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Handicrafts by Judit Siklósi in memory of those killed in the Holocaust

I started creating tapestries depicting Hungarian synagogues because my husband, Vilmos Siklósi, born in Budapest was a child of survivors. When we moved to Zalaegerszeg in 1991, he founded the “Peace Shalom Hungarian-Israeli Friendship Society” to promote cultural and economic exchanges between the two peoples.

In 1995, the Jews of Zalaegerszeg awoke from their sleep and re-established the local Jewish community. At that time there were still survivors in and around Zalaegerszeg. My husband led the community until his death.

In 2004, the synagogue in Zalaegerszeg turned 100 years old currently serving as an exhibition and concert hall. For this anniversary I sewed the first tapestry depicting the synagogue in Zalaegerszeg. Aunt Bözsi, Imréné Anhalczer, a survivor, helped me to buy the material for my first creation. The tapestry measures 130×160 cm, has 500,000 stitches and was made in 1’700 man-hours.

Seeing this work, Borgó (Dr. István Csaba György István [BORGO] (b. 10 May 1950, Marosvásárhely, RO, 10 May 1950), a Hungarian painter, graphic artist, tapestry designer, sculptor and teacher of Transylvanian origin – editor) said that what I had realized was so beautiful that he would organize an exhibition of it if there were more such works. After all, it was not he who organised my first exhibition, and I haven’t met him since, but it was on his suggestion that I should sew more that I took up preparing synagogue tapestries.

In addition to synagogues, I also sew Jewish holiday images and symbols.

How are these pieces made? I draw the synagogue building myself on the tapestry fabric and follow the drawing with tapestry stitching. Most of the pictures are sized 40×50 cm.

So far, I have had eighteen exhibitions including abroad, e.g. in Marosvásárhely. Other venues include Hévíz, Zalaegerszeg, Bak, Szombathely, Mosonmagyaróvár, Győr, Pécs, Budapest (ORZSE), Szolnok, Tiszafüred, Szekszárd, Újpest, Siófok, Nagyatád (all in Hungary – editor). Several newspaper articles about these exhibitions were published, for example in Új Élet (“New Life” – newspaper of the Association of Jewish Communities in Hungary – editor). If I am invited to an exhibition anywhere, I am happy to go and produce a tapestry of the synagogue of the inviting city as a memento.

In Nagyatád, I was confronted with the fact that the people of the countryside do not even know that a synagogue and a Jewish community once existed in their town. It was then that I realised that preserving the memories of synagogues is a tribute, a kind of “cultural mission” to the memory of our fellow human beings who were cruelly killed in the Holocaust.

I sew colour and black and white tapestries, the latter of synagogues that no longer exist because even the buildings have been destroyed, leaving no trace or memory of them.

In short, I started the series to create pieces that would serve as a reminder and at the same time strengthen the connection of the local audience, of the city, to a destroyed piece of our common past.

Judit Siklósi

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Those interested and wanting to purchase or order a piece may want to contact Judit at the following address: zegjuti@gmail.com (ed.)

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Edited and English translation by Péter Krausz

Historical model changes in Győr and their relationship with the religious (ethnic) structure and spatial location of the population

Excerpts from a study by Dr Gyula Szakál, Associate Professor in ret., Economic Historian, Széchenyi István University, Győr

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In the first part, you learned how the Jewish population of Győr came into being and how it co-existed with the majority community of other religions over the centuries. In part two, you will learn how the elite of Győr responded to the political crisis and human tragedy of 1944.

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The reaction of the Győr elite to the political and human crisis of 1944

An important component of the economic mentality is the ability to gain, keep and overcome disadvantages. We have seen that from the 1850s to the turn of the 1890s, all the behavioural traits appeared in Győr. To what was due this flexibility and sense of reality? Here we must return to the historical path and the time factor. In our city – as in the country as a whole – the organic development of local society from the 1848-49 War of Independence to the Second World War or its eve (here I mean the time of adopting the restrictive laws on Jews) was not disrupted by external political forces. Within families and in the micro- and macro-textures of the urban elite, two or three generations of experience and patterns of behaviour were passed on. [5]

The roots of this pattern of behaviour go back to the city’s more distant past. The need and struggle to change from military town, episcopal city, patrician town, open trading town and then industrial town, the acceptance of the New has always won. Economic and human relations have always been open. This is the reason for the city’s inclusiveness.

The attitude of Győr’s elite was characterised by a sense of reality and social awareness, solidarity and personal responsibility. … In spite of overcoming economic crises and successful model changes, urban elites and their values were also affected by the events of the Second World War, including the laws on Jews and attitudes towards them.

In any case, from the mid-19th century onwards, Győr’s Jewish society became very quickly integrated with the city’s other religious populations. This was a consequence of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish population of the town belonging to the Neologue community and the resulting physical appearance and, crucially, mentality. Naturally, this also required the welcoming, opportunity-seeking attitude of the Christian economic and political elite as a partner. In industrial joint-stock companies seeking to modernise local economic life, or even in Masonic lodges attempting to improve society, the city’s most prominent citizens could cooperate regardless of their religious affiliation. One, if not the decisive, reason for this was that business competition was not linked to ethnicity but to personal performance.

The quality of a society – and this is even more true for local communities – depends on how it treats immigrant aliens, minority religious and ethnic groups. In the case of Győr, 10% of the population after the turn of the century was Jewish. Among the economic elite, they held a stable position of around 30%, while in the Legislative Committee (of the city) they accounted for 20-30% of the members. They were therefore an inescapable part of the economic and political life of Győr. If we look at the network of relations and the culture of interaction in the bourgeois society of the time, we do not find any tensions that were specifically induced by the antagonism between the Jewish and Christian communities. The best example of this is the Masonic lodge Philanthropy, founded in 1901, in which Christian citizens were involved in addition to Jewish members. Two memoirs, in which no grievances are mentioned, testify to the smooth relations between the two religious groups. [6]

However, it is worth mentioning the daily Dunántúli Hírlap, published by the Bishop’s Office of Győr, in which more cautious, sometimes harsher, biting articles were regularly published. Their impact was negligible. We asked about this in conversations with the descendants of successful entrepreneurs (the second generation could still remember the 1910s and 1920s), but they did not perceive such a problem.

This seamless relationship, the interplay of social events and obligations, is illustrated by a series of ceremonies that accompanied the unveiling of a marble plaque commemorating the 85 Jewish heroes of Győr who died in World War I. It was the autumn of 1923 … The ceremony was attended by a delegation from the Ministry of Defence, the Győr Regiment, the leaders of the city and county administration and representatives of Christian churches. [7] The county bishop of Győr, Antal Fetser, himself spoke moving words of remembrance.

Peace continued and was extended well into the 1930s. In the spring of 1931, on the occasion of the quarter-century anniversary of the inauguration of the county bishop, Dr. Mór Schwarz, Chief Rabbi of Győr, praised the activities of the high priest with striking respect, obviously not without oratorical turns. Almost all Jews in Győr remembered that the wave of anti-Semitism that had appeared at the beginning of the 1920s had largely bypassed the city.

Coexistence and supportive relationships worked on several levels. Around the turn of the century, Ignác Schreiber, a descendant of a former wealthy grain merchant family, set up a foundation to support students, helping those in need regardless of their religious affiliation. The foundation of Hermann Back – the family had long been baptised – helped start-up entrepreneurs.

Even after the First World War, the establishment of various foundations was linked to Jewish citizens of Győr. Berta Kohn and her sister Jenny Kohn support the city hospital with a substantial sum of money, which is even appreciated by the Minister of the Interior, Ferenc Keresztes Fischer. In June 1925, the industrialists Lajos Buchwald and János H. Schmiedl registered a foundation to help workers. No wonder that the city’s authoritative bourgeois elite does not allow any anti-Semitic voices anywhere near it. In August 1934, the mayor, Dr. Ferenc Szauter, praised the activities of the Chief Rabbi Dr Mór Schwarz, a member of the General Assembly, and the Legislative Committee recorded this in a resolution.

It cannot be considered a coincidence that the combined support of the liberal and social democratic parties in Győr far exceeded that of the conservative parties in the Horthy regime. In fact, when in 1939, in the absence of liberal parties, only the Hungarian Social Democratic Party existed, it received far more support from local voters in percentage terms than in Budapest. The relations described above thus not only reflect the values of the wealthy bourgeois elite, but also the opinion of a broad section of the population of Győr.

Whereas the economic power field was reorganised earlier, the major political power field was reorganised later. The Second law on Jews abolished the daily Győri Hírlap and from 1 October 1939, with the publication of the Győri Nemzeti Hírlap (National Newspaper), the right-wing and even extreme right-wing media took over the provision of information to the citizens of the city. Among the local bourgeoisie, an attempt had already been made to bring about a (political) realignment, also at the behest of the central authorities.

In July 1937, a local group of the Baross Szövetség (Baross Association, a nationwide social association founded by tradesmen and craftsmen in 1919. Only members of Christian denominations were admitted – ed.), founded in 1919, was set up in Győr.[8] Its first hesitant local steps were limited to communicating the news from the capital and the central patterns of behaviour (expectations). A review of the association’s local membership list suggests that the mainstream urban bourgeoisie approached the organisation with due caution. Despite all the enticements of benefits, they were preoccupied with a lot of petty personal matters. Until they gained local publicity, their visibility was not very high. It was not only the more moderate bourgeoisie of Győr that kept their distance, even their leaders were not very prestigious. This organisation of so-called national Christian craftsmen and merchants was headed first by a lawyer and then by a doctor. It is true that the latter was extremely ambitious, but few people joined him in his activities.

Simultaneously with the events of the war, anti-Semitic language became a permanent feature of the local press. It was constructed quite simply. Jews were either helping ‘foreign agents’ to undermine the chances of victory in the war, or ‘trying to corrupt young Christian girls’, or spreading rumours. The citizens of Győr were bombarded with factoids (in today’s parlance, “fake news” – ed.). And from 1944 onwards, measures taken against the Jews were regularly reported on. Of course, news stories condemning Christian citizens who helped the Jews, highlighting the punishment imposed on them by the law, could not be neglected.

The question for us is how the people of Győr reacted to this. The effect of the fervent anti-Semitism fomented by the local newspaper was not satisfactory to the editors, and in several cases, it was reported with strong disapproval.

On April 21, 1944, 15-20 members of the Attila József Circle of Győr (Attila József (1905-1937), a progressive Hungarian poet – ed.) held a protest walk on Baross Street, wearing yellow carnations in their jackets. It took no small courage to do this simple act in those days, we might add. What we have here is essentially a humane expression of the cultural elite. But just as important for us is what the city’s political elite have been doing in these weeks.

The most difficult test has been the implementation of the decree on ghettoisation. It should not be forgotten that this had to be carried out against Jewish citizens who were members of the municipal council for a longer or shorter period of time, and therefore had a working relationship with the mayor and the drafters of the decree. Their number was not small, since over the previous 20 years or so, between 50 and 100 people had appeared in the municipal Legislative Committee as members of the Jewish community, either as important tax payers and voters or as members of the religious representation.

The mayor of the city, Jenő Koller, presented the most humane solution to the Prime Minister. Based on the model of the capital city, he formed three groups of houses. Accordingly, there would be pure Jewish, pure Christian and mixed streets. Looking at the first plan, we can see that the so-called Jewish streets and squares (Batthyány Square, Bisinger Promenade, Deák Ferenc, Kisfaludy, Király, Dunaszer, Czuczor and Dr Kovács Pál Streets) already had a large number of Jewish-owned houses and apartments, as well as large floor areas and very good running water and bathroom facilities. As few people as possible would have had to move, families could have helped each other, and sanitary conditions were good.

The move to the ghetto had already begun when Interior Minister Andor Jaross disagreed, saying that the Jewish population of Győr should be relocated to a well-controlled and isolated area. The new location of the ghetto was designated on 15 May 1944, and was situated in the area bordered by the Moson-Danube, the Rábca and Bercsényi park. Needless to say, this was a decidedly inhumane solution on the part of the Minister of the Interior. From the 1870s onwards, the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of Győr gradually became mixed. The wealthier citizens moved from the former Jewish district to the central parts of the city. From 1904, with the unification of Sziget and Győr, this process accelerated even more. Christian citizens bought the smaller houses and flats, which were left empty and of low comfort there. Here, too, there was finally a thorough mix-up … Conditions here were much worse. Houses were small, space was tight and sanitary conditions were very poor. Even this did not please the Home Secretary. The city tried to postpone the resettlement to the third and absolutely horrible ghetto, but the elite of Győr were completely helpless, although even the church leaders tried their best. …

Vilmos Apor, who took up his episcopal office in Győr during the period of the adoption of the third law on Jews, did his best to help the persecuted. He used all the means at his disposal for their protection. As president of the Hungarian Holy Cross Association, he provided them with legal and material aid and also sought to relieve the pressure on the Jews through his contacts. He wrote letters and sent telegrams to church and secular leaders. Archival records show that, in his defence of the Jews, he became involved in a heated exchange with the county’s government commissioner, who was forced to tell him that there was nothing more he could do. In June 1944, he personally visited the barracks on Buda Street to bring food, medicine and spiritual aid to Christians of Jewish origin. But the guards turned him back in a brutal and humiliating manner. The barracks on Buda Street were built as an emergency military hospital during World War I. By 1944 they were almost uninhabitable. Who would have thought that this ruin would be the home of thousands of citizens of Győr, even if only for a short time.

The Arch-abbot of the Benedictine Order in Pannonhalma, Kelemen Krizostom, who was closely connected to Győr, was more successful thanks to his position. He contacted the Hungarian representative of the International Red Cross and they agreed to consider the whole settlement of Pannonhalma as a children’s shelter and thus put it under the protection of the Red Cross. His goal was achieved, and thousands of Jews among the refugees managed to survive the war. In 1998, he was awarded the “Righteous Among the Nations” medal for his achievements.

The civic tolerant value model of Győr, which permeated the churches here, tried to do something for the persecuted even during the time of the Holocaust. However, greater historical power structures overruled the destiny of the country and the life of the settlements within it.

Unfortunately, the values and attitudes that had been formed over a long period of time could not be handed down through the generations, as the life of the country and its towns and villages was repeatedly shattered from the late 1930s onwards, and the guiding principle became the denial of the past rather than its continuation.

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[5] As a result of the traumatic changes following the First World War, Győr suffered perhaps the least loss of all the large towns close to borders. (There are no specific studies on this.)

[6] Quittner 1996; Körner 2005.

[7] Lónyai 2004. The years between the two world wars and the events of the Holocaust have so far only been briefly reviewed from this perspective by Sándor Lónyai. Detailed knowledge of the events still requires much research.

[8] Archives of the City of Győr X/1. Documents of the Győr group of the Baross Association 1937-1944. These documents are still completely unprocessed.

SOURCES

Computer processing of ecclesiastical sematisms in the Győr-Moson-Sopron County Archives

Computer processing of the list of the instructions of the second law on Jews, which is kept as a separate list in the archives of the City of Győr

Archives of the City of Győr X/1. Records of the Győr Group of the Baross Association 1937-1944. Data have been taken from the records, but the source as a whole is completely unprocessed

LITERATURE QUOTED

Borovszki Samu: Counties and towns of Hungary, Győr county; Budapest, 1910

Eva Quittner: Pebbles of memory Győr, 1996

József Kemény: The History of the Jews of Győr, Győr, 1930.

András Körner: Taste of the past, Budapest, 2005

Sándor Lónyai: From the numerus clausus to Auschwitz, Budapest, 2004

Lajos Gecsényi: Győr guilds in the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century; Arrabona 21, 1979.

Lajos Gecsényi: Soldiers and citizens in the fortresses of Győr in the 16th and 17th centuries; Military History Publications, 1984

Gyula Szakál: Citizen entrepreneurs in Győr; Budapest, 2002

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This study was published in the journal Műhely (Vol. 36, No. 2, 2013). Republishing rights were granted by Dr. Gyula Szakál.

The pictures are not included in the study, they are for illustration purposes only.

Edited and translated into English by Péter Krausz.

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Historical model changes in Győr and their relationship with the religious (ethnic) structure and spatial location of the population

Excerpts from a study by Dr Gyula Szakál, Associate Professor in ret., Historian of economic relationships, Széchenyi István University, Győr

Introductory reflections

Győr … in 1743, having bought its way out, was elevated to the rank of free royal city. It could have remained a peaceful patrician town, but two generations later it was already on the path to becoming a grain trading city. Subsequent to the opportunity to trade in agricultural produce closing (1870s), there was a brief period of livestock trade, and then, recognising its limitations, the local elite quickly moved towards the establishment of modern manufacturing industry. …

How was this linked to the ethnic and religious structure of the city and its spatial location? The uniqueness of Győr was that within a relatively small radius, four settlements were divided by rivers and legally separated, while these parts were functionally completely united. For a long time, the three rivers were also the boundaries of the municipalities. Győr and the associated Újváros were located in the inner part of the city, bordered by the Danube, the Rába and the Rábca, while Sziget, Révfalu and Pataháza were located in the outer parts as independent villages. This legal status was maintained until 1905. The spatial separation also meant the division of religious groups.

