The Jewish Community of Nagyecsed

Mateszalka

A town in the Szatmar district, north east Hungary.

Jews first settled in the place in the middle of the 18th century, under the patronage of the estate owner, Sandor Karolyi. His son, Ferenc, continued this tradition. The majority were engaged in commerce and trades. The community, which was orthodox, built a synagogue and a school, as well as a Talmud torah. After World War I, the town became the most important in the district and attracted many Jews.

In 1930, the community numbered 1,621, which represented 17.7% of the population.

The Holocaust Period

In 1941, the males were conscripted for forced labor, work on fortifications and in services together with other Hungarian citizens whom the authorities did not want to join the armed forces.

In 1944, after the German occupation, one of the largest concentration camps in Hungary was set up in the town; about 17,000 Jews from the neighboring towns in the district were kept there. The prisoners were held without a roof overhead, under overcrowded conditions and extreme hunger, and subject to cruel treatment and torture on the part of the police. After some time they were sent back to occupy a few of their dilapidated homes. The community was allowed to organize the distribution of one meal daily. Finally, they were taken to the railway station and transported in sealed freight cars, 80 people in each car, to Auschwitz.

After the war a small number of forced labor survivors returned, followed by a few more from Auschwitz. By 1946 they numbered 150, and this increased to 238 in 1949. They renewed communal life, but after the anti-Russian revolt in 1956 they began to disperse. The majority went to Budapest and Debrecen, but some went on Aliyah to Israel. In 1959 there were 98 Jews in the town, of whom one third were children.

Ököritófülpös

Formerly: Szatmar Okorto (Okorito)

A village in the district of Szatmar, north-east Hungary.

History

The first Jews came at the end of the 18th century. Most were peddlers and craftsmen. Following the dispute between the orthodox Jews and the reform movement in the General Jewish Congress of Hungary (1868-69), the Jews of Szatmar-Okorto elected to join the orthodox stream, which refused to accept the regulations adopted by the Congress. The community had a synagogue and a cemetery.

In 1930 there were 126 Jews in the community.


The Holocaust

The Jewish laws (1938 and thereafter), designed to restrict the Jews in the economy and culture significantly hurt the Jewish community. In April 1944, about a month after the occupation of Hungary by the German army, the local Jews were moved to a ghetto that was set up at Mateszalka, to which the Jews of Maramaros, about 1200 people, were also taken. They were kept there under conditions of severe overcrowding and hunger. In May 1944 all of them were sent to Auschwitz.

Twenty-two members of the community survived the war. Five of them returned to the village, but left shortly later.

Nyírbátor 

A town in the Szabolcs district, north east Hungary.

Jews settled in the town in the second half of the 18th century. The majority were engaged in commerce, while Jewish artisans had a good name. There were some Jewish landowners, among them two who established industries, as well as many members of the free professions.

There was a good deal of anti-semitism at all levels of society. As a result of the Tiszaeszlar blood libel in 1882, Jews were attacked by mobs, their homes were broken into and their property stolen.

The community was organized in 1816. Because of differences between haredim (orthodox) and maskilim (enlightened) at the Jewish Congress in 1869, the community adopted a stand on Congress nor those of the haredim. The haredim broke away and formed their own orthodox community. With the influx of families from Galicia, this community grew until it was larger than the original community. Active in the community were the hevra kadisha (burial society), bikur cholim (sick visiting) society, education and charitable institutions.

Following World War I there were continual outbreaks of terror. Many inter-marriages were dissolved, business licences were cancelled and Jewish officials in government service were dismissed without payment of compensation.

In 1930 the community numbered 1,873 (17.3% of the total).

The Holocaust Period

In 1938, following the publication of discriminatory laws which aimed at limiting Jewish participation in the economic and cultural fields, the means of livelihood of the Jews was affected. From 1942 many were conscripted for forced labor, work on fortifications and in services together with other Hungarian citizens whom the authorities did not want to join the armed forces. The majority were employed in the mine fields on the Ukrainian front where they perished.

