with practicing professionals, potential civil servants and people "with an education." The competition was brutal, there were simply not enough "uri" (gentlemanly) positions available to satisfy the expectations. The entrenched Jewish middle class stood in the way of the native bourgeoisie. Anti-Semitism was the outcome of this keen economic rivalry. The Christian Party, supported by the politically moderate Hungarian middle class, and quite powerful in Budapest, generally followed an anti-Semitic orientation that was akin to the anti-Semitism of more right-wing elements.

Hungarian-Jewish economic rivalry was made even more acute by the decision of large numbers of so called Swabians, Hungary's German minority, to Magyarize their names and emphasize the Christian nature of the struggle against the Jews. Public opinion was

mobilized against the apparent Jewish domination of the economy.

The statistics of the period confirm the disproportionate role played by Jews in some sectors of the economy. At the same time, Jews were strongly underrepresented in a number of occupational categories where non-Jews were proportionately over-represented.¹⁴ The statistical table reproduced below was slightly edited to eliminate some occupational categories and to include only three denominations. Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians and Jews numbered 6,612,735 out of a total population of 8,688,319. The picture presented is not altered, however, by the abridgment.

Roman Catholics formed the largest group in Hungary, approximately 2/3 of the entire population. Evangelical Christians (Lutherans) and Jews were roughly of the same number, and therefore an easy comparison is in order. (Calvinists, the second largest denomination, are not cited.) Note the slight presence of Jews in agriculture, the primary occupation in Hungary, and in the categories of laborers and domestics, the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic order. Jews were (rigidly and arbitrarily) excluded by governmental fiats from military service. The number of Jews in commerce and credit, on the other hand, was spectacularly greater than their percentage in the total population would suggest. This fact enraged the Hungarian population for it underscored the intolerable notion that Jews controlled the country.

Jewish industrialists played a dominant role in the developing industrial life of the nation. The statistical table below vividly illustrates this point. (Numerically small denominations, like the Greek Catholics, are not included in the chart, and therefore only 97% of the population is accounted for.

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INDUSTRIAL CORPORATIONS IN 1935¹⁶

Position Owner or Renter Director Technical functionaries Commercial functionaries Position Owner or Renter Director Technical functionaries Commercial Functionaries

Roman-Catholic 673 89 2,517 8,244 Evangelical 146 197 479 1,115

(64.9 %) 33.7 % 36.6 % 54.5 % 45.9 % (6.1 %) 7.4 % 9.1 % 10.4 % 6.2 %

Reformed 150 247 532 1,497 Israelite 1,008 900 1,021 6,877

(20.9 %) 7.6 % 11.4 % 11.5 % 8.4 % (5.1 %) 50.9 % 41.6 % 22.1 % 38.3 %

The numbers in parentheses indicate the percentage of the total population. The low numbers certainly underline the weak development of Hungarian industry. In the most important category of Owner or Renter, Jews, but 1/20th of the population, were an absolute majority. It is important to bear in mind that these numbers speak of Jews from the religious point of view. It will be the contribution of the late 1930's in Hungary's history to introduce the Nazi concept of the racial Jew. A very significant portion of the non-Jewish capitalist class-and in the absence of specific statistics it is necessary to generalize-consisted of converted Jews. Extreme assimilation, including the abandonment of the Jewish faith, was most popular among the most successful and wealthiest segment of the community. Subsequently, to anti-Semites of the Nazi era baptismal rite made no difference.

In Budapest 38.2% of the two-story buildings, 47.2% of the three-story and 57.5% of six or more story structures were owned by Jews.¹⁷ Even in agriculture where Jews, as indicated above, were under-represented, Jewish capital made significant inroads. 9.7% of all estates classified as "large" were controlled by Jews.¹⁸ The great Jewish historian of the Holocaust, Jeno Levai, speculated that about 20-25% of the total wealth of the country was controlled by Jews.¹⁹ There was also great poverty in the Jewish community, a factor that did not lessen a hatred partially produced by the great wealth of some Jews.