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Religious conflicts and the urban space

… the evangelical population, or its elite, was an economically innovative, successful stratum. This group represented 6-7% of the urban population, and among the richest (a group of 250 of the richest taxpayers) their share was around 15-20% until the early 1900s. The proportions are very similar to the performance of Jewish entrepreneurs. …

Emergence of the Jewish population

The third religion and ethnicity whose increase in numbers was linked to the function of the military town was Judaism. There are no direct archival records until the 1800s, but there are indirect references to their presence. The number of soldiers increased or decreased, but it certainly meant an increase in consumption. In particular, the role of mobile traders grew in the preparation of military campaigns. There are also indications that military commanders did not despise the share of the surplus income of military contractors. In another period – 1720 – there are also indications that under the protection of General Heister, ‘large numbers’ of Jews, Greeks, Serbs and Armenians settled in the city, paying only to him for protection. [1]   It is quite certain that this practice could not have been otherwise in the past. There are also indications that in the town, which was rebuilt after the fire of 1567, there was already a ‘Judengasse’ and a house used as a synagogue close to it. If we look at the geographical location, these were located right on the edge of the most dangerous part of the city wall.

The fate and geographic movement of the Jews of Győr took on a particular shape as the role of the military town faded. The settlement became a free royal town from 1743, but a council decision to expel the Jews from the town was taken as early as 11 December 1747. We do not know exactly how many people were affected, but it could not have been more than 300. As in the case of the evangelists, the expulsion was symbolic. They were moved to the village of Sziget, on the other bank of the Rábca River, which was owned by the bishop. The earliest record we have is from 1791, when the catholic church allowed 30 families to settle there for 200 Ft a year. Although it forbids the admission of further families, it also grants the community full autonomy. They can maintain a house of prayer, elect a judge who, in addition to internal affairs, settles disputes even between Jews and Christians. [2]

If you look at the number of families, you can only think of large families. The first accurate data is recorded in the ecclesiastical sematisms (directories; kept by village parish priests, including data on the denominational distribution of the settlement – ed.) from 1804. Only 13 years have passed since the forced emigration, but this census mentions 351 Jews, which was 9.6% of the population. The space cut up by the rivers and the divergence of jurisdictions provided an opportunity to exclude them fully from the city, but in essence it did not happen, having moved only a few hundred metres away from the centre. From then on, however, this area became the centre of their geographical identity, even when most of them no longer lived there.

The case of the construction of the new synagogue is a good example of this. A religious community, when it becomes financially strong enough, wants to visually present its existence. From the Middle Ages to the present day, the most concise form of this has been the building of churches. It was not only a simple place of worship that was needed, but also, depending on financial strength or even political influence, its location was also important.

This was the case in Győr, when the community, which had become financially stronger thanks to the grain trade, wanted to build a representative synagogue instead of a very modest and unimpressive prayer house (one was on Kígyó Street – a very small street – and the other was hidden on the floor of a guest inn). At this time, still the early 1860s, the more affluent sections of Jewry already began to move out of the village of Sziget which had once housed them.

The internal tension in the community was palpable. Those pf the Sziget district – the poorer section of the group – felt that the townspeople were ‘trying to force them’ to leave the ancestral soil. Looking back to the late 1920s, József Kemény says there were serious struggles, various alternatives were considered, and finally the assembly of representatives, almost exclusively made up of very wealthy entrepreneurs, made the decision. … József Kemény assessed this decision: ‘The decision shows that the majority finally came to the conclusion that if the Jews were to develop their economic and cultural strength, if the centre of their activities is to be increasingly shifted to the city, their representative temple … must not remain in the former ghetto.’ [3]

It is worth noting that the land purchased was very close to the church of the Evangelical community (separated by a street), the church of the Carmelite Order (bordered by a river) and the bishop’s residence was only a few hundred metres away. The area was large enough for the planned synagogue to serve as a suitable landmark, or even a counterpoint. The city government of the time did not at all hinder this ambition (it should be noted that the representative body at this time was composed almost entirely of Christian citizens).

We have already mentioned that the realisation of these dreams was made possible by the intermediary trade in grain. Grain from Bačka-Banát and partly from the lowlands was transported via the Danube and Győr to the markets of Vienna, and from there onwards. This trading role directly provided a livelihood of some kind for 15-20% of the population. But the multiplier effect was greater.

The huge housing and public buildings (schools, law courts, other public buildings) in the city centre were built with the capital generated. And for the top merchants, the profit margins, sometimes in the hundreds of percent range, made it possible to pursue almost ‘American’ careers. For the Jewish population of the settlement, this situation provided an excellent opportunity. All the opportunities were open to them to develop their previously accumulated knowledge, capital and contacts. This two-decade period from the 1850s onwards was exploited most skilfully by Jewish entrepreneurs. The names of families such as Fleischmann, Ehler, Kőnig, Keppich and Schreiber became known and, at the same time, respected.

These wealthy entrepreneurs started a spatial movement towards the most frequented streets of Győr’s city centre. In the absence of research in this direction, we can only deduce from scattered data that the properties they owned were not only of considerable size, but also served as landmarks. The spatial movements of the wealthiest group were later followed by others.

From the processing of the ecclesiastical sematisms, the numerical growth of the Jewish population of Győr can be clearly seen.

Increase in the Jewish population of Győr

Year	Capita	Proportion of the population, %	Location
1804	351	9,6	Sziget district
1809	358	12,0	Sziget district
1819	354	20,5	Sziget district
1830	720	17,3	Sziget district
1840	850	19,8	Sziget district
1851	1243	31,0	Sziget district
1861	1318	35,2	Sziget district
1872	2885	12,0	Győr, entire city
1881	3826	14,6	Győr, entire city
1891	4036	17,3	Győr, entire city
1901	5317	15,7	Győr, entire city
1910	5418	9,6	Győr, entire city
1917	5647	13,2	Győr, entire city
1928	6023	12,3	Győr, entire city
1940	4967	9,7	Győr, entire city

Beyond tracing the numerical movement, the more interesting question for us is the relationship between the Christian and Jewish populations. Looking through the most diverse sources of contemporary social publicity – newspapers, publications – and oral recollections, we find only minimal manifestations of anti-Semitism in Győr.

The struggle between the entrepreneurial elite groups in Győr was evenly matched and in more than one case it was the Jewish entrepreneurs who had to cling to their Christian counterparts. If you look at the dozen or so bourgeois families that were considered the richest in the eyes of the public (tax lists confirmed this exactly), Christians were certainly predominant. There was no status envy, not even jealousy. In many cases of the change from a merchant town to an industrial model, we found a very high degree of cooperation between elite groups of different religions. The reason for this is to be found not only in the receptiveness, flexibility and Westernised civic values of the bourgeoisie of Győr, but also in the mentality of the local Jewish population. From very early on they lived together with local citizens, and if we look at the geography of immigration, they came from Western countries or from neighbouring settlements. According to the data in the local sematisms – and this was obviously also the case nationally – they very often, but by no means exclusively, performed commercial and other service functions in the surrounding villages.

In a nearby settlement, Gyömöre (about 25 km from Győr), a small Jewish colony with a Yeshiva was established by mid-19th century.  … We have scarce data to show that many people came from the surrounding settlements to Győr, which offered greater opportunities. The Jews of Győr belonged almost exclusively to the Neologue movement, in appearance and behaviour not unlike the bourgeoisie or even middle-class groups of the Christian faith as understood locally. According to an oral recollection, it was almost a unique opportunity to see Jews with sideburns and in kaftans in Győr, who did not move much from the Sziget district. Simply put, a Jewish entrepreneur in Győr is first an entrepreneur, then a Győr citizen and only then a Jew. Religiousness, as an identity-forming, group-forming, and thus bonding and excluding aspect in Győr, had been thoroughly weakened by the end of the 19th century. The pragmatic values of the bourgeoisie always overrode religious rifts.

The most prominent mayor of the town, Károly Zechmeister (1888-1906), was of Lutheran origin, while the town’s chief medical officer, Fülöp Pfeiffer, and the town’s fire chief, Ernő Erdély, were of Jewish origin.

Estate inventories show that the general practitioners of active Catholic public figures were very often Jewish. It is therefore not surprising that the Masonic lodge(s) of Károly Kisfaludy, which was very strong and active at the turn of the century and had many members of Jewish origin, … included also many Christian members.

Spatial framework of coexistence

The integration of Jewish entrepreneurs into Christian society can be considered seamless. There was no question of occupational or even territorial segregation. Computer processing of historical housing and address directories and of the census ordered by the second law on Jews (“Law IV, 1939, on the Restriction of the Participation of Jews in Public and Economic Life” – ed.) proves this. The latter list contains 506 items (names, occupations, streets). [4] Of these, 67 were deleted, who had died or moved away, and were included in the processing, since we were carrying out a social history analysis and these citizens had lived and worked in Győr for a long time.

We were mainly interested in occupations and their spatial location. In our case, the names were only important in terms of the proportion of families that were considered to be truly wealthy locally (among the richest). After all, there is always a family behind the names. Our estimate may be subject to subjective errors, but a maximum of 20 families could be considered truly wealthy. The list therefore ranges from the local Jewish upper middle class to the lower middle class. It excludes doctors, lawyers, and business as well as technical intellectuals. In Győr in the 1930s, the latter was a group of considerable size and power. Also missing were the poorer group who worked as workers or employees.

If we take the entrepreneurs in the list as a family of four, this represents 40% of the local Jewish population, but if we think of a family of six, it represents 60%. It is likely that the latter figure is similar to the real proportion. 63% of the entrepreneurs on the list were engaged in trade. We were able to sort the trading occupations (the same occupation was described in more than one way) into 36 major groups. The distribution of occupations shows the trend towards industrialisation and urbanisation. Food, general merchandise, textiles and clothing retailers accounted for nearly 60% of the 235 traders. They were essentially found in all trade sectors. It is rather interesting where they were few in number, even though stereotypes would have led one to expect their presence there. Only 24 entrepreneurs were involved in the second-hand clothing trade, the rawhide trade and the feather trade, which represented 5% of the whole group. Only 15 inn/pubkeepers were recorded (3.3%), although there were many more inns and pubs at the time. As a mere curiosity, 8 pig traders and one loan librarian were also recorded.

We were able to organise the 271 craftsmen into 38 major categories. Almost every profession of the time was represented. Nearly a third of the craftsmen were tailors, hatmakers, embroiderers and other clothing-related businesses. We also found 30 shoemakers (15% of Jewish craftsmen), 12 hairdressers (4.4%), 10 photographers and 6 dental technicians. We can assume that the majority of the photographers and dental technicians of the period were of Jewish origin. It is merely of interest to note that one goldsmith, one shipwright, one thresher, one window dresser and one cleaner were also recorded.

Perhaps more important than the occupational structure is the spatial location of businesses. According to contemporary records, there is at least one Jewish entrepreneur in 121 streets (squares) of Győr. It could be said that by the early 1930s they had already settled in the entire city. Of course, we know that the place of residence and the place of business did not always coincide, but for us it was the presence in the urban space that was important. Their home in the Sziget district of the time almost emptied between the two world wars. We could link at most 13-15% of the businesses recorded in the inventory to this area. In the immediately adjacent Újváros, their share could be a maximum of 10%. Obviously, the poorest layer still remained in their old location, but these are not recorded in the source.

Three quarters of businesses are concentrated on city centre streets. It should also be noted that doctors and lawyers of Jewish origin also lived in this area. (The downtown area occupies a circle with a maximum radius of 400 metres, which takes 15-20 minutes to walk around.) We found 53% of entrepreneurs in this area. However, one observation needs to be made. On Baross Street, which was the most representative shopping street in Győr at the time, their presence can be estimated at perhaps 30%. It would be good to know the religious distribution of the traders and craftsmen operating in each street. We can only estimate the 1938 data, as the closest accurate street list of businesses we have is from 1915.

It is also likely that the number of businesses could not have increased substantially from 1915 to the 1930s, as the geographical space of the street did not allow for this. We also assessed that in 1904, a business on Baross Street was a mere 5 m away, which had decreased to 4 m by 1915. The space of businesses could not have shrunk any more than this, or more precisely, their number could not have increased any more. The same proportion on the adjacent and equally long Deák Street fell from 9 to 7 m between the dates indicated. Thus, the proportion of Jewish businesses on the most important downtown streets can be put at less than 50%. More importantly, the premises of the leading businesses on Baross Street were quite large. This was the case with Ferenc Sándori’s hardware store, Jenő Kocsis’ department store, Gusztáv Kőnisgberg’s and Géza Alexy’s shops. They were Christian entrepreneurs.

There is a surviving photograph of the Salzer brothers’ shop, which was very modest in size and we know that they had great difficulty in finding a place on Baross Street. The largest merchant’s house in the downtown area, which had two floors, was owned by the Catholic Kreszta family. On Kossuth Street, the longest street in Győr, which separates Sziget from Újváros and connects directly with the city centre, there were 170-180 businesses, of which we can estimate the proportion of Jewish businesses at 20% at most. Only one “Jewish Street” was found, Híd Street, where the proportion of Jewish entrepreneurs can be estimated at 90%. This was both a connecting and a dividing street between the three districts. They catered specifically to the needs of the poorer layers of the urban population, with their very modest-looking shops.

END OF THE FIRST PART

Be sure to read the Second Part to find out how the Győr elite reacted to the political crisis and human tragedy of 1944.

[1] Borovszky 1910: 363.; [2] Quoted by Kemény 1930: 18.; [3] Kemény 1930: 67.; [4] Győr City Archives: separate lists

The list of the literature and sources used is provided in the Second Part.

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This study was published in the journal Műhely (Vol. 36, No. 2, 2013). Republishing rights were granted by Dr Gyula Szakál.

The pictures published here are not included in the study, they are for illustration purposes only.

Edited and translated into English by Péter Krausz.

Photo report by István Nagy and Memorial Addresses

The commemoration ceremony in the funeral parlour of the Győr-sziget cemetery took place on a beautiful sunny summer day, 18 June 2023, with an increased attendance compared to previous years.

Tibor Villányi, President of the Győr Jewish Community, welcomed the guests and greeted the attendees.

The first speaker was Prof. Andor Grósz, recently elected MAZSIHISZ President. It is of particular significance that Andor Grósz is a native of Győr, which he referred to in his speech (his address is available on the Hungarian post only in Hungarian).

Here you can also see an interview with the President of MAZSIHISZ, published in the daily Kisalföld on 24 June 2023. (Only in Hungarian)

Afterwards, László Rózsavölgyi, Győr Municipal Assembly Member, addressed the audience on behalf of Dr. Csaba András Dézsi, Mayor of Győr. (His address is available on the Hungarian post only in Hungarian.)

Péter Joel Totha, Chief Rabbi of Győr and the Hungarian Defence Forces, recalled in his speech the events of 79 years ago in Győr and Hungary. Following a song of mourning by Cantor István Gara, the participants recited the ancient Kadesh in memory of those murdered in the Holocaust. (His address is available on the Hungarian post only in Hungarian.)

Finally, Dr. Péter Krausz, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Roots in Győr Foundation, spoke about the World Reunion planned for next year’s 80th anniversary and the student competition already underway. He invited participants to these events. (His contribution is available on the Hungarian post only in Hungarian)

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Vilma Popper is a little-known individual in the Hungarian literary history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Unfortunately, only fragments of her life are known, and even less about her relationship to Judaism.

The productive novelist was born on May 11, 1857, in Győr. Her father, Armin Popper, served in the so-called Vienna Legion of Austrian Volunteers, fighting on the side of the Hungarian revolution in the War of Independence against the Habsburgs in 1848-49. Following the overthrow of the uprising, he settled in Újváros, a district of Győr, as a medical practitioner. Her mother, Josephine Leon, was also Austrian. She had one sister, Helén Lujza. She graduated from a Győr secondary school. She wanted to become a doctor like her father, but it was impossible for a woman in those times. Vilma’s mother tongue was German, but she spoke excellent Hungarian, English, and French. Her upbringing was influenced by the ideas of the War of Independence, reflected in several of her works.

They lived close to the synagogue at today’s 14 Kossuth Lajos Street.

