Content provided in partnership with

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

Judaism, Spring, 2001 by Peter Kenez

<< Page 1 Continued from page 5. Previous | Next

The Hungarian Communist Party and the Jews

The Communist Party leaders did everything within their power to deny their Jewish background. They went to ridiculous lengths to cover up this background. Rakosi, for example, went so far as to imitate a peasant accent and peppered his speeches with what seemed to him as village expressions. [6] Needless to say, such attempts were in vain. Indeed, in the eyes of the Hungarians, the Party was doubly alien:Jews led it and it was the agent of a foreign power, namely the Soviet Union. The party did everything to counteract this identification withJews. It sent out instructions that "In house to house agitation a person with a Jewish face orJewish behavior should not participate under any circumstances." One wonders what they had in mind as constituting "Jewish behavior." The circular went on to explain: "That is the explanation of the lack of success of Madisz and MNDSZ." [7] (Madisz was a youth organization and MNDSZ was a mass organization for women.)

Most Popular Articles in Reference: The importance of understanding organizational culture; Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students; What factors attract foreign direct investment?; Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...; How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques; More »

Most reprehensibly, the top leaders openly courted low ranking members of the Hungarian Nazi Party (Nyilaskeresztes Part). The party needed new members in order to penetrate into Hungarian society, and also to be able to assume a nationalist mantle. Rakosi explicitly stated that in his opinion it is easier to make good communists out of the little Nazis (kis nyilasok) than out of Jewish intellectuals. [8] Rakosi, Gero, Revai, and indeed most members of the top leadership came from precisely those social circles in which the top leader of the party expressed no confidence. One may explain this attitude either as a result of remarkable self-knowledge, or, perhaps more likely, self-loathing.

Many of the new members of the party were indeed ill educated and came from lower class, peasant and worker background. They had many reasons to join. First of all, by becoming communists, they could cover up their unsavory past. Indeed, the Party in its recruitingwork made it explicit: join and your missteps would be forgiven. These ex-Nazis, of course, brought with them their deeply ingrained antisemitism. Low ranking Communist activists often made crude antisemitic statements. The antisemitism of these new communists was of a different order than the cynicism of the top leaders who were simply willing to take advantage of the antisemitism of others.

Given ever increasing communist dominance in politics, it was easy to see that membership in the victorious party would lead to material benefits. But in any case, moving from one radical organization into another was intellectually and psychologically not very difficult. In Hungary in the inter-war period it was the extreme right (in the absence of the discredited and outlawed Communist Party) that stood for much needed social reforms. During the war often it was a matter of chance whether a young radicaljoined one party or the other. There were several instances where brothers ended up on opposite sides of the political fence, while sharing radical social commitments. [9]

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

Judaism, Spring, 2001 by Peter Kenez

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in Reference

Most Popular Publications in Reference