The fear that the Jewish population was growing too rapidly

and posed a threat to the character and identity of the nation

Anti-Semitism, indeed and all types of racial and ethnic intolerance pays special attention to the numbers game. There is

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always concern and anxiety, sometimes articulated and often simmering just beneath the surface, that the host population may be engulfed by a rapidly growing minority, and the character of the nation may be distorted, damaged, diluted or even destroyed. The feeling is often irrational-the root cause, perhaps, of its existence-because the evidence contradicts it. In Hungary, after World War I, the Jewish population was actually shrinking not only in terms of percentage but also in absolute numbers. The statistical table reproduced below clearly dispels the popular myth that Jewish growth threatened the Hungarian character of Hungary.

RELIGIONS IN HUNGARY²⁰

Religion Roman-Catholic Greek-Catholic Reformed Evangelical Greek-Eastern Israelite Others

1920 5,105,375 175,655 1,671,052 497,126 50,918 473,355 16,721

(63.9 %) (2,2 %) (21.0 %) (6.2 %) (0.6 %) (5.9 %) (0.2 %)

1930 5,643,003 201.093 1,813.162 534,165 39,839 444,567 21,490

(64.9 %) (2.3 %) (20.9 %) (6.1 %) (0.5 %) ( 5.1 %) (0.2 %)

It is noteworthy that in a ten-year period, while every other group, with the exception of the small Greek-Eastern denomination, grew, the Jewish population decreased by about 30,000.

After 1938 Hungary, as an ally of Germany, territorially profited from both the Western policy of appeasement and the subsequent establishment of German hegemony in East Central Europe. Some of the lost territories were regained. The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia returned the Hungarian inhabited portion of Slovakia, referred to as Upper Hungary, and Ruthenia. Hungary also capitalized on the destruction of Yugoslavia and the Bacska region was reincorporated. Diplomatic support from Berlin compelled Romania to cede about half of Transylvania back to Hungary. These additions significantly enlarged the total as well as the Jewish population. In 1942 there were 725,007 Jews in Hungary, 4.9% of the population, a slight further proportional decrease.²¹

In the late 1930's and 40's anti-Semitic agitation was abetted by the "visibility" of the Jewish population. In Eastern Hungary and even more so in the "new territories," Jews tended to be more attached to Orthodox traditions. There were a great many Hasidic sects. The general appearance and lifestyle of these Jews; their Oriental caftans,

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beards and payes and Yiddish tongue, conspicuously set them apart from the rest of the population (including most of the Jews of Trianon Hungary). There was no fear of economic domination from these Jews, but, there seemed to be so many of them.²² These Jews, with their large families, concentrated in Ruthenia and some parts of Transylvania, were seen as a direct and physical challenge to the Hungarian nation. In the counties of Bereg, Maramaros and Ugocsa they made up 17.8%, 18.4% and 13.3% of the population.

The "visibility" of Jews was further accentuated by their presence, in disproportionately large numbers, in the urban centers. This was a historic necessity reinforced by the logic of contemporary economics. It was a world-wide phenomenon reflected in all the cities of Hungary. The Hungarian Nazi movements, including the Arrow Cross, by far the most popular, were primarily supported by the radicalized discontented lower classes of the big cities, where the large Jewish communities served as a ready-made ammunition for the propaganda canons of anti-Semitic agitators.

JEWS IN LARGE CITIES²³

City Budapest Miskolc Debrecen Kassa Nagyvarad Szatmarnemeti Kolozsvar Ujvidek Ungvar

Region Trianon-Hungary Trianon-Hungary Trianon-Hungary Upper-Hungary Transylvania Transylvania Transylvania Southern-Hungary Ruthenia

Jewish Population 184,453 10,428 9,142 10,079 21,333 12,960 16,763 3,621 9,576

% of Total Population 15.8 % 13.5 % 7.3 % 15.0 % 22.9 % 24.9 % 15.1 % 5.9 % 27.2 %

Right-wing publicists inflated these figures. They attacked the reliability of the official statistics and proclaimed that there were far more Jews in Hungary than the actual number recorded by the census takers. It was also emphasized by them that there were many Jews who concealed their true identity and through intermarriage, conversion or the changing of family names, infiltrated into the Hungarian nation without surrendering the characteristics of their race, or that peculiar loyalty and mentality which sets Jews apart

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from their neighbors. It was declared that these crypto-Jews posed an even greater threat than their more readily identifiable brethren. A typical illustration of this mentality was a pamphlet published by the Arrow Cross Party that differentiated between the racial and the religious Jew, and thus was able to fortify the claim that the Jews were indeed a real and numerical menace to the nation. It is difficult to establish how the numbers were arrived at. However, it is illuminating to note that the allegations were made not only for Hungary, but for other European states as well.