Popper worked as an English and German language teacher at the Royal High School for Girls in Győr (Ferenc Kazinczy Grammar School today) and often assisted in her father’s practice. In WW1 – already 57 years old – she volunteered as a nurse and served in the military hospital set up in her school. She was a member of the Győr Women’s Benevolent Association. Also, she established a foundation to support students in need, irrespective of their religion.

Vilma Popper never married. In the last decades of her life, she lived quietly and alone in her parent’s house, taking care of her sister’s children and grandchildren.

In 1944, following the coup d’état by the Hungarian nazis, the Arrow Cross Party, she found brief refuge in the  Csillag Sanatarium, but the institution was soon forced to shut down. Together with all the other Jews from the city and the region, she was forced into the Győrsziget ghetto and subsequently deported to Auschwitz. The 87-year-old woman survived the horrors of the journey only to die in the gas chambers.

She wrote in German

Vilma Popper’s works were all written in German. Only three of her sixteen volumes were published in Hungarian. So far, no one has made an effort to translate the rest of her oeuvre, probably explaining why she is little known. Some of her books have been published in English, though. Also, she has translated several Hungarian authors, including Kálmán Mikszáth, into German. For this reason, she was considered an ambassador of Hungarian literature in Austria and Germany.

Vilma Popper was a versatile storyteller writing tales, essays, sketches, and short stories on historical and other subjects. She maintained contacts with several well-known Hungarian contemporary writers, including Kálmán Mikszáth, Frigyes Karinthy, and Ferenc Molnár. She also was a close friend of the celebrated actress of the time, Mari Jászai, whom she met when Jászai still worked as a maid in Popper’s neighborhood. The memory of encountering the renowned artist is told in her short story ‘Mari Jászai and the Green Bench.’

Her first success as a writer came in 1891 with ‘Märchen und Geschichten für große und kleine Kinder’ (Tales and Stories for Children, Big and Small), published in Leipzig. From then on, she was constantly present in German literary life. This work was published in Hungarian in 1894 under the title ‘Tales and Stories by Aunt Vilma.’ It was not her, but Adolf Ágai, the founder of the legendary satirical magazine, ‘Borsszem Jankó’, who translated it into Hungarian and wrote a foreword using the pseudonym ‘Uncle Forgó.’ “I consider this storybook is suitable for developing a child’s independent thinking, as it will guide his developing soul to what is beautiful and true without moralizing,” Ágai wrote.

Interestingly, none of these stories reflect that Popper was Jewish. Instead, the traditions of the country’s Christian majority are displayed in titles, such as: ‘The First Christmas Tree’ or ‘Santa Claus,’ perhaps because she came from an assimilated Jewish family.

Her second work, ‘Altmodische Leute’ (Old-fashioned People), was published in Dresden in the same year. Its Hungarian version hit the bookshelves five years later. The third volume, ‘Neue Märchen und Geschichten’ (New Tales and Stories), was the last to reach booklovers in Hungarian in 1900.

Popper was a founding member of the Kisfaludy Literary Society of Győr, established in 1909, aimed at  “promoting, developing and spreading Hungarian literature, cultivating fine arts, organizing readings and celebrations, and publishing the most significant literary works.” Starting then, her works were regularly published in Győr newspapers and recited at literary evenings. Between 1894 and 1920, she was also a member of the Verein der Schriftstellerinnen und Künstlerinnen Wien (Association of Women Writers and Artists, Vienna), where her works were regularly read. Her histories appeared in leading German literary magazines. Max Geißler, a well-known German literary scholar of the time, praised Popper’s talent as a short story writer in 1913 but also stressed that Popper had recognized the limits of her talent.

She celebrated the Kossuth¹ centenary in 1902 by releasing a youth novel about the War of Independence, ‘Die Fahne hoch!’ (Raise the Flag High!), and subsequently wrote a biographical book about Richárd Forstmayer, a renowned organist and cellist in Győr. Until 1926, her short stories, translated into Hungarian, were frequently published in Győr newspapers. These were primarily short, concise narratives or fables written in the style of Aesopus.

One of her most powerful short stories, Ahasuerus’ Sons, was published in the newspaper ‘Győri Hírlap’. (Ahasuerus, or the Legend of the Wandering Jew, is a medieval story about a Jewish man who Jesus Christ cursed on his way to Golgotha to eternal life until the Last Judgement.) Dr. Erzsébet Nagy, a local historian and secondary school teacher of history in Győr, describes this in her monograph on Popper. The characters in the story are outsiders: a sick Gypsy musician and a Jewish doctor. The dying man complains to his doctor of a lifetime of pain:

“You see, doctor”, said the gypsy, when the bow fell from his feeble hand, “I am relieved now. My brothers will sing these tunes as I am being buried, as the blessed soil will welcome her son. The dead will finally be granted the land denied to the living. We, Gypsies, bear the curse of Ahasuerus. We must wander, always wander, without rest. No one loves his homeland more than we do, no one sings about the motherland in a way we do, of which not a single lump is ours, because we are not Hungarians – only Gypsies.” “Old man, I can say the same about myself,” the doctor said, “I, too, bear the curse of Ahasuerus because I am a Jew. We are free to fight, bleed and die for the homeland, but we are still strangers; we will always remain the children of the Ahasuerus.”

She also worked as a translator.

With the rise of the nazis, no more works of hers were allowed to be published. The Győri Hírlap remained loyal to her, and some of her animal stories, characterized by witty mockery and tormenting the spread of fascism, were printed under a pseudonym.

Limited memories

Vilma Popper’s legacy is all but forgotten.

At the end of the war, in 1945, her nephew, Dr. Sándor Korein, a doctor at the Csillag Sanatarium, who had survived the Shoah, placed a white marble memorial plaque in the inner doorway of Vilma Popper’s former residence. The students at the Kossuth Lajos Technical College of Győr used to pay tribute to the writer every year by laying a wreath and doing a small performance at the plaque. Access has become impossible in recent years, and the custom has faded away.

As the house, about 150 years old and in poor condition is currently under renovation, the commemoration will be in a little while possible again. The memorial plaque has been temporarily removed but will be reinstalled when the works are completed.

Miklós Petőcz, a literary historian and poet, commemorates the Győr author with a poem created in 1997.

(The poem was not translated)

In 2006, Dr. Erzsébet Nagy compiled a gap-filling monograph titled ‘Vilma Popper, the Gentle-voiced Author’ that is a valuable tribute to the almost forgotten Jewish writer. According to Nagy: “The real way to maintain her memory, however, would be publishing her works so that her thoughts and gentle humanity would be present among literature lovers and readers.”

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Translated by Viktor and György Polgár

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¹ Lajos Kossuth (1802–1894) was the political leader of the Revolution and War of Independence in 1848–1849.

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Sources:

• A magyar irodalom győri nagykövete (The Ambassador of Győr’s Literature), Kisalföld, December 2, 2013
• Max Geißler: Führer durch die deutsche Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Dunker, Weimar 1913
• Győri Legendák (Győr Legends) – The poems of Miklós Petőcz, Palatia Printing House, Győr 1997
• Győri Életrajzi Lexikon (Győr’s Biography Lexicon), Győr Municipal Library, 2020
• dr. Nagy Erzsébet: Popper Vilma, a szelíd hangú írónő (Vilma Popper, the Gentle-voiced Author), 2006
• Popper Vilma írónőre emlékeztek Győrben, (Novelist Vilma Popper remembered in Győr) Új Élet, December 15, 2013.
• Nagy Mária: 160 éve született Popper Vilma, a tragikus sorsú győri írónő, (Vilma Popper, the Tragic Novelist from Győr, was Born 160 Years Ago) Győri szalon, May 11, 2017
• Mazsihisz és jewishgyor websites: Magyarországi zsidókért díj dr. Nagy Erzsébetnek-és-Harsányi-Lászlónak (Dr. Erzsébet Nagy and László Harsányi awarded with the ‘Pro Hungarian Jewry’ prize) March 24, 2022; jewishgyor.org/en/2022/03/27/this-selfless-woman-doesnt-work-for-awards-but-for-humanity/
• Wikipedia
• Mónika Ladocsi-Tóth, Lajos Kossuth Technical School of Győr, oral communication, May 16, 2023

Roots and early years in the life of Rabbi Dr Emil (Joel Zvi) Róth

By Amir Livnat

Hebrew version below

Introduction

Rabbi Dr Róth Emil (Joel Zvi), the last Rabbi of Győr’s Neologue community before 1944, is a well-known figure in the city’s Jewish history. His Zionist approach convinced many of the city’s youth, including members of the Orthodox community, to immigrate to Palestine, the Land of Israel, in the years before the outbreak of World War II, and as a result saving their lives. Rabbi Róth stayed with his congregation throughout the war, even though he was given the opportunity to save himself and his family. As a teacher and spiritual leader loyal to his community, Rabbi Róth is often referred to as “Korczak of Győr”. He is also remembered for his joint sermon with the Orthodox Rabbi Benzion Snyders on the last Sabbath of the Jewish community, in the barracks camp in Budai Street before the deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It is not surprising, then, that Rabbi Róth is remembered by Győr’s Jews and their descendants as a leader and a role model, almost a mythic figure. Accordingly, much has been written about his years serving as Rabbi in Győr, from 1935 until the last days of the community in June 1944. On the other hand, the period before Rabbi Róth assumed his position in Győr is less known and documented. In the following paragraphs we will fill in these gaps and trace the roots and early years of Rabbi Róth.

Childhood

Emil Róth was born on September 21, 1907. Apart from his Hungarian, he was given the Jewish name Joel Zvi (יואל צבי), reasons for that will be discussed later on. His last name, Róth, is written in modern Hebrew as “רוט”, but in Jewish traditional Hebrew it was usually written as “ראָטה”.

Civil records preserved in the Hungarian Archives in Budapest shed light on Emil’s family. His parents are Izsak Róth and Irén Kohn, who married on July 28, 1904. Emil is the third of Izsak and Irén’s five sons. His elder brother Dezső (David) was born on June 10, 1905. Andor (Mordechai) was born second, on August 29, 1906, and after them, as mentioned, followed Emil. Emil’s younger brothers are Sándor, born on October 6, 1909, and László, who was born about a year later, on October 21, 1910.

Emil was born in the town of Kunszentmárton, where his parents Izsak and Irén lived, and where all their children were born. Kunszentmárton is located in the eastern part of today’s Hungary, in the Great Hungarian Plain, about 130 km southeast of the capital Budapest. It lies on the eastern bank of the Körös River: a tributary of the Tisza River, and is considered an important crossroad due to the bridge that crosses the river within its boundaries. Kunszentmárton was recognized as a city as early as 1807.

In 1910, shortly after the birth of Emil Róth, 10,921 inhabitants lived there, of which 222 were Jews. In 1912, a new synagogue was built in the town, which still exists today. Most of Kunszentmárton’s Jews made a living from agriculture, trade and various crafts. Jews in the town also owned a flour mill, a wood factory and a printing house. Emil’s family made a living as grain merchants. They would send grain on cargo ships that sailed across the Tisza River.

Emil’s childhood family life can be visualized based on the memoirs of his brother, Sándor Róth, who in later years took the Hebrew name Israel Goren, a member of Kibbutz Ma’abarot in Israel. A booklet called “From the River Tisza to Hefer Stream” collects stories of Kibbutz members of Hungarian origin, among them Israel Goren. Some of his memories will be shared here:

“The village had a small Jewish community of 25 families. My parents maintained a Kosher kitchen, closed their shop on Shabbat, etc., they also celebrated the Jewish holidays – Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and more. They would often quote the verse “Le’Shana Haba’a Bi’Yerushalim” – “Next year in Jerusalem!”. Our family was very warm and there were good relations between the family members. In my parents’ home, I absorbed the Jewish tradition, which was common for all of us: my parents, grandparents and us, the five sons… On vacations, father would bring a student from the Rabbinic Seminary, who would teach us some Torah. During the school year we had religion studies for only an hour a week, which was a very poor study. Our vacations were wonderful: before noontime we would play in the synagogue yard, then we spent one or two hours learning with the student, and in the afternoons – like all the other children and boys – we would swim until nightfall in the stream near our house. This is how we grew up, and we enjoyed ourselves in the village. My father was in the grain tradesman. We were an affluent family”.

Upon completion of the elementary school in the village of Kunszentmárton, the children of the Róth family, including Emil, were sent to high school in the nearby city of Szeged. In 1920, close to the beginning of Emil Róth’s studies there, the Jewish community in Szeged consisted of 6,958 people, which made about 6% of all the city’s population. Most of them belonged to the Neologue community.

Family History

We will now go back several years, to follow Emil’s extended family and their origins. We will start with his parents, and continue to follow the family tree to previous generations. Emil’s father, Izsak Róth, was born on April 3, 1878 in the town of Komádi, which is located about 120 km east of Kunszentmárton, near the present-day Hungary-Ukraine border. Previous generations of the Róth family lived in this town as well.

Izsak Róth’s father, and Emil’s grandfather, is Lajos/Leopold Róth, who bears the Jewish name Yehuda Aryeh. Izsak’s mother is Aranka Porgesz. Apart from Izsak, the couple had 4 daughters: Hermina who married Béla Fisch, Rosa who married Josef Baron, Ethel who married Izsak Schwarz, and another daughter. After the death of his wife Aranka, Lajos married Sara-Szerena Sussman. The two were married on September 15, 1891 and had one son and 3 daughters.

Emil’s mother, Irén Kohn, was born on June 4, 1877. Her parents were János Kohn and Regina Kohn. Apart from Irén, we know of another son named Ödön Kohn. Irén was born in the town of Csongrád, and grew up in the nearby town of Kunszentmárton, the birthplace of Emil Róth. Like the Róth family, János Kohn was also involved in the grain trade business. In a relatively small town, it is likely that the Róth and Kohn families were connected by business ties, which ultimately resulted in a match between Izsak and Irén, Emil’s parents.

Next, we will continue our journey further back in time to trace even more distant origins of the Róth family. Lajos, Emil’s grandfather, is the son of David Róth and his wife Frumet Klein. Apart from Lajos, they had three boys, Ignatz-Yitzchak, Isidore-Israel, Simon and a daughter, Memet (Engel). As mentioned, this generation of the family lived in Komádi already.

One generation before, David Róth is the son of Simon Róth and his wife Roza-Reisel Reich. Apart from David, they had two more children Josua and Sara, the wife of Jakob Feldman. Simon’s father, who is the earliest ancestor known in this family, is Joel Róth. Emil Róth carries, therefore, the Hebrew name of his ancestor from the fifth generation: his great-great-great grandfather. But as it turns out, this is not the person he was named after.

The previously mentioned Simon Róth, Emil’s ancestor, had a first wife before Roza Reich: Zipora, born Gotlib. Their only son was Joel Zvi Róth, who was named after his grandfather, and later became the most famous figure in this dynasty. Emil Róth was, therefore, named after Joel Zvi Róth: his great-grandfather’s half-brother. Joel Zvi Róth was born in Komádi in 1820. He served as a Rabbi in several towns in western Hungary. In 1854 he began serving as Rabbi in the city of Huszt, established a large yeshiva there and gradually became one of the most important Rabbis in Hungary. After his death in 1892, several books containing his legacy were published, the most prominent one is Beit HaYozer (בית היוצ”ר, a name that refers to the acronym of his name in Hebrew).

Education

After reviewing the history of his family, we will now return our focus back to Emil Róth. In June 1926, Emil Róth started studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary and University of Jewish Studies, also known as the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest (Országos Rabbiképző – Zsidó Egyetem). This institution, related to the Neologue community, was established back in 1877, and is still active today. The Seminary’s graduates were leading key figures of the Neologue Judaism in Hungary. At the time of Emil’s studies, Rabbi Lajos (Yehuda Aryeh) Blau was the head of the Rabbinical Seminary.

Emil Róth studied at the Rabbinical Seminary for five years. During their studies, the students at the Seminary completed studies with a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Budapest. As part of his studies, Emil Róth’s work focused on Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro: a 15th-century Rabbi and commentator who was born in Italy, moved to the land of Israel and served as one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Jerusalem. In 1930, Róth published his thesis under the title “Obadjah Bertinoro Palesztinai utazása” (The journey of Obadiah of Bertinoro to Palestine). He presented a copy to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. This copy, which includes a handwritten dedication, is currently held by the National Library of Israel.

During the course of his studies, Emil Róth spent certain time in Jerusalem as a guest student at the Hebrew University. The university was then in its early years, and consisted of a few buildings distant from the rest of the city, on top of Mount Scopus. Emil arrived in the British Mandatory Palestine on October 28, 1930, on the ship “Zelio”. He stayed in Jerusalem for about a year. In addition to his studies at the Hebrew University, Emil studied at the Rabbi Kook Central Yeshiva, headed by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel. During his studies, the yeshiva was located in Rabbi Kook’s house, in the street that is now named after him, in the center of Jerusalem. During Emil’s stay in Jerusalem, his younger brother Sándor Róth came to visit him, and ended up staying in Israel for about six months.

