[C. 5.18.]
Czechoslovakia and Hungary [1933-1938]
[JDC in Subcarpathian
Russia]
Another area in
which JDC spent sizable sums of money and considerable
energy was Subcarpathian Russia (or PKR, in Czech
initials), the easternmost tip of Czechoslovakia. A mostly
Orthodox Jewish community lived there, subsisting on petty
trade, agriculture, and forestry. There was a famous
Hebrew secondary (p.218)
school at Munkács (Mukachevo) and a number of yeshivoth.
In 1933 JDC started a feeding program for children.
(End note 88: JDC report for 1933)
Occasionally small sums were granted to vocational
establishments or small Jewish workshop cooperatives,
mainly in the automobile repair and textile branches. Most
of this work was done in conjunction with the Jewish
Social Institute in Prague and a parallel organization in
Bratislava.
About 15,000 Jews from
Czechoslovakia succeeded in reaching Palestine between
the autumn of 1938 and the end of 1939, the overwhelming
majority by means of "illegal" immigration.
(from: Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971): Zionism, Vol. 16,
col. 1113)
[JDC in Hungary]
In neighboring Hungary, JDC did not operate at all in the
1930s though it followed developments there with
increasing anxiety. The Jewish population in Hungary was
actually declining, as a result of numerous conversions
among the upper strata of Jewish society and a decline in
the birthrate. There were 444,500 Jews in Hungary in 1930.
With the annexations of parts of Slovakia and PKR in late
1938 and in March 1939 [and by the accession of a part of
Transilvania in 1940] the Jewish population grew to
725,000 by 1941.
In Hungary proper (as contrasted with PKR), and especially
in Budapest, Jews tended to be a prosperous middle-class
community. In early 1939 it was estimated that 43 % of
Hungarian commerce was handled by Jews; 49.2 % of the
lawyers and 37.7 % of the doctors were Jewish. Industry,
too, was partly in the hands of Jews.
(End note 89: R46, reports for January 1939. The
population statistics are taken from Erno Laszlo:
Hungary's Jewry: A Demographic Overview, 1918-1945; In:
Hungarian Jewish Studies,
ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York, 1969), 2:157-58)
[Horthy government]
Yet Jews in Hungary were still considered to be strangers,
despite the fact that they had lived in the country for
many centuries and despite their own keen desire to be
regarded as Hungarians. The regime of the archconservative
regent, Admira Horthy, wavered between personal friendship
for Jewish elements in the Hungarian aristocracy and
anti-Semitism.
[May 1938: Percentage law
for businesses - Jews are considered as outlawed]
In May 1938, under the influence of Nazism, Hungarian
anti-Semitism won its first great victory in a bill that
decreed that by June 1943 not more than 20 % of people
working in any establishment could be Jews. As a result, a
large number of Jews were thrown out of their professions.
Hungary's politicians followed the German example closely
in other ways too. In late 1938, after the Sudeten crisis
in the autumn of that year, the Hungarian government
published the text of a second bill, which was finally
passed in March 1939. The preamble (p.219)
to that law stated quite explicitly that the Hungarians
were outlawing Jews as part of a general movement: "Before
the (1938) law was promulgated, only one of the
neighboring states, Germany, had taken energetic measures
to drive the Jews out of the country. Since that time,
however, many other states in Europe have followed this
example. ...
The Jewish question is an international problem like many
other questions of international interest, such as world
traffic, world economy, hygiene, and instruction." An
international solution - that is, mass emigration and
expulsion by international consent - was consequently
desired.
[Supplement: No Haavarah
agreement for East European Jews]
For German Jews there is the Haavarah agreement. But there
is no Haavarah agreement for East European Jews. This is
the point that the Yiddish Jews should be exterminated,
the German Jews not. It can only be assumed that Zionists
are steering this process].
[1939: Hungary: More
discrimination laws: Citizenship questions - profession
discriminations]
The 1939 bill itself provided for the invalidation of the
citizenship of certain classes of Jews who had obtained
their Hungarian nationality after 1914; in effect, it
revoked the Jewish franchise by instituting a separate
Jewish poll in the national and municipal elections; and
it barred Jews from positions in the civil service,
municipalities, and public corporations, and from working
as public notaries and editors-in-chief. The number of
Jews in the legal, medical, and engineering professions
was limited to 6 %. Publication of papers owned by Jews
was forbidden, and state contracts for Jewish enterprises
were withdrawn. Most serious of all was the provision that
no trade concessions or licenses could be granted to Jews
unless the percentage of Jewish license holders dropped to
less than 6 %.
The definition of a Jew was clearly Nazi in origin: a Jew
was a person of Jewish faith, a Christian born of Jewish
parentage, or the offspring of a mixed marriage if the
Jewish parent had not been baptized before the marriage.
It was quite clear that very soon Hungarian Jewry would be
calling for active help from JDC.
