The conference, opened by Ambassador Arkady Rzegocki, was naturally concerned with historical studies, but it provided an illuminating background to the current troubling situation. For 20 years, these public events have been held annually in cooperation with the Embassy and with the Polish Cultural Institute in London. The Embassy and the Institute are both proud of the fact that they are happy for discussion to range freely over difficult subjects, not excluding the question of complicity in the Holocaust.
This article covers the first part of the one-day event, which provided a fascinating picture of two once great Jewish communities and of how their contrasting histories, and those of the two host countries, led to different experiences of the Shoah. (A second article, in The Jerusalem Report of May 1, will cover the war and the postwar period, with an emphasis on how the Holocaust has been commemorated and explained in the two countries.) A lighter note was introduced by Mary Gluck of Brown University and Beth Holmgren of Duke, who spoke on the Jews in cabaret and other popular entertainment in, respectively, prewar Budapest and Warsaw. And the event was also much enriched by the presence of a number of survivors who were able to share their own stories, complementing and even correcting some research findings. In an opening discussion of the historical background, Professor Polonsky and his co-editors were joined by Victor Karady of the Central European University, Budapest, who traced the differing developments of antisemitism.
Deep roots
The arrival of Jews in both Poland and Hungary can be traced back at least a thousand years. Indeed, there was a Jewish presence in what is now Hungary during the years of the Roman Empire. There were certainly settled communities in both countries dating back to the Middle Ages, when they were welcomed by the rulers with a view to developing their feudal economies. The use of money was growing and one of the first roles played by Jews, many of whom had skills in metallurgy, was in the minting of coins.
In addition, kings increasingly came to rely on the taxes that Jews could be persuaded to raise. At the same time, the great land-owning magnates needed managers to run their estates. Jews learned the skills required and were to dominate this field. In time, Jews came to form, in effect, a ‘middle class’ between the nobles and their peasant workers.
Their role in the economy and position in society, seen as being close to the ruling class, as well as their adherence to their own religion, placed a distance between the Jews and the general population in these devoutly Christian lands. Decrees were issued by the medieval church that required them to live apart and even to wear distinctive clothing or badges. Following a wave of expulsions from Western European countries, starting in England in 1290, and the Crusades, which fell murderously on the Rhineland communities, more and more Jews moved to the underdeveloped East. Over the centuries the Jews prospered and, despite frequent persecution, became established as an essential, if often resented, element in their new lands.
Sixteenth-century Poland came to be seen as ‘a paradise for Jews’ and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, created in 1572, was the only country in Europe where Jews could farm their own land. But disaster struck in 1648 when a Cossack uprising under Bogdan Chmielnicki devastated the country. Although this was directed at the Polish Catholic nobility, perhaps as many as 20,000 Jews were killed. There were further large numbers of victims when the now weakened Commonwealth was invaded by Sweden and a period of appalling warfare and destruction followed. Recovery took a long time, but eventually a stronger community emerged. By 1764 there were some 750,000 Jews in the Commonwealth, perhaps two-thirds of the world total.
Conditions in Hungary were also precarious. There were repeated expulsions, often soon followed by readmissions, massacres, persecutions, forced conversions and blood libels. In fact, Jews often fared better in lands lost in battle to the Muslim Ottomans. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that conditions improved significantly, though never without numerous restrictions.
Momentous changes
In both realms, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Habsburg Empire, Jews now experienced momentous changes. Between 1772 and 1795, in three partitions, Habsburg Austria, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire progressively divided up the now weakened Commonwealth. Poland and Lithuania ceased to be sovereign nations. With the territories went their populations, including the Jews, who now found themselves subject to quite different regimes. At around the same time, the accession of Joseph II to the Hungarian throne immediately started to alleviate the condition of its Jewish population. In 1783 a single decree wiped out centuries of oppressive legislation and Jews were free to settle almost anywhere in the country.
The Polish community had maintained a high level of autonomy. Most Jews lived in separate self-ruled settlements, shtetls, where they typically spoke Yiddish, dressed differently, and, of course, had their own religion and customs. Now they came under pressure to adopt the culture of the lands they found themselves in, including languages and education, if they were to aspire to acceptance by the regimes, and more Jews moved into larger towns. There was a vast difference between the relatively progressive and liberal Prussian and Hungarian kingdoms and the repressive, backward and intolerant world of Tzarist Russia. Here they were confined to the Pale of Settlement, broadly Lithuania, Moldova and Belarus, parts of Ukraine, Latvia and western Russia, as well as eastern Poland. Jews integrated more successfully with some cultures than others, with repercussions when, over a century later, Poland once more emerged as a proud independent nation.
Meanwhile, the Jews of Hungary soon started to take full advantage of their new freedoms. While hostility to Jews never abated, with the support of the crown, enlightened members of the aristocracy and even some churches, they gradually achieved protection and official acceptance. In time, they became increasingly assimilated, adopting the Hungarian language and customs, and identifying strongly with national aspirations.