After his return to Hungary, on February 24, 1932, Róth took the Rabbinical ordination exam at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest. He passed the exam successfully and was ordained as a Rabbi. A notification of this appears in the Seminary yearbook for the Academic Year 1931/2.

Rabbi in the city of Eger

Soon after Emil Róth was ordinated, he was appointed Rabbi in the city of Eger. Reports about his links to this city appear already from the beginning of June 1931, even before his ordination as a Rabbi. Eger is located in the north of Hungary, about 120 km northeast of the capital Budapest.

Among Jews, the city was called Erlau or Erloi, deriving from its German name. Rabbi Róth was appointed as Rabbi of the Status Quo Ante community – an independent portion of Hungarian Jewry, which did not belong either to the Neologue or Orthodox communities. Status Quo Ante was a small portion of the Jewry of Hungary, however in Eger it was the dominant community, which most of the city’s Jews, numbering 2,100 these years, belonged to. At the same period, Rabbi Shimon Sofer, grandson of the famous Chatam Sofer, served as the Rabbi of the small Orthodox community in Eger. Rabbi Sofer served in Eger from 1881 until being murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.

The Great Synagogue, a magnificent building located in the center of the city, served as the center of the Status Quo Ante community in Eger. The building was inaugurated on September 13, 1913, and no longer exists today.

The Erloi Yizkor book (memorial book for the Jews of Eger), which was published in Jerusalem in 1975, sheds light on the work of Rabbi Róth during his time in Eger: “Dr Emil Róth, the young Rabbi, a graduate of the Rabbinic Seminary in Budapest, who spent two years in the Land of Israel at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and in [Rabbi Kook’s] Haro’e Yeshiva, came to the city in 1932. He was invited to the position of Chief Rabbi after Dr Eliezer Schweiger moved to Nitra.

During his short term of office, Dr Emil Róth introduced a revolution in youth education. Among all the Rabbis of Hungary, he was the most active and consistent in preaching for Zionism and the study of the Hebrew language… Dr Emil Róth brought new energy to the Zionist activities in Eger. In the Ohel Shem school classrooms, Rabbi Róth divided the youth into age groups, so that at least 4-5 educational groups, about 100 school students, could be educated in a Zionist Jewish atmosphere after their regular daily studies. They learned Hebrew songs, studied the Hebrew language, obtained knowledge about the Land of Israel and the history of the people of Israel. The many trips and summer camps that were organized and managed by the young and talented Rabbi himself, were particularly successful among the youth”.

Also in this book, we find the memories of Meir Zeira (Tibor Klein), who was born in Eger: “After Rabbi Emil Róth started his function, a significant turning point occurred: the Jewish holidays were celebrated by children as part of a connection with the Land of Israel, while learning about symbols of the holiday, beautiful songs in Hebrew and overwhelming stories told by the Rabbi. All of this happened after school, in the Ohel Shem hall, and there were often discords between the school management and the Rabbi and his young assistants.”

In 1935, Rabbi Róth was appointed Rabbi of the Neologue community in Győr, therefore he left Eger. After his departure, he was replaced by Rabbi Dr Zoltán Récz, also a graduate of the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest. Like Rabbi Róth, he was also taken to Auschwitz together with his congregation, but he remained alive.

Epilogue

During his time in Eger and Győr, Emil started a family. He married Erzsébet (Elisheva Baneth), who was born in Budapest in 1910. Around 1934, their eldest son György (Yehuda Aryeh) was born followed in about 1937 by their daughter Eszter Judit.

Emil Róth continued to serve as the Rabbi of Győr, his divers work in this city until the last days will not be detailed here. In June 1944, the Jews of Győr were sent in two transports to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Among them were Emil Róth, his wife and children. None of them survived. During the years of the Holocaust, Izsak, Emil’s father, also perished. His mother Irén had passed away a short time before that. In addition, his brother Andor (Mordechai) Rot, his wife Ágnes and their daughter Hanna also perished.

Three of Emil’s brothers, Dezső, Sándor and László, were the last survivors of his family. All the three immigrated to Israel, and made their home there. His older brother Dezső married Klára Klein while still in Hungary. The two lived in Kunszentmárton, where their son Pál was born in 1932. Klára and Pál were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 1944, and killed there. Dezső survived the years of the Holocaust. After the war he married Sara Parcel Neiman, who also lost her husband in the Holocaust. They immigrated to Israel in 1951, and lived in Kiryat Bialik, a town close to Haifa. László Róth, the youngest of the brothers, also lived in Kiryat Bialik.

One of Emil’s brothers arrived in Israel at an earlier stage: Sándor Róth, who was mentioned above when discussing Emil Róth’s childhood and studies. Sándor studied law in Hungary, and simultaneously agriculture, which he hoped would be useful in the Land of Israel. He joined various Zionist groups, and after several attempts, immigrated to Israel in 1935. In Israel, he adopted the Hebrew name Israel Goren. He joined Kibbutz Ma’abarot, located in the Sharon area, not far from Netanya. He married Klara Kliger, and they had two children, Yitzhak and Igal.

There is no better way to conclude this review about Rabbi Dr Emil Róth, than citing the words of his brother Israel Yanai: “My older brother, who studied at the Rabbinical Seminary, brought home the Zionist idea that ignited in my heart the desire to follow the path of practical Zionism. Under his influence, I joined the Zionist student union ‘Maccabiah’… thanks to him I came to Israel – while his own fate was very bitter… these things will serve as a monument to the memory of my brother, who perished in the Holocaust and was not buried according to the Jewish tradition”.

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In case you have any additional information about Rabbi Róth, please reach Amir Livnat, amirlivnat@gmail.com

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Hebrew version

One of the fourteen already damaged

On May 5, 2023, another fourteen stumbling stones were placed in Győr in the framework of a project started years ago by the Hungarian Jewish Cultural Association (Mazsike).

The first stone commemorates Ágnes Korein, who was murdered at the age of 15.

Dr Csaba András Dézsi, Mayor of Győr, was also present at the stone-laying ceremony and made a short statement. Péter Kirschner, President of MAZSIKE, also spoke. A TV report was made of the commemoration.

Twelve (12) members of the family of Jakab Neuwirth, who was murdered in 1920 (!), were also given a memorial stone at three different locations.

Stones were laid in front of the former residence of the Hacker family. How devastating that one of the Hacker stones was damaged a day or two after it had been laid. A metal thief looking for a copper block instead of the thin copper plate covering in reality the concrete block? Or an anti-Semitic manifestation? Shocking.

Ferenc Mátyás Csillag, a 12-year-old boy when murdered, is commemorated by a stone in Árpád Street.

May their memory be a blessing!

Reported by Miklós Szedő

Introduction to the Győr IWalk

Written by Ildikó Mesterházi, Ambassador of the Zachor Foundation and the USC Shoah Foundation in Győr

April 16, the day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust in Hungary, is approaching. By the end of March, the renewed “Walk in the Jewish Quarter of Győr” will be available to help commemorate the event. On this occasion, I would like to introduce you to the IWalk educational programme.

The IWalk program is a digital education program of the University of Southern California (USC) Shoa Foundation, implemented in Hungary by the Zachor Foundation. The program offers local history walks through a free phone app. The phone application allows you to learn about the history of the Jewish community of a given settlement, either independently or with a guide, through a local history walk.

The information is supported by site-specific digital/multimedia resources; these are short (a few minutes) excerpts of video interviews from the USC Shoa Foundation’s Visual History Archive. During the walk through Győr, we will learn about the personal recollections of Lenke Askergren, Leslie Borsa, Ibolya Keller Krausz, Gabriella Polgár and Edith Tupy. In addition to the interview extracts, there are also resources to help the learning process related to each stop of the walk. The Győr walk includes maps, photos, posters and newspaper clippings.

The Győr IWalk brings the history of Győr’s Jews closer to us through active learning by visiting parts of Győr-Sziget and Újváros. The walk takes us through the peaceful and tranquil 1920s, and then through the period of exclusion, looting and deportation.

The walk takes us through ten stations in five locations.

1. Híd utca, the entrance to Bercsényi Park – the settlement of the Jewish community, a period of peaceful coexistence between Jews and non-Jews
2. the park behind the synagogue – the time of settlement of the Jewish community, the period of assimilation
3. Synagogue courtyard – building of the synagogue and the school
4. Emil Róth memorial plaque – the role of the Rabbi and the concept of Zionism
5. The Memorial to Child Victims – disenfranchisement, discrimination
6. Home for old and poor Jews (Menház) – the power of the community, the German occupation
7. Kohn’s Oil Factory Industrial Memorial – the role of the Jews in the industrialisation of the city, the period of looting
8. Bishop János Simor Square – ghettoisation, exclusion
9. Former Catholic girls’ school and convent – relocation to the barracks camp, silent bystanders
10. Győr-Sziget Israelite Cemetery – Vilmos Apor, Memorial to the Martyrs

The walk is a guided discovery and reflection. The process is prepared by providing the necessary background information about the place and then students gather information from a variety of sources. Knowledge construction is done collectively through discussions, so it is very important to ask questions related to the sites and video interviews, and to give students the opportunity to reflect on what they have heard. Reflection can take place during or after the walk in a classroom setting. The phone app also allows us as teachers to monitor individual student responses. In this case, we need to be familiar with the IWitness interface, which I will write about in more detail next time.

The IWalk app is free for anyone to use, and walks can even be done virtually.

The process to download the app is as follows:

• IWalk is available under the name USC Shoah Foundation and can be downloaded for free on Google Play and the App Store. Look for this logo:

• Once downloaded, the interface will display the available countries.

• In our case, we have to look for Hungary, then Győr.
• In the footsteps of the Jews of Győr, you can find a walk through Győr, with the dome of the Neolog synagogue in the picture. (In Hungarian only.)

• The walk can be downloaded and will be offered by the app. The reason to download is that you don’t need an internet connection on the spot.
• The interface asks if the answers should be sent to the teacher. You should tick no here, in which case the download will start.

The walk can be viewed virtually from home, giving you the opportunity to learn about the life and history of the community through personal stories.

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Sources:

Zachor training programs

Újkor.hu

Jewish scouts at Révai High School – MEMOIRES NEVER PUBLISHED BEFORE

To the best of our knowledge, this document has never been published in any form, either on the World Wide Web or in print. It has been hidden in manuscript for over 20 years. We owe this little sensation to Margit Erdély, whose compilation about her grandfather, Dr. Ernő Erdély, the former Chief Commander of the Győr Fire Brigade, was published earlier on this site (https://jewishgyor.org/2022/07/11/dr-erdely-erno/). Ernő Erdély’s son Miklós, Margit’s father, was a member of this scout troop as a student at Révai and significantly contributed with his memories to writing this story.

This post is longer than average, but I didn’t see any reason to shorten or split the original manuscript. I have selected the photographs from various sources for illustrative purposes.

Thanks go to Margit Erdély for preserving this treasure and contributing to its publication, to Daniel Jaquet for putting the manuscript on the computer and to Judit Somló for the most indispensable corrections to the text.

Peter Krausz

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The story of the László Szőgyi Scout Troop 479 in Győr, 1932-1940

Compiled by László Székely, Scout Officer, using the Yearbooks of the Royal Hungarian Révai Miklós High School (later Révai Miklós High School) of Győr and the recollections of László Szende and Miklós Erdély, 2001

Born in England at the beginning of the century and having arrived in Hungary before the First World War, scouting developed in the 1920s into a significant movement of youth, and especially of schoolchildren. This was demonstrated, among other things, by the 1926 County Scout Camp in Megyer, which was attended by 6 000 scouts representing the country’s scout troops. With its uniforms, excursions and camps, the scout movement became very attractive for the students of the Révai Miklós High School. The school’s scout troop Turul, which was formed before the First World War, had 60-70 scout members out of 340-350 students around 1930.

At that time, Győr, with a population of around 50 000, had a significant Jewish population almost 6 000. A considerable number of these citizens were merchants and intellectuals, and their sons were sent to the Révai Miklós High School (they had little choice: apart from the Benedictine Gymnasium, this was the only option for boys in the city to go into trade or higher education). These Jewish students also wanted to become scouts, but partly the Christian nature of a scout troop as such (and with it the majority of Hungarian scouting) and partly their different religious requirements (the Sabbath and the meal regulations) did not allow this. Thus, the need to form a separate Jewish scout troop arose in the early 1930s.

In 1931, there had been already 8 Jewish scout troops among the 589 scout troops in the country, and by 1934 (including the Győr troop!) their number increased to 12, meaning that elsewhere the same thinking was being followed as in Győr.

After such a precedent, in the first half of 1932 the (neologue) Israelite religion teacher of the school, József Ullmann, started to organise the scout troop. The Győr Israelite Community became the supporting body, while the troop recruited its members exclusively from the Jewish students of the Révai High School.

The troop was officially formed in the autumn of 1932, at the beginning of the school year, with 33 members, who prepared for the recruit probation with great zeal under the leadership of Scoutmaster József Ullmann and Assistant Officer István Klein.

József Ullmann was primarily a religion teacher, he taught religion to students of the Israelite faith in several secondary schools in Győr. His profession, coupled with his purist personality, had a great impact on his work as a Scoutmaster. Parents were happy to allow their high school boys to become scouts because they knew their adolescent children were in good hands as a supplement to parental and school education. As a result, within two years, 70-80% of the school’s Jewish students were members of the troop.

The troop took the name of László Szőgyi, a teacher of the high school who died as a war hero in the WW1, and received the number 479 from the Hungarian Scout Association: thus the full name of the troop became László Szőgyi Scout Troop No. 479.

László Szőgyi joined the Győr Main Real School in 1910 and was a teacher at the school until 1915, after a one-year break (1911-12). He also enjoyed engaging with his students outside the classroom, for example, in the summer of 1914 he and three of his students rowed on the Danube from Ulm to Győr. In 1915 he was called up as a soldier and died at the front. His name is on a memorial plaque in the school lobby, unveiled in 1925, along with that of four of his colleagues and 55 former students.

In respect of the number 479, the scouts of the troop had a battle cry that went like this

“479! (whispered) – 479!!! (in the middle voice) – 479!!!!! (at full voice)”.

The debut of the team took place on March 8, 1933, whereby Pál Seller, national Scout Inspector, Gergely Bencsik, the Co-president of the Székesfehérvár Scout District (also a teacher of the school and the commander of the Turul team) and Dr János Erdős, the Chairman of the team’s organizing committee, were really impressed by the good work the team had done so far. As a result of the inspection, the troop was certified by the Hungarian Scout Association on 14 June 1933 and was inaugurated by District Co-President Gergely Bencsik on 19 June at a nice ceremony.

The troop held its first camp in Balatonlído (sic!) from 16 July to 30 July 1933. It was attended by 34 scouts. The camping was made possible by the generous support and dedication of Dr Ernő Erdély, School Board President.

The participating 34 scouts represent practically the whole troop – even in the following years the whole troop always camped together. This is remarkable, because e.g. in the Turul troop only 50-60% of the members were also campers. Obviously, this was only possible thanks to the parents, as well as wealthy (merchant) members of the community, who also provided substantial support to the troop, e.g. by paying for the camping costs of poorer scouts. The city of Győr also contributed to the costs with a 50 Pengo camping grant (at that time the cost of a scout camping was around 5-10 Pengo).

Dr Ernő Erdély, School Board President, was the Chief Commander of the Győr fire brigade. His son attended the second grade in this school year and he was of course a member of the scout troop.

This summer, the 4th Jamboree, the great meeting of the world’s scouts, was held in Gödöllő, Hungary. The recently formed, novice troop could not, of course, attend, but it nevertheless went on a one-day trip to the huge event, which attracted 30 000 Scouts, at the beginning of August.

This visit was a wonderful experience for the Scouts of the newly formed troop, and the boys’ reports of their impressions gave a great boost to the recruitment of new members.

From the autumn of 1933, the Jewish Community of Győr, supported by generous external financial contributions, provided the troop with a scout “home” and equipment ideally tailored to the scouting goals.

The Israelite Women’s Association also bought scout uniforms for the needy scouts, contributing to the uniform image of the troop.

In the school year 1933-34, the troop continued to grow and by the end of the year the troop had 50 scouts and 9 recruits under the leadership of two officers (Commander József Ullman and Frigyes Ullmann) and three assistant officers (István Klein, Imre Herzberger, Ervin Freiberger).