On April 22, 1944, all the Jews of the town were sent by cart to Nyiregyhaza. Because of the overcrowding they were dispersed to the estates in the neighborhood where they were held under starvation conditions until May 28, when they were transported to Auschwitz. Some tens of Jews were transferred from Auschwitz to labor camps in Germany. Some of them were freed by the Russians at the end of the war, others were sent to a prisoner-of-war camp at Slutsk (in Poland and later Belarus) where they remained for nine months until their release.

After the war 500 people returned to the town, some of them survivors of forced labor and others residents of the small villages in the surroundings. The returnees renewed the orthodox community. The status-quo community was not revitalized. In 1958 no Jews were left in the town.

Hungary

Magyarország

A country in central Europe, member of the European Union (EU). 

21st Century

Estimated Jewish population in 2018: 47,000 out of 9,800,000 (0.4%).  Hungary has the largest Jewish population in central and eastern Europe. Most Jews live in Budapest, with a minority living in a number of other communities of them the largest are located in Debrecen, Szeged, and Miskolc. The umbrella organization of the Jewish communities:

Mazsihisz
Phone: 36 1 413 55 00
Email: info@mazsihisz.com
Website: www.mazsihisz.hu

HISTORY

The Jews of Hungary

Antiquity

Jewish presence on the territory of Hungary is documented during the 2nd and the 3rd centuries CE, when the country, then known as Panonia, was part of the Roman Empire. Various archeological findings attest Jewish settlement in a number of places, most of them on the banks of the Danube river or close to it. A few inscriptions mentioning the word Judaeus (“Jewish”) and Jewish symbols, including the menorah – the seven branch candelabrum, were found on tombstones unearthed in Brigetio (now Szőny Komárom), Solva (Esztergom), Intercissa (Dunaújváros), Acquincum (Budapest), Triccinnae (Sárvár), Sopiane (Pécs), and Savaria (Szombathely). About two-thirds of the extant inscriptions referring to Jews belong to soldiers. They probably served in the Roman legions recruited in the Middle East, like the First Cohort of the Syrian Hemesian Archers that originated in the Syrian town of Hemesa (the modern Homs) and included Jews from that town. It seems that the worsening security situation in the Middle East due to the 3rd century attacks of the Sasanid Persians led to additional Jews from Antioch, Hemesa and other places in Levant to join their relatives in Panonia. The ties between the Jews of Panonia and the Levant ceased after mid-4th century following the split of the Roman Empire and then the evacuation of Panonia by the Romans.

1251 | In the Land of Hagar

In the second half of the 11th century, some Jews migrated from the regions of Bohemia and Moravia, in today's Czech Republic, and settled in a part of the Pannonia region located in what is now Hungary. Documents from the time show that the local church issued edicts prohibiting marriages between Christians and Jews, as well as employing Jews at festivals and fairs.
This attitude changed in 1251 when King Bela IV issued a bill of rights that regulated trade relations between Jews and Christians and protected the Jews from harassment by Christians. This royal act caused Jews from all over Europe to start immigrating to Hungary, “Land of Hagar”, as it was called in Rabbinical literature of the Middle Ages.
But not all was rosy in the land of goulash and blintzes. The reign of King Lajos I saw a rise in the influence of the Catholic Church, which was displeased with the rights given to the Jews, and in 1360 this king decreed that the Jews be expelled from his kingdom. Four years later the decree was annulled due to financial reasons, but many of those expelled never returned.

1526 | Three States for One People

In the 16th and 17th centuries the Hungarians, Turks and Habsburg emperors all fought over the coveted Hungarian real-estate. The people of Hungary – and the Jews among them – passed from hand to hand and from sovereign to sovereign like second-rate goods at a country fair.
The story begins with the Battle of Mohacs, which took place in 1526 and ended with a fateful defeat for the Hungarians at the hands of the Turks. Following this clash Hungary was divided into three parts: The southeastern part fell into Turkish control, the northwestern part under the rule of the Habsburgs, while the eastern part – the region of Transylvania, which remained under Turkish sovereignty (but not Turkish rule) – became an independent principality.
The Jews who lived under Turkish rule enjoyed relative freedom. The most significant community in this area lived in the city of Buda (later to become part of modern-day Budapest). This was a community of Jews from the west and east alike, and the blend of cultures enriched the Torah life of Buda Jews thanks to the fruitful mixture of the study techniques perfected by the sages of Spain and the Ashkenazi principles of 'pilpul' – the nuanced legalistic mechanism of Talmud study.
The economic situation of the Jews in the city, which sat on a major trade route, on the banks of the Danube, was likewise improved, and they traded in all goods – from hides and rugs to cattle and liquor.
The Jews living in the eastern part of the country – as explained, under Turkish sovereignty but not direct Turkish rule – enjoyed relative prosperity, influenced by the Calvinists of the Hungarian Reform Church, who were more tolerant than their Catholic predecessors were.
The state of the Jews who lived under the Habsburgs, however, went from bad to worse, and many of them were expelled from the Crown cities.