JEWS IN EUROPE²⁴

State Hungary Romania Poland England France

Racial Jews 1,300,000 3,200,000 6,100,000 1,200,000 2,900,000

Religious Jews 500,000 1,000,000 3,500,000 300,000 725,000

Such allegations reflect the Hungarian racists' notion that anti-Semitism was a defensive measure whose aim was to preserve the Hungarian character of Hungary.

The belief that the Jews were an alien

and unassimilable minority

Extreme nationalism was a basic component of the philosophy of the Horthy regime. Generations of schoolchildren were indoctrinated with the injustices of Trianon. Irredentism was the primary foreign policy objective of the government. In the charged emotional atmosphere of the era, all minorities would encounter difficulties. In addition, Hungarians were traditionally very conscious of the fact that they were a small nation, unique and unrelated to the neighboring ethnic groups. The doctrine of integral nationalism was translated into official policies that accentuated the Hungarian character of Hungary. Swabians, despite the presence of a powerful patron-state, were repeatedly victimized by a xenophobic regime.²⁵ The German minority had to wage an incessant struggle to protect its mother-tongue, school-system and cultural autonomy. Undoubtedly, Hungarian pride suffered in the interwar years as a result of the

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anti-Hungarian policies pursued by the dominant nationalities of the successor states, former victims of Hungarian intolerance themselves, against their large Hungarian minorities. However, Budapest could not retaliate. The Slovaks, Romanians, Croats and Serbians constituted only 2.4% of Hungary's population.

Hungarian nationalism was very much influenced by the racist theorizing, in vogue after World War I. It employed racist terminology and slogans. The Szeged movement was affiliated with race-protecting leagues. Racists occupied high positions in the government.

Jews were obvious targets and victims of this spirit and policy. It was possible for some of the minorities, like the Germans, to be accepted into the Hungarian nation if certain prerequisites, like family name, knowledge of the Hungarian language, were met.²⁶ However, Jews always remained Jews. They were perpetual outsiders, an alien minority; they could never become Hungarians. This sentiment was embraced not just by the apostles of marginal hate-groups, nor was it limited only to the leading spokesmen of the reactionary regime-it appealed to many liberal-thinking Hungarians as well. Jews were perceived as a separate nation within the body-politic of the Hungarian nation. They had a different mentality and different characteristics; they posed a permanent danger. In practical terms they were blamed for all the problems and ills of Hungary. On June 6, 1939, Zoltan Mesko, an Arrow Cross deputy, spoke on the floor of Parliament about a housing proposal. In his address he stated that "If we extripate these (unmistaken reference to Jews) from the Hungarian society, then we will not have Social Democracy, or this party or that party; what we will have will be a nation of honest Christian Hungarians. "²⁷

People in responsible positions echoed, in a more cultured manner, this same sentiment. Premier Imredy in a celebrated speech in the Upper House on May 20, 1938, spoke about the Jews:

It is undeniable that among the Jews, this racial mentality presents itself rather sharply; therefore the assimilation of Jews is more difficult than that of other elements. ... The other side of the problem is the question of mentality. ... it slowly emerged and in Budapest especially took hold a mentality which in its perception of public, communal and moral problems does not always agree, indeed it frequently sharply differs from, with that Hungarian spirituality (mentality), which we

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inherited from our forbears and which we want to transmit to our descendants.²⁸

It was particularly galling that this "different mentality" was so well entrenched in the cultural and intellectual life of the nation. Jews were very numerous among Hungary's intelligentsia. In 1930 49.2% of the lawyers, 34.4% of the doctors, 45.1% of the private chemists, 31.7% of the journalists, 28.9% of the musicians, 24.7% of the scholars and writers and 24.1% of all the actors were Jewish.²⁹ These were the numbers after a decade of subtle and direct pressures by the regime on Jewish professionals. In 1930, while practically half of all jurists were Jews, those in governmental service, as judges, prosecutors, administrators, etc., were only 2% Jewish.³⁰ In the civil service Jewish bureaucrats constituted an insignificant 1.7% of the total number.³¹ These "achievements" were not sufficient. Hungarian professionals continued to press for additional measures to ensure the further erosion of the Jewish role in these middle-class occupational categories.