On September 10, 1933, the troop unveiled the troop flag donated by Dr Jánosné Erdős (wife of the chairman of the organizing committee) in the presence of a large distinguished audience. The inaugural speech was given by Dr János Erdős, President of the Organising Committee. A speech was delivered also by Dr Henrik Kallós, President of the Jewish Community, about the team’s namesake, László Szőgyi, who died a hero’s death (in WW1). The scout flag of the troop with the inscription “Ancient faith and integrity for the homeland” was blessed by Chief Rabbi Dr Mór Schwarz.

The good performance of the troop was recognised by letting it send six patrols to the national competition of the Hungarian Scout Association. The best result was achieved by the patrol “Hawks”. Three patrol leaders (Tibor Holzer, Zoltán Kállai, Pál Weiler) could participate in the 13th (national) training camp for patrol leaders in Hárshegyi Scout Park (Budapest).

The 1934 Big Camp was held from 9 to 24 July in Fonyód-Béla-telep with the participation of 51 scouts.

65 years later, László Szende, who was in the second year of high school at the time, remembers the camp as follows:

It was a real pleasure to camp on the shores of Lake Balaton. The murmur of the water almost echoed in the tents and accompanied our dreams.

Of course, this great experience also had its drawbacks, because when a storm raced across the lake, it didn’t spare the camp. The tent canvas was stretched to the point of being torn to pieces, and some of the more fragile parts of the tent fell on the occupants. It had to be rebuilt with the help of the most storm-resistant members of the team.

A great event was the flag-raising ceremony with a horn call at the opening of the camp, and the ceremonial lowering of the flag to music at the closing. Between these two occasions, the flag was flying in an imposing way.

In the mornings, a line-up and the issuing of orders in front of the flag followed a horn call, and in the evenings, the retreat to the tents was accompanied by music. All this made the sunrise and sunset more colourful.

Of course, those who were reprimanded in any way by the commanding officer during the morning call – for their objectionable behaviour the previous day – were not taken in by the cheerful colours, but rather by ‘other’ feelings and thoughts.

In general, a mischievous cheerfulness ruled the camp. Just to give a few examples …

… our friend N., who was fast asleep and disturbed his tent-mates with his snoring, was ‘rewarded’ by the others by having black shoe-paste smeared on his nose, forehead, face and many other parts of his body. On awakening, the tent dwellers were greatly amused at the spectacle. The most amusing thing was that, at first, our friend N., unaware of what had happened to him, laughed with the others. Then, when he realised what had been done to him, he withdrew, blushing and embarrassed, to “wash away the shame of what the centuries had smeared on him”.

… another nice experience was that when we found out that our friend J. was sleeping the sleep of the righteous in the night watch. A not quite appropriate piece of rubber was found somewhere and stuck in his open mouth until he woke up. He saw the joke and removed the “piece”, i.e. spat it out.

… the boat trip to Badacsony with a crew of about 3 men happened to be a nice adventure. First, we walked around the mountain and thereafter we “climbed” it (a low mountain). The route led up past some very spectacular press houses and vineyards, with the Kisfaludy house visible at the end. There was an amazing view down to Lake Balaton, walking down to the harbour and then crossing the water to the campsite was of course much easier. It was a really romantic day out.

In the school year 1934/35, the enrolment ceremony was held on 25 March 1935 in the presence of a large and distinguished audience. The inaugural address was given by Dr Károly Barna, Chief Government Councillor and President of the National Grand Committee of the Hungarian Jewish Scouts. The Hungarian Scout Association awarded the troop with two commemorative medals (for the raids and the obstacle race) acknowledging their good work this year. The 14th National Patrol Leader Training Camp, held in the spring in Hárshegyi Scout Park, was attended by Patrol Leaders Pál Kőnig and Miklós Erdély. The troop consisted of 6 officers (Scoutmaster József Ullmann, Commander, Officer Frigyes Ullmann, Assistant Officers István Klein, Imre Herzberger, Ervin Freiberger and István Silbermann) and 58 Scouts at the end of the school year.

From 8 to 20 July 1935 the troop camped in Sopron at the Tómalom. The generous support of the Jewish Community, the Women’s Association and the Holy Association made it possible for all the scouts to take part in the camping, which was refreshing for body and soul. After 65 years, little was known about the camp. Recalling his memories, Miklós Erdély, a former camper, said that …

… the boys had visited Vienna under the guidance of Scoutmaster Frigyes Ullmann, where the scouts had been warmly welcomed. They visited the most important sights of the city, but he also recalled that they saw soldiers in helmets everywhere. Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, who had introduced a fascist-style dictatorship, was assassinated by Austrian National Socialists in a failed coup in June 1934. A year later, in his opinion, there were riots because of the anniversary.

On 1 September, a boat launching ceremony was held. The 5 new boats of the troop were inaugurated by Dr Pál Vidor, Scoutmaster. This was a great opportunity for the troop to make adventures on the water, which, in Győr, given the rivers in and around the city, was a great opportunity. The scout troops operating here were able to take advantage of this situation very easily, as there was a separate scout boathouse on the banks of the Rába river.

The troop commander was pleased to note in his report in the yearbook of the Révai High School that the young scout troop was making progress year-by-year. He also wrote that they were striving to achieve the goal that scouting would help the boys in developing their spiritual and intellectual gifts and talents, which God had instilled in them.

On February 9, 1936, a scout enrolment ceremony was held again, at which Chief Rabbi Dr Emil Róth delivered the enrolment address. On this occasion, 5 new recruits took their vows and 32 Scouts made their pledges.

During the “good deed week”, the team collected two cartloads of in-kind donations and P100.15 cash for the needy. The donations were delivered to the city’s Social Welfare Department for distribution.

The Hungarian Scout Association rewarded the troop with a commemorative plaque of 500 good points rating for their good work during the year.

The size of the troop also continued to grow: this year, 52 Scouts and 32 Cub Scouts led by 6 officers were actively involved.

In 1936, the summer camp for the scouts was held in Kőszeg, but there was also a separate camp for the Cub Scouts in Vaspuszta, on the estate of Ignác Bruck, the Community President. In addition to the two camps, the troop’s rover patrol also attended a three-week boating camp at Lake Balaton.

Unfortunately, nothing more has been found out about these camps, even their exact dates, duration and number of participants have been forgotten over the decades. In any case, the fact that they were able to organise three camps in one summer reflects very favourably on the zeal of the leaders and the financial situation of the team.

A successful summer was followed by a very good year of scouting. According to the report the scouts participated in all national scouting events of the Hungarian Scout Association. During the “good deed week”, the usual 2 cartloads of donations was collected again this year, but the amount of financial donations almost doubled reaching 185.09 Pengo. The Hungarian Scout Association honoured the troop with an even greater award, 600 good points on the usual commemorative plaque.

László Szende (then in 5th grade) recalled that he was a member of the Seagull Patrol at that time. The leader of the patrol – son of the above-mentioned Dr. Ernő Erdély, Chief Commander of the Győr Fire Brigade and Chairman of the School Board – was Miklós Erdély. Dönci (this was his scout nickname), as a firefighter offspring, was extremely attracted to the fire brigade (he became a fire brigade officer after the war). From the point of view of the Seagull Patrol, this was interesting because …

… the patrol had a “fire discipline”,

… several times, its members would participate in a light drill of the firefighters in the yard of the fire fighter station (e.g. rolling out hoses, assembling, etc.),

… the scouts went often skating on the rink of the Skating Club next to the fire fighter station, managed by the fire brigade,

… in the spring and autumn, they played football and did athletics on the skating rink, which had been converted for the purpose.

Such programmes were accessible not only the Seagull patrol but other patrols could also participate in similar sports activities.

In his memoirs, László Szende also writes that besides the practical work, they also received theoretical training in the patrol (troop), talked in detail about the 10 Scout Laws (after 65 years he still remembered five of them verbatim!) and other requirements of the scout trials. But they also did special tests, he recalled, for example, taking the cook’s special test and the observation special test – and the badge related to these tests to wear on his arm.

In the summer of 1937, the camp was held at Síkfőkút, near Eger.

László Szende was also at this camp (he didn’t go to many camps because he had to help in his father’s grocery store in the summer), and this is how he recalled it long after the event:

Síkfőkőkút is located in the western part of the Bükk Mountains, an extremely beautiful area, an almost wilderness setting.

The hilly, mountainous woodland with its hills was perfect for a game of a ‘war’ with numbers fixed on our hats. We threw ourselves into this game with great passion. The numbers “shouted off” by the warriors in their hiding places were resounding. The number of survivors grew thinner and thinner and the number of “corpses” gradually increased, and at the end the winners returned to the camp site with a triumphant battle cry. I’m not boasting, but the game I remember was won by our patrol – the Seagulls.

The night watch was an exciting moment of the camping experience. The sound of the horn woke the boys at midnight. They woke up from their sleep, dressed as quickly as possible and lined up around the troop flag at the command of their patrol leader. The commander informed us that our posted observers had reported that an enemy formation was preparing to attack our camp.

The patrols surrounded the camp and waited for the enemy. However, after about half an hour on watch, the commander called off the alert because the observers reported that the enemy, having learned of our vigilance, had abandoned the attack. It was disappointing not to be able to fight and defend our camp, but comforting not to have to spend more than an hour of the night without sleep.

Among my experiences was an unpleasant one, namely the following:

There was a very beautiful meadow below our camp, which was often used as a football pitch. We used to play football matches there in free time. During one of these games, I got into a big fight with one of the assistant officers, whom I called an idiot in the heat of the game. Naturally, I got the short end of the stick. The affair turned into an interrogation and detention. The most painful thing for me, however, was that during the previous days of the camp I had been hoping to compete for the proud title of “best camper”, but this “malheur” put an end to that beautiful hope.

On one occasion, a small part of the campers went on a trip from Síkfőkőkút to Eger. Eger is situated between the Mátra and the Bükk mountains and is the capital of Heves county. It is very rich in monuments and historical sights. We visited the ruins of the fortress, famous for the heroic battle of Captain István Dobó against the Turks. We also visited the minaret from whose balcony the muezzin called the Turks to prayer in the name of Allah. The high tower offers a beautiful view of the city.

We saw the house of Géza Gárdonyi, the great writer of Eger, where he wrote his famous work “The Stars of Eger”, and we visited his grave. In addition, we also passed by several other historical sights and monuments. We returned to the camp tired, but with very nice experiences.

As the years went by, the Révai yearbook became thinner and thinner, and the reports in it about the scouts became shorter and shorter. This was particularly true of the report of the Jewish scout troop, which in 1937-38 was only a few lines long and contained hardly any meaningful information. From the following year onwards, any search for the report is futile; even about the Turul scout troop only a few lines could be included in these wartime yearbooks…).

In the 1937-38 school year, the troop participated in all the federal rallies and this year again it collected donations in kind for 2 carts and 152,90 Pengo in cash. In the spring and fall – every year, including this year – several day trips were organized to excursion sites near Győr.

László Szende remembered these trips in this way:

In addition to the big summer camps, we organised short trips in spring and autumn.

Our favourite and most frequent excursion target was Kiskút by the Iparcsatorna (an Industry Canal built for the factories around). This was mainly a patrol trip, but there were also troop trips, which were usually organised in conjunction with the summer outing of Révai in June. One of the favourite programmes at the camp show was ‘Mufti, the Wonder Spider’. Mufti, member of our troop, had the special ability to recite every text from the National Anthem to Toldi backwards and forwards. We had great fun with the improvised backwards recitation of texts invented by our mates from other patrols, that he was doing as if he were reading from a book. That’s why we called him “Mufti, the Wonder Spider”. Another friend of ours was a “counting wonder” who did similar tricks with numbers as Mufti did with words. He divided and multiplied everything and anything. It was a great experience for us.

Another of our favourite excursion spots was „Püspök erdő” (the “Bishop’s Forest”), up the banks of the Moson Danube, which was the scene of exciting number wars and obstacle races.

Several times during our scouting period, we visited Kismegyer, the scene of the Battle of Napoleon. Here we saw the monument erected to commemorate the battle.

The team also made boat trips north and south on the Moson Danube, as well as on the Rába and other rivers in the area.

Once (we have not been able to find out which year) a major undertaking was undertaken: it was our participation in the North-East Hungary Cycling Tour.

Months in advance, preparations were underway. The girls embroidered flags on the bikes and the parents – especially the mothers – were worried sick about their touring sons. The route was Budapest-Eger-Miskolc-Debrecen and back, with lots of fun and some not so fun.

The trip started with excitement, because one of our mates had such an unfortunate fall in the horseshoe bend in Gödöllő that he was injured and his bike was badly damaged. But we helped to fix everything and continued on our way.

We arrived at the camp of the Jewish team in Miskolc late on Friday evening (which was already part of Sabbath), so we were stigmatized by the camp rabbi as “blaspheming God”.

Well, in the end everything went very well and nicely. Lillafüred and later the Nagyerdő in Debrecen, but also many other beautiful places we saw on the way, were a great experience for the participants. It is true that we had originally planned the tour to be even longer, but we did not have enough time and energy for more.

The mothers were the happiest that we shortened the trip, still an unforgettable experience.

As the Jewish question in Hungary became more acute, the Scouts withdrew from the more “fashionable” campsites of the previous years (Balaton, Sopron, Kőszeg, Eger) to “modest” camping facilities. This meant summer camping on the estates of Jewish landowners or landlords in the Győr area, who, understanding the changing times, were willing to provide the troop with a campsite.

Thus, in the summer of 1938, the group was given a campsite on their property in Fúd near Nagyszentjános by the Vajda brothers, who were farmers there.

I have a photograph of the gate of this camp in the background with the inscription “479th Szőgyi László Scout Troop Győr” that I received from László Szende with the following lines of recollections:

I had been courting the little girl at the front of the picture for only a year; she has been my wife since 1946 for 53 years. When she came to visit me in the camp, neither of us had expected our lives to take such a turn. Unfortunately, this turn of life has been full of sad events. The deportation of our parents, family members, many of our fellow scouts and ourselves. After our return home, severely shattered but fortunately alive, we did what we were wisest to do: we got married.

It is interesting that our brother scout, Pali Grüngold – later Gábor – who is in the background of the picture, my best friend and my assistant patrol leader in the Seagulls, and the little girl he loved, were in a similar situation and acted in the same way as we did. Another of our teammates – the aforementioned Dönci Erdély – followed the same path. I think we were good examples of the perseverance and persistence of the Scouts. Examples that are rare in life.

I remember one nicer “story” from the puszta of Fúd: we had a fellow scout, Pollák, whom, who knows why, everyone liked to poke and prod. One day, we thought he was in the tent and someone shouted “let’s punch Pollák!” That’s all we needed, we rushed into the tent: pulling and pulling until the tent collapsed. We waited to see Pollák’s terrified face as he climbed out.

But our face became terrified, because on climbing out it turned out that someone had mixed up the person entering the tent who was not Pollák, but our extremely strict assistant officer: Uncle Gyuri Klausz. The trouble broke out, of course, followed by an order for questioning, and severe reprisals. Well, that too is one of the fond memories of the camp. In later years, when we met Gyuri Klausz, who had become a good friend, we would recollect old times and have a good time.

Sadly, neither Gyuri nor Pali Pollák are alive anymore.

As Hungary became more and more entangled in the fascist world, the Jewish troops’ options had narrowed to the point where they could only camp on one of the nearby Jewish estates. The last camp of the group was held in the summer of 1939, at Hodálypuszta near Ménfőcsanak. János Krausz, a tenant farmer on the estate, was kind enough to approve the camp.

The following letter is addressed to István Vértes, a former scout member of the troop, who understood the times, sensed the coming storm and was the first, or at least among the first, to emigrate to Israel.

Hodálypuszta Camp, 29 June 1939

SZŐGYI LÁSZLÓ SCOUT TROOP GYŐR NO 479

Dear Brother Scout,

We think of you with great affection in our Hodálypuszta Grand Camp where we have just held our cosy campfire in memory of you, in your honour. At the beautiful melody of Hatika Oath, every brother scout remembered you.

Our Scout regards to you, Commander József Ullmann (+ 17 signatures)

The letter is typical of the situation which, in the late 1930s and the first half of the 1940s, brought tragedy to Jewry, and of course to the Scout movement.

It is probable that the songs sung at the campfire mentioned in the letter were the ones learnt by those who stayed behind from their brother scouts who had emigrated to Israel, and which were often sung in difficult times. Here are two of them (which László Szende recalled, who unfortunately did not tell us the tune):

(Only in Hungarian)

A Jordánon suttog a szél
A Jordán regéket mesél.
És sejtelmes hangját
Oly messzire viszi a szél.
Elviszi messzire, távoli földekre,
A zsidó szívekbe.

xxx

A Kineret tó partján
Egy kicsinyke kis sziklán
Ül egy fekete bachur
És magában így beszél:
Tízet szerettem
És kilencet feledtem,
De azt az egyet elfeledni
Nem tudom soha.

