Part of the Second Prize winning entry to the “Their destiny, our history” student contest initiated by the Jewish Roots in Győr Public Charity Foundation (2023-24)
by Lili Flinger, Anna Hordós and Dorottya Kispál
Gergely Czuczor Benedictine High School, Győr
Supported by Tamás Cséfalvay, History Teacher
High school life during the war
According to the yearbooks, the euphoria of the 1938 Vienna Decision had a great impact on the life of the school community. Pupils and teachers organised a collection for the sister school in Komárom and, as a symbolic gesture, 43 flags were sent by the pupils to Komárom, which was celebrating its liberation (from Slovakia – editor).
Furthermore, the new law on defence and the introduction of compulsory Young Soldier Exercises (HU: levente kötelezettség – editor) had a stimulating effect on school scouting. “During negotiations in Komárom in October, the Scout Alliance called on the troops to be ready to march simultaneously with the army. This did not happen, but many exciting negotiations preceded our visit to the liberated Komárom on 4 December.” A collection was also started among the pupils for the benefit of the liberated Komárom sister institute. In addition to the enthusiasm generated by the growth of the country (manifested e.g. in book collection for Transylvania and Carpathia), the approaching dark shadow of war highly influenced school life from the 1939 school year onwards. The yearbooks contained introductory studies on patriotic education, the unification of Hungarian youth and the school tasks of the Young Soldier Exercises. Pupils over the age of 14 could be required by the authorities to serve in the air defence service.
According to the School Yearbooks, “parents also began to be very anxious, especially about the situation of the town Győr on the frontier; one frightened the other, fearing for the lives and safety of their children, and it was difficult to dissuade them from taking their sons to a safer place. Small school absences did occur as a result of the sudden panic.”
In the chronicle of the 1941-42 school year, we can read that ‘the present troubled and difficult times are beginning to have a detrimental effect on the youth. Fortunately, we were able to protect the great majority of our pupils from the dangers […]”
In the 1943-44 school year, this made school work almost impossible. Following the German invasion, a notification of 31 March stated that our school had been requisitioned for German troops and 480 people were housed in the building. Teaching was of course suspended.
On 13 April 1944, Győr was heavily attacked by air. The students of the high school went above and beyond to help the victims of the bombing. They were mainly involved in fire-fighting and rubble clearance, but there were also students who learned to defuse unexploded incendiary bombs.
The school building was then requisitioned on 25 April to replace the bombed-out troop hospital.
The Benedictine monastery was briefly at the centre of events when Géza Lakatos, the deposed Prime Minister, arrived in the city on 12 December 1944 and took refuge in the Győr monastery. At the dawn of his arrival, the house was surrounded by Arrow Cross legions, where Lakatos was held as a prisoner. (Soon Lakatos left for Sopron at the urging of the Arrow Cross related government commissioner of Győr – editor; historiamozaik)
At the end of March 1945, with the Russian invasion, the school building was once again turned into a hospital. From 8 May, the community was able to use its own building again. In the school teachers’ board minutes of 4 May 1945, the Soviet presence and the preparation for the changed circumstances can be felt. According to the minutes, “besides teaching, our great concern is educating for the new times. Besides, our pedagogical approach has always been democratic. We have always fought against the spirit of the times, against racial and religious hatred, we have not differentiated between rich and poor children to the detriment of the latter, but in school evaluation practices only individual merit and achievement counted. We are convinced that our Christian principles, to which, of course, we are unswervingly attached, can be brought into the fullest harmony with the ideals of the new democratic world.”
Implementation of the Laws on Jews
Since the introduction of the Laws on Jews, the Director General of the Székesfehérvár School District has repeatedly instructed schools to comply with these laws and to present certificates. According to Article 5 of the law of 1939: IV. t.c. (i.e. the second Law on Jews), all teachers, including the headmaster, were obliged to declare whether they, their parents or grandparents were members or had been members of the Jewish community. If they were exempt from the above law for any reason, they were required to state the reason in their declaration. On 13 June, a special decree (4300/1939) called on church-run schools to make a declaration. For this administrative task, the Minister for Religious Affairs and Public Education established a table of origin for the persons concerned.
In October 1940, the institution received another request for the submission of certificates on Jewish origins. The request stipulated that the declaration was not obligatory for ordained clergy, but for nuns!