1781 | The Edict of Toleration

Many historians mark the day on which Emperor Joseph II issued the “Edict of Toleration” for the Jews as the day on which the walls of the ghetto came down, at least metaphorically, and Jews began to integrate into the European sphere. The edict, issued in the year 1781, abolished the residential restriction that had been placed on the Jews, granted them freedom of movement throughout the empire and allowed them to take part in commerce and the economy, to enroll in institutions of general studies and practice free professions.
At the same time, the edict prohibited the operation of synagogues, as well as the use of Yiddish and Hebrew in official documents. Jews lacking formal education were not allowed to marry until age 25, as a way to encourage education.
But despite the restrictions on religious freedom, many Jews immigrated to Hungary, mostly from the regions of Galicia (now southern Poland) and Moravia (now in the Czech Republic). In time, the Jewish community of Hungary would split into two opposite schools: most of the Jews arriving from Moravia were enamored with the ideas of progress and adopted the values of the Enlightenment, and within 100 years they produced many thinkers and intellectuals, among them Theodore (Binyamin Zeev) Herzl, many of whom left an indelible impression on European culture.
The Jews who came from Galicia, on the other hand, adhered to their traditional Judaism, and in time founded the Hasidic courts of Satmar, Munkacs and others.

1848 | Amen-cipation

The history of the Enlightenment and its attitude towards the Jews is complex and inconsistent. One the one hand, those upholding the values of equality, which are the very heart of the Enlightenment movement, could not exclude the Jews, lest they be accused of double standards. On the other, the ancient European aversion to the notion of the Jew as an equal among equals made it hard for the Europeans to put their ideals into practice.
Hungary was not unique in this regard. Between 1815-1840 the number of Jews in Hungary grew by approximately 80% due to accelerated immigration, stemming from the reforms of Joseph II and the Edict of Toleration. On the face of it, Jews integrated into Hungarian society and received equal treatment, but the excuses for Jew-hatred always found willing ears.
One of many examples can be found in the words of one of the leaders of the Liberal movement in the lower house of parliament regarding the production of alcohol, one of the main occupation of the Jews in that period: “Those who live in areas where every saloon is in the hands of the Jews know what danger they pose to the people […] as they constantly hold the white poison.”
Another expression of anti-Semitism which no “edict of toleration” could undo came in 1848, during the “Spring of Nations” revolution. Although Jews took an active part in the revolution, the Liberal-controlled National Assembly refused to grant them fully equal rights. Following this decision, which of course caused much disappointment, many Jews argued that this was proof that the integration into Hungarian life must be increased and Jewish national identity should be blurred.
Despite the hostile environment, in 1860 the steamroller of enlightenment overcame racism and almost all restrictions on the Jews were lifted. The revolution was completed in 1867, when the Jews were granted full equality.