Little is known about the years 1939-40. László Szekeres, a scout leader who graduated from the high school in 1939 took his scouts on several excursions even in the spring of 1940. But there was no camp in 1940 anymore.

The impact of the laws on Jews and the parallel state pressure was growing in general as well as on the Hungarian Scout Association. There was the choice: either to dissolve the whole association (all 600 scout troops) or to expel the 2,000 Jewish scouts, who were then grouped in 14 troops. In the interest of the others, the latter was decided upon and, according to the decision of the General Assembly held in December 1940, Jewish Scouting in Hungary was dissolved. This, of course, also meant the end of Scout Troop László Szőgyi No. 479.

But what happened to the scouts?

Many scouts followed Pista Vértes – together with his parents, of course. They emigrated to the most diverse countries of the world, from Israel, through North and South America, to Australia and even other places.

Some – like László Szende, Miklós Erdély and many others – stayed at home and were put into forced labour camps and were later deported. Those who were lucky managed to escape alive, but these were just a few. The majority, however, like their parents, and most of their families, were victims of the concentration camps.

Those who survived started a new life after the war and remembered for the rest of their lives that …

… “once there was a Jewish scout troop in Győr, which helped many boys to have a beautiful childhood, a character-building and an eventful youth.” (Words by László Szende)

Finally, here-below some of scout songs (recollections of László Szende):

(Only in Hungarian)

Megjött már a fecskemadár, fészket rakott nálunk.
Hívogat már a napsugár, nagytáborba vágyunk.
Virág nyílik a hegyoldalon, nincs szebb annál semmi:
Harsog a kürtszó, cserkész pajtás, táborba kell menni.

xxx

Este van, este, szép csendes este, ragyognak ránk a csillagok.
Nem zúg a szellő a sátrak mellett, jó anyám csak Rád gondolok.
Aggódó, könnyes két szemedre, mosolygó szép tekintetedre.
Te jársz eszembe jó anyám, téged szeretlek igazán.

xxx

Száraz tónak nedves partján döglött béka kuruttyol.
Hallgatja egy süket ember, ki a vízben lubickol.
Sej, haj, denevér, bennünk van a kutyavér.
Sej, haj, denevér, bennünk van a kutyavér.

Epilogue

I have finished writing and I am sad to say that this collection of memories is shorter than I would have liked. The sources I have found have really been very limited and there are hardly any witnesses to remember 50 years later. Here, I would like to thank the generous accounts of two former scouts who were still alive when the data collection began. Without them this story could not have been written.

The question may arise: why did I, as a Catholic by religion, write the history of the Jewish scout troop in Győr?

I was a scout only after the war – for less than two years – and in 1990, as a teacher at the Révai High School, I reorganised the school’s Turul Scout Troop No. 42. In these two capacities, I come across the László Szőgyi Scout Troop. It caught my interest, because from my pre-war childhood years I remember with fondness the Jews who lived in our town: our doctor, our dentist, as well as my father’s friends, business partners and employees. I felt that, even though this story is not dedicated to them, I owed this piece of writing also to their memory.

It was a great pleasure for me to be able to commemorate the László Szőgyi Scout Troop in Győr.

László Székely
Scout Officer
Győr, 2001

Written by Ildikó Mesterházi, Ambassador of the Zachor Foundation and the USC Shoah Foundation in Győr

If you are lucky enough to talk to your parents or grandparents about your childhood, it can be a life-changing experience. It is important for all of us to learn as much as possible about our ancestors through personal stories. This is no different when we are dealing with history. In school education, too, oral history, personal storytelling, which gives an individual perspective on a historical event, is becoming increasingly important. I myself often use this tool when teaching 20th century history.

I am a teacher at the János Richter Music Secondary School and its affiliated school, the Béla Bartók Singing and Music Primary School. The primary school is located in Győr-Sziget. When we deal with city history as a part of Hungarian history and then more narrowly with the history of the place where we live in, it is inevitable to learn about the history of the Jews of Győr, whether it is the construction of the factories in Győr-Sziget, the prosperous peaceful times (editor’s note: the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20th centuries), or the time of the Great Disaster. This is also the case for secondary school students, who visit the synagogue on numerous occasions for school events. For them, too, it is essential to learn about the life and history of the community that built and used this wonderful building.

My graduation in 2015 from the training course for professors called “Video Interviews for the 21st Century Education” run by the Zachor Foundation for Social Remembrance and the Southern California University (USC) Shoah Foundation was a tremendous boost in my educational work, as it opened up a whole new perspective for me on the use of personal life stories in classroom teaching.

The Zachor Foundation, a partner of the Shoah Foundation, is a non-governmental educational organisation that develops teaching materials, educational programmes and teacher training based on the life stories of Holocaust survivors.

In recent years, I have participated in several training courses, developed and tested teaching materials, and created IWalk, a local history walk combined with video-interviews on the history of Győr’s Jewish community. Based on video interviews, my students and I created artworks for an art competition. Two classes of secondary school students have also been prepared for a visit to Auschwitz using interviews and teaching materials from the IWitness online educational platform.

It was a great honour for me to join, as Ambassador of Győr, the Ambassador Programme of the Zachor Foundation and the USC Shoah Foundation, which started in September 2022.

As an Ambassador, I see it as my task to promote the activities of the two foundations as widely as possible, by organising programmes that bring the personal stories revealed in the video interviews closer to teachers, students and in many cases “ordinary people”, thus helping to combat racism, intolerance, anti-Semitism and prejudice, and to overcome the trauma of the Holocaust.

Among the programmes being organised, I would like to bring to your attention an art exhibition visiting Győr in April 2023 and the Győr Walk, renewed in the IWalk app, which will pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust in Hungary on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day. I will write about both programmes in more detail and with more precise dates next time.

Győr, 24 February 2023

You can read more about the work of the Foundations:

• “Useful courses for teachers’ continuous training” by Mónika Mezei can be found here
• Zachor and Shoah foundations are described here
• Search through personal interviews here

The bishop and Jews in Győr

I reproduce these few lines from the Hungarian version of Wikipedia.

Why is that? Because Vilmos Apor was the only Hungarian Catholic prelate who, not without risk, openly stood up for the Jews in the most difficult times of the 1940s.

He was born in Segesvár in 1892 and died in Győr in 1945 as Bishop of Győr.

Scion of a prominent Transylvanian aristocratic family. He studied at the Jesuits. Enrolled in the seminary of the diocese of Győr, graduated from the University of Innsbruck. He was ordained a priest in 1915.

He began his ministry in Gyula as an assistant pastor and teacher, then as a parish priest. At the age of 26, he gained great prestige when, after a hostage-taking operation by Romanian soldiers, he and several others negotiated the release of the captured citizens of Gyula with the Romanian queen.

He focused on the social responsibility of the Church and ran a children’s charity kitchen. He set up several communities, visited prisoners, helped the poor and the sick, renovated churches and founded a Catholic newspaper. In 1919, when the Hungarian Council Republic abolished religious education in state schools, he succeeded in getting this measure revoked by mobilising parents in Gyula.

In 1941, at the age of 49, he was consecrated Bishop of Győr. At the beginning of 1941, the Cardinal appointed him president of the Hungarian Holy Cross Association, a body which was concerned with the cause of Jewish converts to Christianity throughout the country.

On 26 August 1943, Catholic public figures of the time gathered in the Bishop’s Palace in Győr to discuss the possibilities of Christian politics, in opposition to the cursus politics of the time.

„And whoever denies Christianity’s fundamental law of love and claims that there are people and groups and races to be hated and proclaims that people should be tortured, whether they be Negroes or Jews, no matter how much he may boast that he is a Christian, is like a pagan and a public sinner.” – Bishop Vilmos Apor’s sermon on Pentecost Sunday 1944 (excerpt)

After the German occupation and the takeover by the Arrow Cross, he stood up for the persecuted, regardless of their denomination or ethnicity. He strongly criticised and scourged the established order, personally defending the vulnerable against the German and Arrow Cross leaders (1945).

However, his protests, petitions and telegrams on behalf of the Jews remained ineffective. Some of those who approached him were hidden or sent on to Nuncio Angelo Rotta, who issued thousands of letters of protection, or to his sister, Gizella Apor, head of the Hungarian Red Cross. He also helped the civilian population of the city, working with the monastery leaders to house many refugees, especially after the bombing of Győr in April 1944.

On 28 March 1945, the siege of Győr began. The city was also shelled by the retreating Germans and the cathedral was hit. The Bishop took in all the refugees, and hundreds of people found shelter in the cellars of the Bishop’s Castle.

On 30 March, after refusing to extradite the women who had fled to his residence, a Soviet soldier mortally wounded him in a scuffle, and on 2 April, he died of his wounds.

He was temporarily buried in the Carmelite church in Győr. His reburial took place in 1986, when he was laid to rest in the Héderváry Chapel of the Győr Cathedral.

In 1997 he was beatified by Pope John Paul II.

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Vilmos Apor’s lifesaving activities in 1944-45 and his actions to save the Hungarian Jewish community in Győr and nationwide are well known. In the 1980s, he was nominated for the title of Righteous Among the Nations, an honor awarded by the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute.

Several serious Hungarian sources mention that Vilmos Aport was honoured with this title. Reading these materials, I myself was under the same misapprehension. However, I recently learned from the Yad Vashem Institute that the title has not been awarded. The Institute informs me that they are of course aware of the bishop’s activities in saving human lives, but since no testimonies or authentic documents have been submitted so far, they have not been able to award him the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

Our readers are invited to contact us if anyone knows any specific details about Bishop Vilmos Apor’s concrete steps to save Jewish lives. If there were any testimony or irrefutable documentation that the Bishop provided concrete protection or assistance to even one Jewish person during the Holocaust, it would be a great step forward in the matter of granting him the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

„He who saves one life saves the whole world.” – the Talmud

Peter Krausz

Almost every second victim was Jewish

Oszkár Papp, president of Győri AC, recently told the online version of the Győr daily Kisalföld (1):

“I believe that without an appreciation of the past, sports cannot have a future. Rowers have always followed this ars poetica …

… rowing in Győr is now 145 years old, /our club/ is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, still active in the country …”

“Few people know … that behind the swimming pool there is a stone memorial erected by our ancestors to the rowers who died heroically in the First World War. I don’t really know its history … In 2018 and this year … we commemorated the athletes who died more than a hundred years ago,” said Oszkár Papp, who would like to organise a meeting for the living family members of the rowers who died in the war.

“We are probably talking about grandchildren and great-grandchildren who might like to get to know each other and the past of rowing in Győr, as this is what their families have in common. … a meeting like this … would be a decent way to remember those who have been part of our club’s glorious past,” said the club president.

The names on the sports club’s memorial are: foreman Dr. József Kellner, foreman László Szőgyi, secretary dr. Rezső Reichenfeld, Gyula Csillag, János Czigler, Gyula Gold, János Gunyhó, Antal Gyulai, Lajos Harmat, Dezső Haut, Lajos Holló, Elek Karsay, Imre Keszey, Lőrincz Meixner, Antal Németh, Nándor Rosenkrantz, Emil Róth, dr. Imre Sághy, Lipót Schnabel, József Szaltzer, Tádé Turcsek, Róbert Wottitz.

Relatives can contact the club on its Facebook page (Győri Atlétikai Club – Rowing Department) or by e-mail at info@gyac.hu.

So far, the news from Kisalföld newspaper.

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I look at the sad memorial of the Győr Atlétikai Club and the names listed on it.

I am involuntarily reminded of the imposing memorial wall at the entrance to the Győr Synagogue, also erected to remember the First World War, and the list of the names engraved on it of the nearly ninety Jewish soldiers who died in the same war.

Since I think there is a similarity between the names engraved on one monument and the other, I have a more thorough look at the two lists.

My intuition has been confirmed. Many of the names on the memorial of the sports club can also be found on the World War I memorial in the Győr synagogue: Dr. József Kellner, László Szőgyi, Gyula Csillag, Gyula Gold, Antal Gyulai, Lajos Harmat, Nándor Rosenkrantz and Róbert Wottitz. József Szaltzer, another heroic rower, probably corresponds to József Saltzer on the synagogue memorial.

Thus, among the 22 Győr AC soldiers killed, nine were of Jewish origin. Forty percent, almost every second victim.

Seeing this, I wrote to the president of Győri AC, indicating my “discovery” and mentioning the 2024 World Meeting in Győr of descendants of holocaust survivors, which could help to discover the family background of the former rowers, as initiated by the sports club.

I wrote to the club two weeks ago, still waiting for a reply… Should I write again? Or should I not embarrass anyone? I will be back with more news if ever I have the answer.

Péter Krausz

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Sources:

• Kisalföld daily, Győr
• Dr Kovács Pál Library: József Glück photo collection

An Israeli town with an Indian Synagogue

View of Galilee

According to Wikipedia (1), Nof HaGalil (Hebrew: נוֹף הַגָּלִיל‎, lit. View of Galilee; Arabic: نوف هچليل‎), formerly called Nazareth Illit is a city in the Northern District of Israel with a population of more than 40 000. Founded in 1957, it was planned as a Jewish town overlooking the Arab city of Nazareth and the Jezreel Valley. Its name was changed to “Nof HaGalil” in 2019.

The establishment of Nazareth Illit was initiated in the early 1950s. There were economic and security reasons for developing a town in this region.

A parcel of 1 200 dunams of land, about half formerly within the municipal boundaries of Nazareth, was allocated to developments for public purposes in 1954, relying on a law permitting such expropriations. Protests against this action reached the Supreme Court of Israel, which in 1955 accepted (HCJ 30/55) the government’s word that the sole purpose of the land was to erect government facilities. However, only 109 dunams were used for that purpose and planning for residential areas continued. The first dwellings were completed in September 1956 and residents moved in later that year.

In 2014, the ethnic and religious composition of the city population was 64.4% Jewish and other non-Arabic, the rest Arabic. In the 1990s, Nazareth Illit was the fastest developing city in the country as to its population. Newcomers included immigrants from the former Soviet Union and South America including young couples.

The city’s population has been dwindling ever since, due to its deteriorating commercial and industrial basis. Thus, a large portion of the younger population has left altering the city’s demographic structure.

In 2010, the city had 12 elementary schools and two high schools, one for religious studies and another one for engineering.

Nof HaGalil municipality strives to maintain the city’s parks and the surrounding Churchill Forest donated by the UK Jewish community in memory of Winston Churchill.

Hapoel Nof HaGalil is the city’s major football club. Basketball and table tennis are also popular local sports.

Nof HaGalil is twinned with San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina; Leverkusen, Germany; Klagenfurt, Austria; Győr, Hungary; Chernivtsi, Ukraine; Saint-Étienne, France; Alba Iulia, Romania and Kikinda, Serbia.

Meeting in Győr

A delegation from Nof HaGalil visited Győr in September 2022. Mayor Ronen Plot met Győr Mayor Dr. Csaba András Dézsi. (2) The Israeli delegation spent three days in Győr. The two Mayors discussed the functioning of the Győr city administration, the strengthening and development of their relationship as well as the refugee situation.

“We have similar problems and the solutions may also be similar. The aim of the visit was to build and revitalise cultural, sporting and other links” – said Dr. Csaba András Dézsi.

According to Mayor Plot “we can talk seriously about cooperation between the two cities and have agreed to prepare an operational plan for this purpose, that will include the intensification of exchanges in the area of sport and culture”.

The Israeli delegation met Tibor Villányi, President of the Győr Jewish Community.

Indian community in Nof HaGalil

In November this year, a new synagogue was inaugurated in Nof HaGalil, an Indian synagogue, as the Eliayahu-Hanavi shrine was built by a community of Jewish immigrants from the Bnei Menashe tribe in India. This community believes that its members are descendants from one of the ten lost Jewish tribes that were taken as slaves from the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrian Empire around 721 BC. However, it is highly likely that they are a group of tribes that adopted Judaism in the 1950s.

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Sources:

• Wikipedia
• Győrplusz
• Tachles, magazin, Zürich, 25 November 2022
• Bnei Menashe, Wikipedia

But how is he related to Győr?

Featured image: Anton H, Pexels

In August, the tragic story of Hanna Szenes was performed on an open-air stage in the courtyard of the Lajos Vajda Museum in Szentendre, created by Ágnes Réka Tóth and Kristóf Widder using the young poet’s verses, diary and memories, with music by Sándor Födő. The role of Hanna was played in a very convincing way by Eszter Bíró, who resembles her so much. (1)

It was a real experience, despite the fact that the performance took place not on stage planks, which usually set the rhythm, but on the bare ground of the museum courtyard, which absorbed every step, almost without any echo or any noise. Can this be interpreted as meaning that Hanna’s fate and memory will one day be forgotten in such an echoless way?