According to the December 1940 notice, the certificate for those born after 1 October 1895 had to include the parents’ birth certificates. Repeated requests suggest that the declarations required by the laws on Jews were delayed by the Benedictine community, either for lack of the appropriate documents or for other reasons. The last such request dates from June 1944.
As regards the admission of Jewish students, in a letter of April 1940, the Directorate General of Catholic High Schools asked for the 6% rate laid down by law to be observed, with the addition that a baptised pupil was not counted as a Jew. The November letter further clarified the number limitation, stating that 6% meant 2-3 pupils in the first class. In schools where there were no Jewish pupils in the primary classes in the previous academic year, not even 1% could be admitted. In March 1944, the Catholic Directorate General of Education contacted the school to inquire whether refugees from the annexed territories had been admitted. However, refugee status did not apply to those who were subject to the laws on Jews.
The Jewish students of the school
According to the yearbooks of the Gergely Czuczor Catholic High School in Győr, Jewish students were continuously present at the school between 1939 and 1945 (Figure 1). The figure shows a decrease in the number of Jewish students, which may be partly be due to assimilation and baptism of Jews, changing schools, and possibly the interruption of studies (as well as the dramatic deportations of the Jewish population in June 1944 – editor). Some students were conscripted as soldiers and sent to the front. From the German invasion of 1944 onwards, the school year was truncated, lasting only four months in 1944-45.
| Év | Összes diák | Ebből izraelita diák |
| 1939-1940 | 636 | 24 |
| 1940-1941 | 631 | 18 |
| 1941-1942 | 626 | 17 |
| 1942-1943 | 606 | 14 |
| 1943-1944 | 610 | 12 |
| 1944-1945 | 337 | 1 |
Individual destinies
László Biringer was born on 18 December 1924 in Győr.
He was born the son of János Biringer. According to the yearbook, his mother’s maiden name was Gabriella Herzfeld. His father was a timber merchant and László, or as his friends called him, Laci began his secondary school studies in 1935 at the Czuczor Gergely Benedictine Secondary School in Győr, where he studied diligently, all his marks were excellent, the only less favourable mark he got was in the seventh grade for his behaviour, which is surprising because he was already working as treasurer of the school sports club that year and received a prize for his paper on the writer Ferenc Herczeg.
The Volumetric Physics Department of the Self-education Group had 24 student members, and at one of its academic conferences Biringer presented a paper on the vibration of strings. The chronicle of the academic year 1941-42 points out that Biringer was commended for his work on the topic ” The influence of 18th century thinkers on the functioning of the state “. He was therefore a versatile and diligent student. He graduated with distinction and was awarded a distinction.
Although there is no evidence of a direct family connection, it can be assumed that he was related to Károly Biringer, the owner of Győr’s first permanent cinema. Tivadar Biringer (Károly’s brother – editor), later the owner of the cinema, also graduated at the Benedictine grammar school in 1933.
The Apollo Cinema, owned by the family, opened in December 1909 at 6 Bisinger Promenade with 372 seats. In addition to evening music programmes, the cinema played moving pictures with background music in the mornings and held a morning screening on Sundays.
Ottó Hárs wrote in his diary “The Wanderer Passing Through” that on 8 May 1944 János Biringer was deported after the German occupation. On 26 May, Germans moved into their house, which was one of the most prestigious buildings in Győr.
Although the sources contradict each other somewhat, it is likely that László, then 20 years old, did not die in the same place as his father. László was deported to Auschwitz and his father to Mühldorf. The boy probably died in the gas chamber and his father died of blood poisoning.
The Csillag family was an old and well-known Jewish family of Győr. Several members were students of the Benedictine grammar school. Antal János Csillag was born on 21 March 1925 in Győr, the son of the famous surgeon Dr József Csillag and Jozefa Korein.
Dr József Csillag, the father, was a member of the School Board of the Jewish Community of Győr, and participated in the work of the Győr Committee on Legal Affairs as an important tax payer until 1942. His membership was terminated by the Ministry of the Interior. According to the name register of the Highschool, the family lived at 20 Árpád út in Győr, in the same building where the Sanatorium was located. On his mother’s side, Dr Sándor Korein (1899-1989), the grandfather of Antal and Ferenc, was also a renowned internist and worked together with Dr Csillag. Antal had three siblings: Hedvig (probably named after her father’s sister who died prematurely), Gizella Lujza and Ferenc Mátyás. Antal was in the same class as László Biringer and they graduated together.