1868 | The Triple thread

What does one do when one is told, one fine day, that he is free?
The ideas of Enlightenment and rationalism, which had spread through the Jewish communities in relatively short order, caused deep changes in them. While in the pre-modern era the community was the legal, political and social framework that shaped the life of the Jew, after emancipation it was left with only religious authority.
The “Problem of the Jews,” as Achad Ha'am (Asher Ginzberg) called it, was paradoxically expressed in their successful integration into European life. For now the Jewish community had to decide the greatest question of all: What shall the unique Jewish identity consist of, now that there was no ghetto? How to act when cultural and corporeal walls no longer separate Jew from Gentile?
In 1868 these questions were laid before the Jewish congress organized by the community of Pest (soon to become part of Budapest), one of the largest and most important communities in Hungary. Three major schools of thought faced off with each other at this congress: The Orthodox, who believed in religious conservatism, seclusion, and a minimum of religious reforms; the Neologists (reformists), who called to accept the social changes willingly, use the Hungarian language in sermons and open the synagogues to the winds of change blowing through the world; and the “Status Quo” group, which favored maintaining the existing arrangements.
The Neologists won the majority of the votes at the congress, representing the desire of most Hungarian Jews to integrate into general society. The other schools of thought refused to accept the result, and organized in separate communities. A Jew visiting a Hungarian city in those days could have prayed Shacharit at the Neologist temple, Mincha at an Orthodox shul, and Arvit at a synagogue affiliated with the “Status-Quo” group. Such sharp polarization among the members of a Jewish community was a phenomenon unique to Hungary, and scholars believe that the deep rift left such a lasting impression on the community that its impact continued to be felt until the community was destroyed in WW2.

1882 | Same Solution, Opposite Reasons

Before a Hungarian Jew named Theodore (Binyamin Zeev) Herzl even began to think of the first draft for his book “The State of the Jews”, another Hungarian, Victor Istoczi, a Member of Parliament from a noble family, suggested the establishment a separate state for the Jews. Unlike Herzl, who developed the idea of the Jewish state out of concern for his people, Istoczi formulated the idea due to his fear of the Jews. In other words, they both thought of the idea for the same reason: Anti-Semitism.
Istoczi argued that Judaism is not just a religious community, but a social sect which shared blood, ancient tradition, common interests as well as religion turn into a tight-knit, closed unit. To him, the Jews were nothing but clever parasites planning to take over Hungary, and the internal division among them was but a nefarious plot: The task of the Orthodox was to preserve Judaism and its religious lifestyle, whereas the Neologists were to cunningly make their way into the front lines of Hungarian politics.
Istoczi's words found receptive ears and laid the foundation for the dual experience of the Jews of Hungary: On one hand, escalating anti-Semitism that peaked in the affair of “the girl from Tisza Eszlar”, a famous blood libel that took place in 1882, in which a shamash (synagogue attendant) and a Jewish shochet (ritual slaughterer) were accused of murdering a girl (a charge of which they were acquitted at trial and on appeal as well); on the other hand, an accelerated increase in the number of Jews who moved to the cities and integrated into the general fabric of life. The lesson was unmistakable: Hungarian society was unwilling to accept the Jews as they were. In order to integrate into it, they must renounce their social and religious uniqueness and adapt to the ways and customs of the non-Jewish population.

1886 | The Hungarian-Jewish International

One of the common responses to the non-acceptance of Jews in Hungarian society was that of assimilation. But in accordance with the famous observation by French philosopher Sartre, that “A Jew is one recognized as a Jew,” the fact that they had assimilated among the Hungarians didn't really help the Jews. The prevalent view was that the Jew was a foreign race in Europe and even if he really wanted, he could not become one with the Slavic races. “Judaism is a malignant infection everywhere,” a respectable Catholic journal declared in those days, “and it ruins the mores most particularly in the world of trade, degrades morality and turns corruption into a general fashion.”
One of the solutions for the catch-22 in which the Jews found themselves was to be found in a new ideology that began to spread in Europe at the end of the 19th century: Socialism.
Socialist thought stated that national and religious categories are a capitalist invention designed to obfuscate the gap between the classes. The Jews, who paid a heavy price for their ethnic identity, joined the movement in droves.
One of the main socialists in Hungary was Bela Kun, who was born in Transylvania in 1886. His father was a converted Jew and his mother a protestant. Kun belonged to a circle of well-known Jewish artists and writers, among whom were literary critic Gyorgi Lukacs, novelist Lajos Biro and others – all adherents of the communist ideology and key officials of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. In 1919 Kun was appointed Foreign Minister in the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic that was established after WW1.

1903 | Got a Shekel?