We hope not. Eszter Bíró and her companions may also have undertaken to stage Hanna for this purpose. We also know that Hanna, who was brutally and senselessly murdered by the Arrow Cross, is revered in Israel as a national hero, which is a real guarantee that her memory will survive. This should be the case in Hungary too, and not only in Jewish circles.

In connection with the performance, I remembered that a public square in Győr bears the name of Hanna’s second cousin. Szenes Iván Park.

How is it possible? For Iván was born in Budapest in 1924 and died there in 2010.

Searching the web, it didn’t take much effort to see how Iván Szenes, a very popular non Győr native, was connected to the city.

Let’s see the artist first. It is almost impossible to list the main spheres of Szenes’ artistic activity.

According to Wikipedia (3), Iván Szenes is a Hungarian writer, songwriter, playwright and composer. According to statistics from 2000, he is the most performed author in Hungary, with more than 400 theatre premieres to his credit. He was honoured with the Distinguished Artist Award.

His father, Andor Szenes (1899-1935), was also a writer.

After WW2, Iván worked as a journalist and as a dramaturg, as well as artistic director of theatres, while writing his songs one after the other.  

And here comes the Győr connection: between 1961 and 1979, Iván Szenes was the dramaturg of the Kisfaludy Theatre in Győr.

He has an amazing list of hits. All well-known songs, performed by the most famous Hungarian pop singers and outstanding actors of the 20th century. People of my generation might be heartbroken at the memory of these songs. Just a few examples of the greatest hits, mentioning the original performer of each song:

• Nehéz a boldogságtól búcsút venni – Group Apostol
• Isten véled édes Piroskám, Nemcsak a húszéveseké a világ – László Aradszky
• Jöjjön ki Óbudára – Tivadar Bilicsi
• Az a jamaicai trombitás – Gyula Bodrogi with Ági Voith
• Kicsi, gyere velem rózsát szedni – Zsuzsa Cserháti
• Kicsit szomorkás a hangulatom máma – Iván Darvas
• Melletted nincsenek hétköznapok – Violetta Ferrari
• Mindenkinek van egy álma – Teri Harangozó
• Próbálj meg lazítani – Géza Hofi
• Álltam a hídon – Katalin Karády
• Annyi ember él a földön, Kislány a zongoránál, Nem vagyok teljesen őrült – János Koós
• Bocsánat, hogyha kérdem – György Korda
• Úgy szeretném meghálálni, A régi ház körül, Találkozás egy régi szerelemmel – Kati Kovács
• Álltam a hídon – Olivér Lantos
• Mások vittek rossz utakra engem – Imre Ráday
• Szeretni bolondulásig – Pál Szécsi
• Orchideák – Klári Tolnay and Antal Páger
• Engem nem lehet elfelejteni – Hédi Váradi Tölcsért csinálok a kezemből – Sarolta Zalatnay

You can get emotional, you can hum the catchy tune and you can complain. Whatever the case, according to Wikipedia, Iván Szenes is the most prolific Hungarian hitmaker of all time. And probably one of the most successful too.

After the artist’s death, his daughter Andrea Szenes established the Iván Szenes Art Prize.

His popularity in Győr is unbroken. The park named after him bears witness to this. This July, the Iván Szenes Memorial Evening and Family Day was organised in Győr for the eighth time.

Even in death, Ivan’s popularity may help to preserve Hanna’s memory.

Compiled by Krausz Péter

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Sources:

(1) HANNA – szabadesés több szólamban, Szentendrei Teátrum The play will be shown in Budapest in the automn.

(2) Színház online

(3) Google maps

(4) Wikipedia

(5) jegy.hu

(6) Kisalföld

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Founded by Dr. József Csillag

Dr. József Csillag, the founder and chief physician of the former Csillag Sanatorium, which has been almost forgotten, was born in Győr on 28 October 1887. His father was Géza Csillag (1850?-1944?) and his mother Gizella Goldberger (1859-1927). He attended the Jewish elementary school and graduated from the Hungarian Royal State High School in Győr in 1907.

He graduated from the Royal Hungarian University of Budapest in 1912 then gained experience abroad, in Berlin and Vienna between 1913 and 1914.

In the First World War he served as a military doctor with the 10th Artillery Regiment for 39 months and was discharged with the rank of colonel. He was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Franz Joseph, the Gold Cross of the Crown, two Signum Laudis and the Charles Cross of the Order of the Garter.

From 1917 he worked in the surgical department of the Rókus Hospital in Budapest as a surgeon, gynaecologist, laryngologist and urologist.

From the beginning of 1920 he lived again in Győr where he married Józsa Korein (Jozefin) (1901-1944). They had four children.

Dr. József Csillag opened his Csillag Sanatorium in Győr, at 20 Árpád út, which he then run as the Director-General Chief Physician. The Sanatorium made it possible for patients from the counties and towns of Upper Transdanubia not to have to be taken to Budapest for continuous medical and nursing care, and to have access to complex health care in Győr more quickly and cheaply.

At the time of opening, the sanatorium could accommodate 14 inpatients and had single and double rooms for accompanying persons. The operating theatre was equipped with roof lighting for surgical and gynaecological procedures and was equipped with the most sophisticated equipment and instruments of the time. The X-ray department and laboratory were also equipped to European standards. Even the doctors who visited the institute were surprised by the mechanical marvels of the body straightening room. Patients with all but contagious diseases were treated.

Initially, patients were cared for by Red Cross nurses led by a head nurse, later joined by Lutheran deaconesses. The working relationship between the Chief Physician and the deaconesses was characterised by mutual respect.

Dr. József Csillag’s wife was in charge of catering in the Sanatorium. Their son Antal, who himself became a surgeon, also took part in the work (after the war he worked for decades at the János Hospital in Budapest).

The Csillag family lived in the Sanatorium. When treating a serious patient during the night required the expertise of the Chief Physician, deaconess Lenke Zsohár was obliged to wake the doctor.

The Sanatorium employed excellent doctors. One of the medical staff was József Csillag’s brother-in-law, Dr. Sándor Korein (1899-1989), Senior Physician in internal medicine, who also served as the general consultant. He also acted as a volunteer doctor at the Home for the Poor and the Elderly Singles.

According to recollections, Dr Gyula Corradi (1905-1980), a specialist in infant and paediatrics, was also involved in the work of the Sanatorium.

Dr. Csillag’s statement, made at the opening of the Sanatorium, that his institution was not only available to a narrow group of people, but to the whole of Győr society, is confirmed by newspaper cuts of the time.

Dr. József Csillag also worked as a doctor for the rowing team of the Győr Gymnastics Club. He was a member of the German Surgical Society and was invited to their events until 1942.

He was a member of the School Board of the Győr Jewish Community in the 1930s, and of the Győr Committee of Judicial Affairs as a virilist until 8 January 1942. His membership ended by order of the Minister of the Interior.

The work of the Sanatorium continued, and in 1943 the cellar was declared an air-raid shelter. During the first bombing raid on Győr, the doctors and nurses of the Sanatorium worked almost non-stop.

At the end of May 1944, the Csillag Sanatorium closed its doors and Dr. Csillag together with his family was forced to the ghetto of Győrsziget. On Sunday, 11 June, they were herded into a cattle car with the first group of Győr Jews (except for his eldest son, who was then serving as a forced labourer). After a few days the train arrived with them at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The closed Sanatorium was officially declared “Jew-free” by the Councillor of the Mayor’s Office, István Horváth.

The building of the Csillag Sanatorium has also been claimed by the Evangelical Diaconal Motherhouse for further health work, and a petition for this purpose has been submitted to the Ministry of the Interior. The Government Commissioner for Medical Workers allocated the Sanatorium’s medical equipment and facilities to the Motherhouse.

The Sanatorium was hit by a bomb (first damaged on 2 July 1944), the roof was smashed and the windows were broken. The building now attracted the attention of thieves. After a while, the loss of equipment was noticed by the Treasury, which sold off the remaining items without delay. In two days, everything was dismantled.

A few months later, at the end of March 1945, the city of Győr was liberated, and the first Jewish forced labourers and some of the Auschwitz deportees returned in April. Former Sanatorium owner , Dr. József Csillag, also survived the concentration camp and returned to his hometown. He found refuge in Győrsziget (!).

Three of the older children in his family survived the Holocaust, his youngest son and his wife were however killed in Auschwitz.

Dr. József Csillag’s weakened body was unable to overcome the lung disease he developed in the concentration camp, and he died a year after deportation on 11 June 1945, aged 58.

The former Csillag Sanatorium is now an apartment building.

A marble plaque is the only reminder of the legendary institute.

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The exlusive source of this report: a communication by Vargáné, Blága Borbála. See sources she used here. The study was published by Győri Szalon in the online cultural Magazine dr. Kovács Pál Könyvtár és Közösségi Tér .

English translation by www.jewishgyor.org.

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Our website (www.jewishgyor.org) invites readers to write to us if they know any descendants of Dr. József Csillag who are probably living in Budapest today (email, phone number requested), because we would like to contact them.

A fine example of Jewish social care

In 1930, József Kemény wrote his book “Sketches from the History of the Jews of Győr”, which is a kind of a chronicle of the Győr Jewish citizens’ philantrophy in favour of their city and the local Jewish community. In his work, he also covers the history of the Menház (Home for children and elderly). The following is based on Kemény’s description up to the date of publication of his book.

In 1889, Dr Fülöp Pfeiffer, a physician, citizen of Győr who loved and supported his town being simultaneously the president of the Jewish community, made a foundation of 4,000 crowns with the noble aim of establishing a charity home for poor pupils of the Jewish elementary school located in the two wings of the nearby Synagogue. Several wealthy donors contributed substantial sums to the foundation much later, such as Ignác Schreiber 130 000; Ignác Meller, Jakab Hatschek and Dezső Kürschner 20 000 – 20 000, Károly Wolf 13 600, Márton Fürst 12 400; Samu Winkler, Mór Scheiber and Sándor Hacker 12 000 – 12 000; Lipót Eisenstaedter, Hermann Back and Lipót Redlich 11 000 – 11 000; Albert Fuchs and Miksa Wolf 10 000 – 10 000 crowns, to mention only the most prominent contributors.

Besides the problem of properly feeding the children, the care of the elderly was also unresolved. The funds raised from donations to build a separate children’s institution, a ritual kitchen for public catering and a house for the elderly were insufficient. So, the community leaders combined all the goals.

In 1913, the Menház was completed, based on the plans of architects Károly Mocsányi from Budapest and Dezső Stadler from Győr. The new building became one of the architecturally successful public buildings in Győr-Újváros, its proportions and slightly neo-classical style becoming the ornament of the district in the immediate vicinity of the Synagogue, on the corner of Kossuth Lajos Street and Palatinus (today Erkel Ferenc and Dr. Róth Emil Streets).

“In the basement, there is a large kitchen with a serving area and a pantry, meat and spice room, and the central heating room with a wood and coal fireplace. On the ground floor, to the left, there was the dining room with the servery, and next to it the caretaker’s apartment. To the right there were the old people’s rooms and rooms for the sick and the staff. On the upper floor, the most beautiful part was the prayer hall of about 110 m2, next to which there were also the maternity rooms and rooms for the sick as well as other service space. There was also a laundry in the attic. In keeping with the requirements of the times, the building was designed to provide a pleasant home for the abandoned old people, soothing their old age. But it was also intended to be a focal point for the care provided to our schoolchildren.” (See József Kemény)

The Institute’s operations were shaken to the core by the 1st WW. The rooms were used for housing, and some of them housed soldiers. Food for the children was cut off. Dr Pfeiffer then again donated a substantial sum of 30 000 crowns to the Menház refurbishment, and many other donors followed his example. A change of those responsible took place, the building was renovated and the Menház resumed its old functions, which were even extended (to the Girls Association’s kitchen).

However, history soon intervened once again, and the life of a thriving and growing community was blighted, first by the discriminating laws on Jewish citizens and then by the tragedy of the Holocaust. The Hungarian state abandoned five thousand patriotic citizens of Győr, entire families, including women and children, without whom the city might never have developed as dynamically as it did.

After the 2nd WW, less than nine hundred survivors, who had been through hell and stripped of their possessions, were forced to sell the Menház to the city because they simply could not care for its maintenance. The Menház became a kindergarten, but later it was no longer functioning as such, and the abandoned building deteriorated step-by-step.

2012 saw a positive turnaround. The Jewish Community agreed with the municipality to buy the building back in five annual instalments to prevent it from collapsing and eventual demolition. It was obliged to do so out of respect for tradition and in memory of the builders…

The complete renovation of the building has started, for which the Community has won funds through tenders and it intends to finance further improvements in a similar way. As a first step, the Community has provided space for a kindergarten on the first floor of the building. These premises are now rented by the kindergarten of the Hungarian Pentecostal Church. Later on, the entire building was saved from dilapidation. An exhibition space and a theatre hall were built on the ground floor.

Afterwards, in these spaces, a Jewish religious and local history exhibition was organized by the Community, which gives a broad outline of the history, holidays and customs of Jews in general and in Hungary, as well as the outstanding representatives of the Győr Jews and their contribution to the economic and social development of the city. A number of charts give an account of the life of ‘everyday’ Jewish families, with the help of photographs which are now of historical value. The exhibition aims to inform, remember and recall. History teachers from some of Győr’s secondary schools regularly bring students here to introduce them to the missing chapters in their history textbooks. There are also many visitors from abroad. Entries in the exhibition’s guestbook testify to the positive experiences of visitors.

For several years, the theatre has been home to a successful micro theatre featuring reputable artists. The series of nationally renowned small stage performances has unfortunately been discontinued and the space is now rented out.

The Holocaust Documentation Center and Memorial Collection (HDKE, Budapest, Páva Street) plans to open a new exhibition in the basement of the Menház in the spring of 2026, which will showcase the diversity, past, and present of the Jewish community in Győr.

The Menház was one of the venues of the Jewish Roots in Győr World Reunion held in July 2024 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust.

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Sources.: “Sketches from the History of the Jews of Győr”, József Kemény, 1930; Győr Jewish Community; www.jewishgyor.org

Featured image © Anna Shvets, Pexels

Confronting the 20th century in the Hungarian-Austrian borderlands

Book written by Frank N. Schubert

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What is the book about?

How do we remember the past?  What do we choose to remember?  And, just as important, what has been erased from public memory?  Where do we find these erasures, the “forgotten” remnants of the wrenching events that defined the 20th century? The Past is not Past (A múlt nem múlt el) examines the ways that Hungarians and Austrians on both sides of their common border remember, distort, forget, and ignore the wrenching events that mark the generally horrible century. 

These episodes and developments include World War I, the collapse of the Habsburg empire and postwar political instability, the Treaty of Trianon, World War II and the Holocaust, removal of ethnic Germans, the Iron Curtain and the 1956 revolution, the end of Soviet rule, and the post-1989 migration crisis.

Based on fifteen years of travel throughout the borderlands from the author’s home in Győr, the largest city in the region, as well as on published sources and conversations with residents, the book – part travel guide, part social history, and part memoir – addresses these questions.

Fifteen maps and more than 140 illustrations help readers find the answers.

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Personal impressions

I had the opportunity to read two chapters of Mick Schubert’s book before its publication. The ones entitled „Győr – the Wonders of It All” and the „Reverberations of 1944”. It is an absorbing and fascinating read. Mick raises points of view, shares insights with the reader that have been surprising and/or unfamiliar to me, having grown up in Győr long ago. He takes us, with a touch of irony, through the twisting and often shocking transformations of many well-known Győr landmarks from the early 20th century to the present day.

He shows how people of the recent past and present try to cover up and deny the past, to one-sidedly present the truth of the time, to forget and make other people forget the inglorious and criminal deeds of those who took part in the extermination of the Jews, among others.  Mick points out on almost every page that the past always reappears; the fate of the victims, their persecutors and descendants is intertwined in one way or another. Some reconciliation is possible only by uncovering the truth.

Yes, the past is not past and it can certainly repeat itself if we do not care. For each other. (Note by the site editor.)

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The quote

Based on revelations of this book, and my own experiences, I say, Mick, you are right, the past is still walking among us. We all must face up to it sometime. (Note by the site editor.)

With Mick’s consent, I am publishing a few paragraphs about the Révai gimnázium , which made a profound impression on me as a former student of this institution. I attended the school for four years and my former class still meets every five years. I had never heard before that a part of the school building played a miserable role in the tragic fate of mixed Jewish-Christian couples from Győr in 1944. The full details of this stunning historical moment should be revealed though it would not change the poignant fate of the people concerned. Under the influence of the book, I myself tried to make some modest initial steps to clarify the issue and learned from archival sources in Győr that documents of the district’s chief magistrate appointed by the Arrow Cross government contain dozens of petitions from mixed couples kept in the Révai gimnázium , which only confirms the book’s claim.

