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Antisemitism in Post World War II Hungary - violence, riots; Communist Party policy

Judaism, Spring, 2001 by Peter Kenez

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Another explanation for the wave of antisemitic outbursts might be that while pre-war Jewry had played extraordinarily significant roles in the economy and cultural life of the nation, it had been completely excluded from political power. Now, not only in the powerful Communist and Socialist parties were there Jews in leadership positions, but also in the political police. Peasants in particular found it hard to accept Jews in positions of authority, and were willing to listen to demagogic voices deploring Jewish power. In antisemitic discourse evident in archival documents it was a reccurring theme that now Jews control everything and they are determined to take revenge. In the mind of the Hungarians, justifiably or not, Jews and Communists came to be identified. As we shall see, the Communist Party did everything within its power to counteract this identification, but it ultimately failed. This identification had considerable significance in post-war Hungarian political developments, and it did great damage both to Communists and to Jews.

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The Social Profile of Hungarian Jewry

Hungarian Jewry, and especially the Jews of Budapest, were like no other Jewry anywhere in the world: it was a Western type of Jewry, living in an Eastern European economic and political environment. (I follow the distinction between Eastern and Western types sketched by Ezra Mendelsohn in The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars.) [2] In effect Hungarian Jews were highly assimilated, with a large number of converts, low birth rate, substantial Christian-Jewish intermarriage, with the Jews oriented to Hungarian culture and language rather than Jewish culture and Yiddish. Hungarian Jewry was every bit as well assimilated as German Jewry, and it regarded itself as "Hungarian" just as enthusiastically as the Germans regarded themselves as "German." The difference was that Hungary was an Eastern European country: before 1945 it was governed by the last genuine European feudal ruling class. The country was largely agricultural and the landed gentry owned most of the land. As a consequence of the particular Hungarian social structure, in the late nineteenth century a tacit compromise was reached between the aristocracy and theJewry: middle class occupations, trade and industry, and the liberal professions were conceded to Jews. The aristocracy had no interest in such affairs, but at the same time was keen to advance economic modernization.

After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, gradually a new Hungarian middle class developed which competed for jobs with Jews, and with it suddenly a modern type of antisemitism appeared. A justification for this new-found antisemitism was the extraordinarily large role thatJews played in the short lived Hungarian Soviet republic of 1919. Although at this time only a small proportion of the Jews were attracted to Communism, nevertheless the small Communist Party's leadership was largely in Jewish hands: after all, Jews made up a dominant part of the intelligentsia, people who were traditionally attracted to radical, socialist politics. Hungary, which had been an excellent place forJews, suddenly became much less than excellent.

Antisemitism in Post World War II Hungary - violence, riots; Communist Party policy

Judaism, Spring, 2001 by Peter Kenez

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