It is ironic that of all people, the visionary of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was born in a country where the majority of Jews firmly rejected the Zionist idea, as most Hungarian Jews indeed did. The Orthodox community saw Zionism as a false messiah movement that could hasten the end of days, whereas the Neologist community supported assimilation and defined its members as “Hungarians of Mosaic Faith”, which is to say, Hungarian patriots like any other, who just happen to be Jews.
And yet, seven Hungarian Jews, arriving in Basel as self-appointed delegates, took part in the first Zionist Congress. The most notable among them were Janos Ronai, who in 1897 founded the first Zionist association in Hungary, and Shmuel Bettleheim, who founded the Zionist Organization of Hungary along with Ronai in 1903.
Over the years the Zionist movement grew stronger in Hungary. Indication of this can be found in the number of those who purchased the Eretz Israel Shekel, which rose from 500 to 1,200 people. (The Shekel was the annual dues collected by the Zionist Organization and which bestowed upon the purchaser the right to vote and be elected at Zionist congresses.) “The cream of the crop,” in the words of Dr. Hajim Weissburg, one of the founders, were the members of the Makkabea Club in 1903. The aim of the founders of the Makkabea Club was to provide the members of the Zionist Organization with Jewish and Zionist cultural values and to arouse Jewish awareness, self-respect and national pride among the Jews. Their activities followed those of student organizations and was characterized by communal meals, symbols, slogans, and even dueling when Jewish pride so required.

1910 | The “Big Bang” of Hungarian Jews

At the end of the 19th century, an era when Enlightenment and modernization reached a peak in western and central Europe, an enormous amount of intellect, ability and talent, that had been cooped up for hundreds of years in the yeshivas and batei midrash, exploded into the Hungarian atmosphere.
Hungarian Jews recorded immense achievements in all fields: From the great inventors Laszlo Biro and David Gestetner, through talented mathematicians such as Mano Beck and Miklos Schweitzer, through Nobel-winning chemists George Olah and Michael Polanyi.
More than any other field, Jews stood out in the world of journalism. Among the most influential media personalities in Hungary a special mention should be made of the writer Adolf Agai, who edited the popular satirical Borsszem Janko and publisher Sandor Braun, who invented new color printing formats, including the daily “Az Est”. Strong Jewish roots can also be found in the famous “press halls” of Budapest, which for the first time concentrated the entire journalism production chain - writing, editing, proofreading, printing, marketing and distribution – under one roof.
The field of literature and the humanities was another in which the Jews gained much success. One of these for example was the poet Jozsef Kis, who founded “A-Het”, a periodical which served as a home for Jewish poets and writers, including short story master Tomas Kobor. Upon the decline of A-Het it was replaced by the leading literary periodical “Nyugat”, which featured the works of Hungarian prose pioneer Sandor Brody and novelist and playwright Dezső Szomory Hungarian Jews and Hungarians of Jewish descent made a crucial contribution to the local theater and film as well, including actor Bernard Schwartz, better known as Hollywood star Tony Curtis, who was born in New York to Hungarian parents, and Casablanca director Mihaly Kertesz, who changed his named to Michael Curtiz when he immigrated to America.
Even in sports, considered a quintessentially “non-Jewish” activity, Jews stood out, winning almost 33% of all Olympic medals awarded to Hungarian athletes in the early 20th century.

1920 | The Jewish Laws

After WW1 Hungary lost some two thirds of its territory. Many Jewish Hungarians found themselves overnight living under the sovereignty of new states: Romania, Yugoslavia, Austria and others.
During the Great War (1914-1918) approximately 10,000 Jewish Hungarian soldiers fell in the killing fields, but the patriotism they showed didn't stop the anti-Semitic winds blowing through the streets of Hungary, intensified by the many Jewish refugees streaming from Galicia in search of shelter in the Hungarian lands.
Like many countries attempting to forge a national identity between the two world wars, Hungary too tried to establish a communist regime, but it lasted only 133 days, followed by the regime of Miklos Horthy, a conservative national war hero with anti-Semitic tendencies. The suppression of the communist regime was accompanied by pogroms against the “cosmopolitan” Jews, in which the “white terror” fascist gangs murdered some 3.000 Jews.
During the 1920's Hungary was home to a sort of “soft anti-Semitism”. On one hand, discriminatory quotas on Jewish enrollment in universities, which stood at only 5%. On the other – the Jews were awarded a certain representation in the Hungarian parliament.
At the end of the 1930s the Jews of Hungary, numbering some 450,000, lived under an anti-Jewish assault. It was a slippery slope: In 1938 parliament passed the first “Jewish Law”, which restricted their freedom of occupation in many fields and broadened the definition of “Jew” to those who had converted after 1919. A year later the Hungarian parliament passed “The Second Jewish Law” which expanded the definition of “Jew” even further, to include another 100,000 people who had converted before 1919, as well as their children.
These moves were the barbaric constitutional foundation for the annihilation of the Jews of Hungary during WW2.