Antal excelled in rowing in the 1938-39 school year. In the following school year he distinguished himself in fencing, taking first place at school. At a sports department reunion in 1941, he won the title of president of the fencing department together with classmate Rudolf König. His younger brother Ferenc also chose fencing as his special subject. In addition to the compulsory subjects, Antal passed his French language examinations with good results, according to the maturity examination board.
The family was ghettoised at the end of May 1944, the Sanatorium closed its gates and in June the family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau together with the first group of Győr Jews. József Csillag and his three children, including Antal, survived the Holocaust, but his wife and Ferenc were murdered in the death camp.
Tibor István Fehér was born in Győr on 20 September 1922. He graduated from the Czuczor Gergely Benedictine High School in Győr in 1940 under the direction of Dr Barnabás Holenda. He finished his secondary school years with mostly good grades. His mark for behaviour was excellent.
On 4 October 1943, Tibor Fehér was drafted to Komárom for labour service. After six days, he and his squad were assigned to the electric power works in Bánhida. He was kept here until spring, then he was transferred to Vértesszőlős. By his own admission, they were treated cruelly there. They were forced to work in deforestation and the working conditions were inhumane. They lived in underground bunkers, were constantly starving and the working conditions were unbearable. In his diary, he mentioned by name his guards, platoon leader János Székely, Sergeant Sándor Alföldi (who he said was also from Győr) and Sergeant Imre Sarló, who treated them most cruelly. They beat and punched innocent people and treated them like slaves.
In October 1944 they were returned to Bánhida and remained there until Christmas. As the Russians approached, he managed to escape with one of his companions. They hid in a shepherd’ hut hut but were eventually captured. Tibor was held in three camps between March and May 1945. He was first sent to Neumarkt on 12 March, then transferred to Mauthausen on 28 March, where he was detained until 12 April, and from there to Gunskirchen, where he remained until 4 May.
We do not know the circumstances under which he returned home, but his account was recorded in Budapest in August 1945. According to the minutes of the National Committee for the Care of Deportees of August 1945, he was working as a sugar confectioner’s assistant, presumably at Győr Keksz Co. ltd. We found only traces of information on the fate of other Jewish students of the school. István Reichenfeld, who had graduated from the high school in 1938, was transported to Bergen-Belsen on 1 February 1945.
György Faragó attended high school until the 1939-40 school year, and died in the collection camp (possibly in the barracks of Budai út, Győr – editor) on 15 June 1944.
Tibor Szabó graduated in 1944-45, he possibly survived the holocaust.
Miklós Komlós possibly died in Auschwitz in June 1944.
Further submissions from the students team of the Czuczor Gergely Benedictine High School in Győr:
- Life of Vilmos Apor (special research topic, description)
- Two paintings (artwork)
Edited, translated into English and additional photographs inserted for illustrative purposes by Péter Krausz
Coverpage: The Győr Benedictine Church and High School today, Photo: Győri Szalon
Literature
Cséfalvay Tamás: A holokauszt tanítása – emberi sorsok tanítása; ujkor.hu
Egy átballagó vándor Hárs Ottó naplója Győr 1944. évi bombázásának mindennapjairól. NKA, Győr, 2022.
Lakatos Géza: Ahogyan én láttam. Extra Hungariam. Európa-História, Budapest, 1992.
Némáné Kovács Éva: Az Apolló mozi, Győr első állandó filmszínháza; Győri Szalon
Tóth István Konstantin: A győri bencés gimnázium története az 1944-től 2021-ig terjedő időszakban A tanév végi évkönyvek (beszámolók) tükrében; czuczor.hu
Vargáné Blága Borbála: A győri Csillag Szanatórium és alapítója, dr. Csillag József; Győri Szalon
Sources and Databases
A Czuczor Gergely Bencés Gimnázium és Kollégium dokumentumgyűjteménye, évkönyvei, törzskönyvei és tablói
International Tracing Service (Arolsen Archive)
Yad Vashem -The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names
USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database
Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottság – National Committee for Attending Deportees
Centropa adatbázisa
Dokumentumok online gyűjteménye (bővített dokumentumtár)