Populist writers, generally of a leftist and reformist orientation, also picked up the theme of the endangerment of Hungarian culture by foreign influence. The Village Explorers (Falukutatok) not only revealed the shocking conditions of the Hungarian rural proletariat, the purest essence of the nation, but in their writings they mounted an offensive against the establishment that was responsible for the callous indifference exhibited toward Hungarians and Hungarian values. It was charged that the literary establishment was too attached to a non-Hungarian ethos. The dominant periodical and arbitrator of literary tastes was the Nyugat (West), a publication that transmitted Western ideals. The element of anti-Semitism was only implicit. By and large, these Hungarian narodniks were not specifically against Jews, but in their defense of Hungarian culture they identified the Jewish influence as another non-Hungarian factor that had to be eliminated. Nyugat for instance, was supported by Jewish financial interests and many of its contributors were Jewish writers.³²

The conviction that anti-Jewish acts at home will earn

diplomatic support for foreign policy objectives

The primary objective of Hungarian foreign policy, as stated above, was irredentism. To regain the lost territories, Hungary

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gradually drifted into the orbit of Nazi Germany, another revisionist Power. There were many sharp differences between the totalitarianism of the Third Reich and the authoritarianism of the Horthy regime. However, in order to enlist German support for Hungarian national objectives, the Hungarian government was prepared to ape the German system. There was an element of opportunism in this attitude. Berlin was always suspicious of the ideological purity of the Horthy clique. German-Hungarian relations were made even more complex by the presence, within and on the fringes of the Hungarian regime, of elements that were prepared to identify completely with the Nazi doctrine and objectives. (The Szeged militants constituted one such a group.)

It was the expectation of Germany that Hungary, as a faithful ally, would adopt the anti-Semitism and specifically anti-Jewish measures of the Reich. At the same time, there was concern in Budapest that non-compliance will have negative consequences for Hungary's territorial ambitions. Romania, Slovakia and Croatia were implementing anti-Jewish measures of the Nazi model; Hungary could not afford to do otherwise. The decision to enact the First Jewish Law was made to assure German support in the negotiations over the partition of Czechoslovakia.³³ The Third Jewish Law, passed on August 8, 1941, when Hungary, as an ally of Germany had already declared war on the Soviet Union, was a race-protecting measure that received its inspiration from Nuremberg. With the cooperation of native Nazis, overwhelming pressure was applied by Germany on the Hungarian government to pursue a more and more radical anti-Jewish policy. The anti-Semitism of the Horthy regime was not the anti-Semitism of Adolf Hitler. In the beginning Hungary was prepared to sacrifice the rights and well-being of her Jews to accomplish foreign policy objectives, but as the war progressed and the benefits of being a German ally diminished, her attitude changed. The Horthy regime, especially during the tenure of Premier Miklos Kallay (March, 1942-March, 1944), effectively resisted participation in the Final Solution.³⁴ The Jews of Budapest escaped deportation to the death camps because of the personal protection extended by the Regent. The mass murder of Hungarian Jewry would take place only after German military occupation of the country.

The anti-Semitism of Horthy-Hungary was a consistent policy. It was an integral part of the ideology of the regime. There were acts of

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great brutality (the White Terror, the Kamenec-Podolsk massacre of July, 1941), as well as periods of relaxation (1920's), and periods of tension (1930's), but there was always a preoccupation with the "Jewish question." Trianon Hungary was not always a bad place for the Jews, and Jews survived there longer than in Poland, Slovakia or even the Netherlands. The mass destruction of the Jews of Hungary was promoted, supervised and executed by officials of Nazi Germany, but Hungarian anti-Semitism shares in the moral responsibility for the Holocaust.

Notes

1. See Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars 1918-1941 (New York, 1967), p. 291.

2. Denominations received official classification. The highest level was that of a "received religion," a less favorable one was that of a "recognized religion," with the right to exercise a degree of self-government. and the lowest level was that of a "non-recognized confession," denominations under police supervision.