1944 | Goods For Blood

The Jewish community of Hungary had the dubious honor of being among the few which the Nazi extermination machine left for the end of the war; but when it did happen, the annihilation was deadly, methodical and quick, even for the Nazis.
Unlike the Jews of Poland, many of whom believed the lies of the Nazi propaganda machine, the prevalent view among scholars is that the Jews of Hungary were indeed aware of the horrible atrocities of the Nazis, but until the last moment could not believe that such barbarity could take place in a civilized country like Hungary.
When the Nazis conquered Hungary, in March 1944, there were some 750,000 Jews living in it, of whom about 300,000 were refugees and displaced persons from the east. Over the course of two months about half a million Jews wearing yellow stars were concentrated in ghettos established by the Nazis in every Hungarian city, and in May 1944 they began to be transported en masse to Auschwitz. It is estimated that within a few weeks approximately 450,000 of Hungary's Jews were murdered in this fashion.
In October 1944 the Nazis deposed the Hungarian Regent Horthy and appointed anti-Semitic fascist Ferenc Szalasi, head of the Iron Cross Party, as Prime Minister. As soon as Szalasi took office, the authorities no longer protected the Jews of Budapest. Death ran wild in the streets of the city, and the Danube turned red with the blood the elderly, women and children who were shot in the back and dumped in the river.
One of the most controversial episodes in the Holocaust of Hungary's Jews has to do with Israel Kastner, Deputy Head of the Zionist Organization in the country and one of the founders of the “Aid and Rescue Committee of Budapest”. Kastner saved some 1,700 Jews thanks to a deal he signed with Adolf Eichmann, which can be summed up in three terrible words: “Goods for blood”.
In the 1950s the “Kastner Affair” exploded in Israel after the latter was accused by District Court Judge Binyamin Halevy of “selling his soul to the devil”. Three years later the Supreme court cleared Kastner's name, but he didn't live to see it: A few months earlier, on March 4th, 1957, Kastner was gunned down by three Jewish assassins in Tel Aviv.

2001 | From the establishment of Israel until today

After the Holocaust approximately 145,000 Jews remained in Hungary. During these years the Zionist movement operated at full steam, and many of Hungary's Jews moved to Israel. Among the most prominent were journalist-cum-Justice Minister Yosef (“Tommy”) Lapid, satirical writer Ephraim Kishon and Bank of Israel Governor Moshe Zanbar. The Jews remaining in Hungary mostly turned their backs on Jewish tradition, whether due to the trauma of the Holocaust or the influence of the atheist communist regime. In the late 1940s the Communist Party came to power in Hungary. Jewish educational institutions were closed down, and all Zionist activity was banned. Jews who were of a clear communist bent found key positions in the party. One of these was the dictator Matyas Rakosi, who ruled the country from 1949 to 1956.
During the Communist era the Jewish community in Budapest was under the jurisdiction of the Department of Religious Affairs at the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior. Since 1968 each of the city's 18 districts had at least one synagogue. The one on Dohany Street is considered the largest synagogue in Europe. The disintegration of the Communist regime and the democratic reforms in Hungary rejuvenated the Jewish community. About 20 new synagogues opened, as well as community and social institutions. But anti-Semitism has not abated in Hungary, and has reached new heights in the second decade of the 21st century, with the nationalist Jobbik party receiving approximately 16.5% of the vote in 2010, and over 20% in 2014. Among the anti-Semitic incidents recorded was the throwing of a dead pig on the statue of Raoul Wallenberg, famous for saving Jews during the Holocaust, and naming a square after Albert Wass, a notorious anti-Semite accused of murdering Jewish women in Transylvania.
As of the early 21st century the Jewish community of Budapest numbered approximately 80,000 people – the largest Jewish community in Central Europe, operating 23 synagogues and places of worship, two colleges, three elementary schools, three kindergartens, a hospital, two nursing homes and several cemeteries.