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Quote from Chapter 7.  Győr – The Wonders of It All

“…

The Révai gimnázium or high school on the west side of the park was adapted early in the war for use as a military hospital because of its proximity to the railroad station.  It also continued to function as a school through the academic year of 1942-1943, when Jewish students were dismissed en masse. The building survived the wartime air raids, though with considerable damage.  At war’s end, the Russian occupiers also used it as a hospital.

When the ghetto was established in May 1944 across the Rába in the Sziget neighborhood that contained three Jewish houses of prayer, part of the Révai building became the “mixed” ghetto, where Jewish-Aryan couples were confined.  Those people numbered somewhere between thirty and forty.  They survived longer than residents of the general ghetto.  In fact, they almost made it through the war.  At around nine o’clock on the night of 26 March 1945 they were taken to the Moson Duna and shot into the river, called by some locals the “moving ghetto,” from the Medve Bridge, now the Széchenyi Bridge.  Soviet forces arrived just hours later.[1]

[1] The moving ghetto should not be confused with the floating ghetto.  The latter name was given to boats bringing more than 3,000 Jews fleeing east from Austria in the wake of the 1938 Anschluss.  The vessels tied up at places like Ásványráró, sometimes for months, before the refugees were allowed to debark.

The Révai bears no markers to indicate its wartime use or the fate of those taken away to be killed.  Nor is there a marker at the murder site, either at the bridge or along the river.  All that appears to be known is the approximate number of victims.  And while there are no markers for this catastrophe, the park in front of the school has two marble plaques embedded in the grass in front of newly planted trees, both within twenty meters of the building itself.  The local natural gas company planted the first in 2009, in celebration of reaching 800,000 customers.  Members of the Lions Club International placed the other one in remembrance of their international convention, held at Győr in 2015.  As far as the victims of Arrow Cross murder are concerned, they—and their killers–might just as well have never existed.  A sense that something is missing is missing.[2]

[2] The massacre of the Révai prisoners is actually mentioned in the text of the exhibit concerning the life of Bishop Apor Vilmos at the bishop’s palace.  With phrasing adapted directly from Randolph Braham’s encyclopedia of the Holocaust (volume I, p.- 482), the exhibit identifies the site of their incarceration as ”egy győri iskolaépület,” a Győr school building, without specifying which one.

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The Hungarian and English editions are expected to be published together by the Holocaust Memorial Center (HDKE) in Hungary later this year.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_N._Schubert

Featured image: note in Wikipedia, extract, about F. N. Schubert

The UN General Assembly declared 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day by a resolution of 1 November 2005. It marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, the largest Nazi extermination camp, in 1945.

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Remember and remind!

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Győr, January 2022

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A series of pictures of the Memorial Pyramid in the Győr-Sziget cemetery erected in 1947

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Remember and remind!

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It is with pleasure that we publish the short summary of a conversation we had with Tibor Villányi, the President of the Jewish Community of Győr, in the first days of January 2022. The general question we put to Tibor concerned the past, present and future of the Jewish community in Győr. Read his answer below.

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Past and present of the Jewry in Győr

I can’t say much good about the present of the Jewish community in Győr.

Religious life has shrunk to a minimum, while for me it is the most important measure of the existence of Jewish life. Unfortunately, this is the consequence of the Holocaust, and is typical of many communities in the countryside. We erected a memorial column in the courtyard of the Győr Community and the Synagogue with the names of 400 child victims deported from Győr and its neighborhood, then killed. They were all under 14-years old. They and their unborn children would now be members of a classically functioning community.

Nevertheless, I have a lot to do and I do everything I can to ensure that the great tradition of the once significant community does not disappear without a trace. Our ancestors played a prominent role in the industrialization of Győr, think of Ágoston Léderer and his peers, who were the founding owners of very successful factories as well as prominent actors of the public life in Győr. As a result, Győr has developed into a dynamic industrial city, think of the milling industry, the wagon manufacturing factory, the distillery, the electrification of the city, the multitude of textile factories, the establishment of vegetable oil factories and many other plants. These factories and plants have provided employment and livelihood for tens of thousands of Győr citizens since the end of the 19^th century.

During my presidency alone, we buried more than one hundred people in the cemetery in Sziget while hardly a Jewish toddler was born in Győr during this period. So, the process of shrinkage that began with the 1944 massacre, and which has been exacerbated by further emigration, continues unabated.

The level of interest in community affairs that goes beyond religious life is also extremely low. Regrettably, this was already typical of the generation that survived the devastation and unfortunately, they were the ones who sold and even donated the Synagogue building and the former Home of poor and elderly to the state. The Home has already been repurchased by the community from town ownership. The heavily dilapidated building has partially been renovated. On the ground floor, we set up an exhibition on Jewish religious life and the local history of Jews as well as the Holocaust. In one of the rooms, photo boards have been set up on the life of former Győr families. We have also furnished an 80-seat theater, which is suitable for cultural events. With all this, our goal is to spread knowledge, remember and retell.

As said, the great Synagogue is not in our property any more, we can only use one prayer room. Saturday reception and religious holidays are celebrated there. We have a synagogue clerk and every second week a rabbi coming from Budapest to perform the Saturday service and educate community members. In August 2021, together with the Széchenyi István University, we commemorated the 150 + 1 – years anniversary of the Synagogue’s anointment in an honorable way. We had to postpone the event for a year because of the outbreak of the Covid epidemic.

It is most important to me that we preserve what we have today. To this end, I nurture our relations with the leadership of the city of Győr and the relevant governmental bodies.

The World meeting scheduled for 2024

In principle, I support the organization of the meeting and ensure that Jewish institutions such as the prayer room, the former Home for poor and elderly as well as the cemetery can be visited on this occasion. Of course, I will attend the reunion. (Note by KP: The University has already authorized the use of the great Synagogue as one of the venues for the planned events.)

The international nature of the initiative is also commendable, but unfortunately my experience with the survivors of Győr and their descendants living abroad is not very positive. A few years ago, I tried to arouse interest abroad for Győr with announcements published in the paper Israeli Új Kelet, but there was no reaction whatsoever. Many of these people have ancestors buried in the cemetery, which has been painstakingly tidied up and maintained, but a great number of those living abroad, although they visit the graves from time to time, does not see that the cemetery should be maintained and the graves should be taken care of. This is sad. It should be understood that, as the Hungarian state does not finance the maintenance of the cemetery, the relatives would have to pay an annual maintenance fee on a regular basis, which is not a large amount. From January 1, 2022, HUF 5,000 (USD 16) for single graves and HUF 10,000 (USD 32) for double graves. It should be noted here that this amount is a general cemetery maintenance fee, not covering the cost of repairing individual gravestones. In the last two years, we have re-erected, for memorial and accident prevention reasons, six hundred fallen gravestones without living relatives at great expense.

We are in contact with the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense and, thanks to a grant received, graves of 18 WW1 heroes have also been restored.

Plans for the future

I cannot see into the future.

Of course, we will continue with our current work, such as organizing the religious activities, maintaining the cemetery, running the former Home for poor and elderly as well as ensuring our participation in the cultural life of the city of Győr.

My plans include the creation of an interactive database on Jewish life in Győr including the necessary computer infrastructure in the basement of the former Home for poor and elderly, which needs to be completely renovated. All this will cost a lot of money. I have asked for government help in this respect. The Museum of Győr would take over the running of this new, modern section of the Jewish local history exhibition already established there.

Furthermore, we will organize occasional exhibitions, such as one on Jewish weddings as supported by the Museum mentioned.

As soon as the two-year-long epidemic subsides and the situation returns to normal, we will relaunch the lecture series of the Győr Jewish Free University.

To sum up, despite the current difficult situation, we are working, and I myself, as I said, am actively trying to fulfil my plans in a neat order, within the limits of my possibilities, in order to preserve the traces of Judaism in the life of this beautiful, historic city with great traditions.

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So far, Tibor’s reply, for which we are grateful and hope that the expected success of the international reunion to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust in July 2024, already in preparation, will have a positive impact on fostering and preserving Jewish traditions in Győr and will contribute to the enrichment of Jewish community life here. In this way, the initiators and organizers of the reunion will strengthen the effectiveness of the current activities and the implementation of the plans of the local Jewish Community’s leadership.

The discussion was recorded by Péter Krausz (KP).

Featured image – © P. Krausz

Szabolcs Szunyogh

Noran Libro, 2018

Chapter on Győr, pp 316 – 322, appears on our website as approved by the author

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Szabolcs Szunyogh was born in Budapest in 1950. He graduated as a teacher, but worked mainly as a journalist, newspaper editor and radio journalist. He is also known as an author of books and audio plays for young people as well as an author of educational books. He has been awarded the Radnóti Prize and the György Várhegyi Prize for his work. (The book blurb of “Hungarian Menorah”)

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HISTORY OF THE JEWS OF GYŐR

In 1490, a Jew named Simon moved from Győr to Sopron, this is our oldest record of Győr Jewry. In the 18th century, a city decree informs posterity of the existence of the Jews in a special way: in 1748, the magistrate decided to expel the them. The first news about the Jews of Győr after the Middle Ages, referring to a larger community, dates from 1795: it was then that the first house of worship was built in Győr. The first rabbi we know of was Abraham Schick, who served as a rabbi in Győr between 1803 and 1818.

During the war of independence, the Jews of Győr fought in the army of György Klapka, so the Austrians blackmailed the community, arrested the rabbi and executed a boy. In 1851, the Jews of Győr and Győr-Sziget established a common community of faith, and a school was founded in the same year. (Teaching has been in Hungarian since 1864.) In 1866, a tender was issued for a modern synagogue, which was built according to the plans of Károly Benkó and Vilmos Fränkel (Fraenkel), and was inaugurated on September 15, 1870. (The church was renovated and expanded in 1925-26 according to the plans of Arnold Bachrach.)

The great rift did not escape Győr either: in 1870, the traditional Jews separated from the congressional community open to reform and established the Orthodox community.

The congressional, and therefore neolog community has become one of the most important congregations in the country. Its president is Ignác Schreiber, royal adviser, knight of the Order of the Iron Crown, governor of the Austro-Hungarian bank. He supported not only the education of poor children but also improved the livelihood of underprivileged teachers with huge donations. If a merchant became impoverished or went bankrupt, he could turn to him for help. With his support, the home of the Jewish elders, as it was called at the time, was also built. His successor was a doctor named Fülöp Pfeiffer, who performed philanthropic work worthy of his predecessor. From then on (until the Holocaust) it became a tradition in Győr to perform exemplary charitable work from the personal property of the community’s president.

Jews in Győr largely contributed to the development of industry. Adolf Schlesinger founded a distillery, Károly Neubauer set up a match factory, Adolf Kohn started a vegetable oil factory, Hermann Back built a rolling mill, and Illés Keppich founded a steamship company on the Danube.

The community was devoted to the country, its members participated enthusiastically in World War I, during which 85 young people from the Győr community lost their lives.

In her dissertation, an ORZSE (= National Rabbinical Training – Jewish University) student, Enikő Lőrinczi, reports on the history of the synagogue: “The school connected to the synagogue building was opened on October 17, 1869. The costs were covered by the community from the purchase of seats at an eternal price, interest-free loans from community members and donations. In 1927, a winter church was added to the building. After the war, the church remained unused, so its condition gradually deteriorated. The synagogue became state property in 1968 that turned into city ownership in 1993. A total renovation of this property was completed in 2003. The more than 140-year-old synagogue was refurbished by August 2006. The former synagogue in Győr now serves as a museum building and hosts cultural events. The art collection of János Vasilescu can be seen in a permanent exhibition on its galleries. The former school wing houses the College of Music. The Jewish community, very much decreased in membership due to the Holocaust, now uses a separate prayer room in a side wing of the synagogue.”

Today there are 1444 Hungarian towns and villages in which there was once, but for more than seven decades now there has not been a Jewish community. Fortunately, Győr is in a different situation, although about five thousand people were actually killed during the Holocaust. (Of the community in Győr, which previously numbered 5,700, 780 remained after the war.)

The ghetto was set up in a part of the city called Sziget, from where Jews were driven into the slum barracks of the factory district while subjecting them to humiliating and rude searches. It is important to mention that the bishop of Győr, Vilmos Apor, who was later shot by drunken Russian soldiers, tried to prevent deportation and went to see the Jews in the slums in person, but was chased away by the gendarmes.

For the first time in Hungary, a granite block was erected in Győr in memory of the Jewish children abducted and killed during the Holocaust. Since the former synagogue is being managed by the Széchenyi István University, chief rabbi József Schweitzer and University rector Tamás Szekeres inaugurated a memorial in the courtyard to honour the memory of five hundred children in 2007. On behalf of the Hungarian Jewish Cultural Association, five stumbling blocks were also placed in the town in memory of the abducted Jews of Győr in 2016.

Perhaps it is teachers who preserve the memory of the martyrs to the utmost in the hearts of their pupils and students. On the website of the Mihály Vörösmarty High School in Érd, for example, we can read the touching lines of an eleven-year-old girl: “On April 16, 2015, the day of the Holocaust Remembrance Day in Hungary, we made a trip to Győr. We visited the Synagogue and Holocaust memorial exhibition. From the interesting lecture we heard, we got a comprehensive picture of the architectural features and functions of the Hungarian synagogues. Then, on the upper levels, we could see paintings by Holocaust survivors and Jewish artists. We then walked through the nearby Memorial Museum, which served as a refuge for the persecuted during the war. Today, it helps visitors learn about Jewish culture. It was about religious holidays and traditions, but also about everyday life. The most emblematic part of the visit for me was the Holocaust Memorial Room, where the guide lady told us about the horrors her family had experienced. Thank you so much for the opportunity, it was a moving and instructive journey.”

THE NEOLOG SYNAGOGUE OF GYŐR

The building that can be seen today, which was once the synagogue of Győr, is located in Győr Újváros, Petőfi Square, more precisely at Kossuth Lajos street 5. The detailed construction plans of the synagogue, which shows stylistic features of historicism and Art Nouveau, were developed by the Pest design bureau Örömy, Hencz and Bergh, while the architect was Vilmos Fränkel (Fraenkel), a Viennese architect, but the real designer was Károly Benkó.

This is a very imposing building. Its external size is 22.25 by 35.30 meters.

The six hundred square meters of land were purchased by the community in 1866 to build a school and a synagogue there. A total of 33 bids were received, of which the one by architect Benkó was accepted. The costs were covered from public donations and loans. First – this is a characteristic Jewish feature – the school was completed, and only then the synagogue itself.

The floor plan of the synagogue is rectangular, but since towers are attached to the corners, the central space is ultimately reminiscent of an octagon. The towers and the prayer room are covered with domes placed on light cast iron columns, the twin windows have curved closures, and the light entering through the huge rose window makes the interior of the synagogue  elevated. The dome rises more than 33 meters above ground level. The ark, the Torah cabinet, and the bima in front of them are, according to neolog customs, positioned at the eastern end of the building. The Hebrew text above the ark means, “Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth.” (This is a biblical quote from Joshua chapter 3, verse 11.) Inside, a two-story gallery decorated with the stars of David runs around along the walls.

This is one of our first neolog synagogues. It is reminiscent of Christian basilicas in that its verticality expresses a religious sentiment towards the sky, although not as clearly as the neo-Gothic Frankel Synagogue in Budapest. The interior of the building is richly decorated, and the exterior with its huge dome and spherical tower helmets provides for one of the ornaments of the city.

Originally, the synagogue had seating for four hundred believers, but during the renovation, which began in 1926 and was completed on November 20, 1927, the church was expanded. After the war, on March 15, 1946, the synagogue was rededicated, but the Győr congregation, which had been reduced to a fraction of its population, could neither fill it nor maintain it. The school wings were nationalized as early as 1950, and the remainder of the building became state-owned “as a gift” in 1966, with offices of a grain trading company and a warehouse for scrapped furniture. In 1973, the Liszt Ferenc College of Music received the school wing. There was still a community office in the Kossuth Street wing, and there was also a prayer hall upstairs (both the community and the prayer hall are still operational today – website editor). Between 1994 and 1999, partly with the support of the European Union, the building was renovated, which, although not shining in all its old beauty, at least does not deteriorate further. It is currently run by the Széchenyi University and the Rómer Flóris Museum of Art and History of Győr, and concerts are held in the main prayer space thanks to its excellent acoustics.

Recommended reading:

Lőrinci Enikő: A pozsonyi és győri zsidóság nyomában

Holokauszt emlékkirándulás Győrben

A győri zsidóság tragédiája

A győri zsidóság története (PDF)

A győri zsinagóga

A győri neológ zsinagóga építésének története

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Featured image – © Noran Libro