3. A unique phenomenon among the Jews of Eastern Europe was the inability of most Magyar Jews, including the religiously observant, to speak Yiddish. See Ivan Sanders, "Tetova vonzalmak" [Tentative Affinities] in Uj Latohatar (5 Munich, 1975), p. 441.

4. For an illuminating discourse on the subject, see George Barany, "Magyar Jew or Jewish Magyar? Reflections on the Question of Assimilation" in Bela Vago and George L. Mosse, ed. Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918-1945 (New York, 1974).

5. C. A. Macartney, October Fifteenth I (Edinburgh, 1956), p. 20.

6. For such an interpretation see Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera. The Green Shirts and the Others (Stanford, 1970).

7. For a Marxist treatment of the organization see Rudolfne Dosa, A Move. Egy jellegzetes magyar fasiszta szervezet 1918-1944 [The MOVE. A Characteristic Magyar Fascist Organization 1918-1944] (Budapest, 1972).

8. Istvan Deak, "Hungary" H. Rogger and E. Weber The European Right (Berkeley. 1965) p. 397.

9. Bennett Kovrig, Communism in Hungary. From Kun to Kadar appendix 2 (Stanford, 1979).

10. Rudolf L. Tokes, Bela Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic (Stanford, 1967). p. 193.

11. Nicholas Horthy, Memoirs (New York, 1957). p. 98.

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12. Nicholas Horthy, The Confidential Papers of Admiral Horthy ed. M. Szinai and L. Szucs (Budapest, 1965), p. 131.

13. Ivan T, Berend and Gyorgy Ranki, "A magyar tarsadalom a ket vilaghaboru kozott" (Magyar Society Between the Two World Wars") Uj Iras 10 (1973), p. 100.

14. There is a striking similarity between the roles played by Jews in Hungary and the contemporary roles of Chinese in many Far Eastern countries.

15. Hungarian Statistical Yearbook (1935), p. 18.

16. Ibid., p. 136.

17. Alajos Kovacs, A Csonkamagyarorszagi zsidosag a statisztika tukreben [The Jews of Dismembered Hungary in a Statistical Mirror] (Budapest, 1938), p. 48.

18. Ibid., pp. 13-LI.

19. Eugene Levai, Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry. Edited by Lawrence P. Davis (Zurich, 1948), p. 37.

20. Hungarian Statistical Yearbook (1939), p. 18.

21. Hungarian Statistical Yearbook (1942), pp. 14-17.

22. A very skeptical Mark Twain reacted to the official census figures in the United States by writing the following disclaimer in the September 1899 issue of Harper's Magazine under the title "Concerning the Jews"; "Look at the city of New York; and look at Boston, and Philadelphia ... how your race swarms in those places!" p. 533.

23. Hungarian Statistical Yearbook (1942). pp. 16-17.

24. Matyas Matolcsi (comp.), A Zsidok utja [The Way of the Jews] (Budapest, 1943) p. 11.

25. For a detailed treatment of the subject see Thomas Spira. German-Hungarian Relations and the Swabian Problem from Karolyi to Gombos 1919-1936 (New York, 1977).

26. Gombos was of German background and Szalasi's non-Magyar ancestry included Armenians. However, when it was revealed, by political opponents, that Imredy had some Jewish ancestry, he was forced out of office.

27. Hungary. Parliament, Proceedings, I., p. 195.

28. Bela Imredy, Mult es jovo hataran [On the Boundary Between Past and Future] (Budapest, 1938) p. 36.

29. Kovacs, pp. 18-19.

30. Berend and Ranki, p. 100.

31. Ibid.

32. I am indebted to my good friend Ivan Sanders for his helpful comments on the village explorers.

33. C. A. Macartney "Hungarian Foreign Policy During the Interwar Period, With Special Reference to the Jewish Question" in Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918-1945 (New York, 1974), p. 134.

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34. There is extensive primary and secondary literature on this sensitive subject. Helpful sources would include the captured documents of the German Foreign Office, Randolph L. Braham (comp.), The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry, A Documentary Account, Jeno Levai, ed. Eichman in Hungary. Documents, the private papers and memoirs, generally self-serving but always revealing of the decision-makers, like Nicholas Kallay, Hungarian Premier.

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A Case Study on Trianon