Nyírcsaholy

A village in the Szatmar district, north east Hungary.

Early in the 19th century, the local estate owner encouraged Jews to settle in the village. They were poor but industrious and soon developed commerce and trades. There were also a few land owners.

The community was organized in 1832 by a family named Hartmann which owned an estate. A synagogue was built in 1849 - it was later renovated and enlarged. In the same year the hevra kadisha was established and a plot of land obtained for a cemetery. A heder and Talmud torah were also opened that year. Because of differences between Haredim and Maskilim (enlightened) at the Jewish Congress in 1868, the community affiliated with the Orthodox stream, which refused to accept the decisions of Congress. Later a school was established.

In World War I eleven Jews served in the armed forces; two were killed in action.

After the war, soldiers returning from the front stirred up agitation against the Jews, many of whose homes were looted and many of whom were cruelly beaten up. Despite this, the village was hardly affected by the White Terror (1919-1921) possibly because at that time it was under Romanian rule. In the thirties the Zionist movement was very active. Many of the youth went on hachshara in preparation for going on Aliyah. In 1936 four of them emigrated to Israel.

In 1930 the community numbered 133.

The Holcaust Period

In 1938, with the publication of discriminatory laws, which aimed at limiting Jewish participation in the eoconomic and cultural fields, the economic situation of the Jews deteriorated. Lands and farms were expropriated. The authorities examined the identity papers of the Jews from time to time, so that those not in possession of valid documents could be expelled. Jewish youth in the pre-military Levente organization were ordered to wear a yellow stripe on a sleeve.

In 1941, 32 men were taken for forced labor. Some were sent to the Ukrainian fronts where they were employed in the mine-fields; many perished. Others died in the Mauthausen and Gunskurchen concentration camps.

In March 1944, after the German occupation, the local youth unleashed violence against the Jews and robbed them. Posters appeared on the streets warning Christians not to help the Jews. On April 16 a curfew was imposed on the Jews, and a week later they were loaded onto carts, and, guarded by the gendarmerie, transferred to the ghetto in Mateszalka. On May 30 they were transported to Auschwitz.

After the war 23 survivors returned from Auschwitz and labor camps. They cleaned up the synagogue and cemetery which had been desecrated, and renewed communal life. In 1948 a memorial was erected to the martyrs. However, they slowly began to leave Nyircsaholy and in 1952 only 2 families remained.

Tyukod

A village in the Szatmar district, north east Hungary.

Jews settled in the place in the second half of the 18th century. The majority were shopkeepers and peddlers. Relations with the Christians were always good and there were never anti-semitic outbreaks. The community was affiliated with the orthodox stream. There were a hevra kadisha (burial society) and a synagogue, the latter built in the second half of the 19th century.

In 1930 there were 98 Jewish inhabitants.

The Holocaust Period

Before the outbreak of World War II (September 1, 1939), the situation of the Jews of pro-German Hungary already deteriorated. After the publication of the discriminatory laws in 1938, which aimed at limiting Jewish participation in the economic and cultural fields, Jewish owned farms were immediately expropriated, excluding those whose owners had outstanding records in World War I the local authorities did not fully implement these laws and the business licenses of the merchants were not cancelled. Only the orders concerning forced labor were carried out.

16 Jews were conscripted for forced labor, work on fortifications and in services together with other Hungarian citizens whom the authorities would not allow to join the armed forces. In the second half of 1941 they were sent to the Ukraine front, where the Hungarians fought alongside the Germans, and most of them perished.

In March 1944, after the German occupation, the situation deteriorated. At the end of April, all the Jews were assembled in the synagogue. On the following day they were sent by cart to the Mateszalka ghetto. For the first time did the Jews feel the calamity; fear of death, hunger and beatings by their guards. At the end of May they were transported to Auschwitz.

After the war, 11 survivors returned from forced labor and Auschwitz. They found the synagogue and cemetery undamaged, thanks to their neighbors who guarded them. Also two torah scrolls were saved. Despite this the returnees could not adjust to the conditions. Their stores were not returned to them and their farms were nationalized. The communist authorities converted the synagogue into a museum.

Most Jews left and in 1964 there was only one inter-married family that stayed.