קהילת יהודי נ'יראגיהאזה

Miksa Szabolsci (Weinstein) (1857-1915), author and editor born in Tura, Hungary (then part of the Austrian Empire). He was educated at several yeshivot and he attended also the National Rabbinical Seminary, but following his inclination he became a journalist in 1878.

From 1881 he collaborated on a daily newspaper published in Debrecen. In the Tiszaeszlar blood accusation (1882) he spent much time in successfully investigating the circumstances under which the alleged victim had disappeared, and wrote numerous articles for the "Pester Lloyd" and other newspapers denouncing machinations and illegal pressures in the affair. As a result of his informative work, he was ordered by the country’s legal authorities to leave Nyiregyhaza, the scene of the trial, and the anti-Semitic investigators made an attempt upon his life. Nevertheless, Szabolcsi's reports of the trial appeared in the "Pester Lloyd" and "Neue Freier Presse", and were reprinted by many of the leading European newspapers.

After editing the "Pester Juedische Zeitung" for two years, Szabolcsi became editor of the Hungarian weekly newspaper "Egyenloseg" in 1886. In 1889, together with Vilmos Vazsonyi, he started a movement for the recognition of the Jewish faith by the Hungarian state; his agitation, which at the outset met with opposition by official Jewish leaders, resulted in the enactment of a law to that effect in 1895. This important achievement made "Egyenloseg" the dominant Jewish newspaper in Hungary. In its columns Szabolcsi successfully fought other attempts at blood accusations, and caused the dismissal from his post of Bela Makay, a biased official in charge of Jewish religious affairs in the ministry of education (1911).

Szabolcsi advocated religious Judaism and the recognition of its adherents as a constituent part of the Hungarian nation. When the first Zionist movement was started in Hungary, Szabolcsi violently denounced it, believing that it would jeopardize the position of the Jews in Hungary which had been consolidated shortly before.

Szabolcsi was partly responsible for the founding of the Hungarian-Jewish Literary Society (IMIT) and of the Hungarian-Jewish Culture Association (OMIKE). He was constantly in search of Jewish journalistic talent, and in his writings served as a model for the Hungarian Jewish press.

Among his published books were "Magyar Szanhedrin" (a Talmud translation; 1878); "Olasz zsidok kozott" ("Among Italian Jews", 1903); "Nemet zsidok kozott" ("Among German Jews", 1905); and an abridged Hungarian version of Heinrich Graetz' "History of the Jews" (2 vol., 1908-9). In 1938 his "Gyongyszemek a Talmudbol es Midrasbol" ("Pearls from the Talmud and Midrash") was published by Ella B. Szabolcsi.

Bela Bernstein (1868-1944), rabbi and historian, born in Varpalota, Hungary (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied at the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary and at Leipzig University. He was rabbi in Szombathely from 1892 to 1909 and then in Nyiregyhaza. In 1901 he tried to introduce a uniform religious education in Hungary. Bernstein's writings were on Hungarian Jewish history. In 1944 he was deported by the Nazis to his death in Auschwitz.

Dávid Jándi (born David Lederer) (1893-1944), painter, painter, born in Jánd, a village in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, Hungary (then part of Austria-Hungary). He was educated in Nyíregyháza, where his family settled towards the end of the 19th century. In 1911 he moved to Baia Mare (Nagybánya), now in Romania, and joined the local school of painting led by János Thorma (1870-1937) and as of 1912 he adopted the name David Jandi. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army during WW I creating numerous drawings. It seems that he was captured by the Russian army and held in Siberia, before returning to Nyíregyháza after the end of WW I. After the war he studied at the Budapest College of Fine Arts in 1922. In 1925, for nearly a year he lived in Italy, and then visited that country almost every year until 1930 working in Venice and Florence. His experiences in Italy had a huge impact on his work. He painted landscapes, biblical and mythological scenes strongly emphasizing the spatiality of the forms. He participated at several exhibitions in Budapest as well as in various cities in Transylvania. In 1926 he was elected a full member of the Society of Painters of Baia Mare. After Northern Transylvania was annexed by Hungary in September 1940 and as a result of the implementation of the anti-Semitic policy, he could participate only at exhibitions organized by Jewish associations. His work Ghetto apparently was created during the last month of his life when the Jews of northern Transylvania were forced into ghettoes by the Hungarian authorities before being deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Jandi was deported from Baia Mare in 1944 and shot dead while attempting to escape from the deporting train.