The turbulent nineteenth century
The nineteenth century brought contrasting developments for the Jews of Poland and Hungary. Most Polish Jews now lived in the Russian-ruled Pale, still following a traditional life in shtetls. The Tzarist authorities made some attempts to integrate them but relations with the state were always strained, especially by impositions such as disproportionate terms of military service. At the same time, their self-governing kahals were gradually lapsing into backwardness and were eventually abolished in 1844. Enlightened new ideas, for progressive education, socialist movements like the Bund, Zionism and Communism, which spread among the literate young Jews, were not welcomed by the autocratic and antisemitic regime. Starting in 1871, hundreds of pogroms, tolerated if not actually encouraged or even instigated by the authorities, claimed countless lives as well as allowing widespread rape and wanton destruction. More and more Jews came to see there would never be a future for them in the Russian Empire. Between 1880 and 1914 over two million migrated to the United States, some 200,000 to Britain and 60,000 to Palestine.
The same period saw a much lower level of Jewish migration from Hungary, with fewer than 180,000 estimated to have left for America among a total of over two million Hungarians. As part of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire, Jews were a protected and successful minority among many others. There was a relatively high level of conversion to Christianity, but most Jews remained in the faith, about half of them leaving the Orthodox synagogue for the Neolog reform movement, which was strongest in the capital, Budapest, while some towns hosted a strong Hasidic presence. Even if they did not renounce their religion, by adopting Magyarization Jews were welcomed as true Hungarian patriots. There were even attempts to establish a historic connection between the Magyars, who invaded and settled on the Great Hungarian Plain in the ninth century, and the Khazars, another Central Asian people, whose king converted them to Judaism at around that time as a political expedient. As they became successful in business, industry and the professions, many Jews, perhaps as many as three hundred families, not all of whom had converted, entered the lower ranks of the nobility.
The First World War and its aftermath
As a result of the partitions, millions of Poles, including Jews, found themselves fighting on different sides in the First World War. Although it no longer existed as a country, the territory of Poland formed much of the Eastern Front and suffered huge losses of life and property. Both sides offered the Poles pledges of territorial concessions and autonomy in exchange for their loyalty. Polish sympathy lay more with Slavic Russia, where the 1905 revolution had brought some liberalization, while the Germanization of Poles within Prussia’s borders and the suppression of Polish education meant that the German armies were met with hostility. To foster Polish support, in 1916 the Central Powers, Germany and Austria, declared that a new Kingdom of Poland would be created – though a large part of its western lands would be annexed and cleared of Poles and Jews, to be replaced by German colonists. Nevertheless, Jews sometimes suffered from association with Germany, the Yiddish language adding to suspicions of disloyalty.
The 1917 revolution led to the withdrawal of Russia from hostilities and its cession of all formerly Polish lands to the Central Powers in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. When the United States, under President Woodrow Wilson, led a crusade to spread democracy and liberate the Poles, they declared support for the Allies. After the defeat of the Central Powers, Józef Piłsudski, a popular hero, became Chief of State in the new independent Poland. In favoring a multiethnic Poland and opposing antisemitism, Piłsudski was seen as a friend of the Jewish people, who supported him politically. The years between his coming to power in 1926 and his death in 1935 probably represented a high point in optimism regarding Poland’s acceptance of its Jewish minority. In the years leading up to the Second World War antisemitism again grew in strength. There were boycotts and looting of Jewish businesses, while the successful move of many young Jews into the liberal professions was met by a backlash of restrictions and exclusions.
Some 320,000 Jews fought in the Austro-Hungarian army alongside Germany in the First World War and 12,000 lost their lives. The first postwar government, liberal and democratic, was cut short by a ruthless communist revolution of which most of the leaders, the best known being Béla Kun, were of Jewish ancestry. The Romanian army soon crushed the revolution, leaving the way clear for reactionary forces under a former Austro-Hungarian admiral, Miklós Horthy. The Treaty of Trianon, which in 1920 formally ended the war between most of the Allies and the Kingdom of Hungary, established it as an independent state, but within new borders. These deprived the country of about two-thirds of its population and of its territory, which included much of the country’s natural resources. The Jews, forming a relatively larger minority in the correspondingly reduced population, five percent overall and as much as 23 percent in Budapest, soon found themselves in conflict with the near-majority Magyars.
The prominent position of Jews in business and industry, in the professions and in the world of entertainment and the arts, was met by a growth of antisemitic movements. In 1920, 46 percent of Hungary’s physicians and a similar proportion of lawyers were Jewish, as were 41 percent of veterinarians, 21 percent of pharmacists, 34 percent of journalists, 24 percent of musicians, 23 percent of actors, 17 percent of artists. In addition, so were 40 percent of factory owners and a fifth of large landowners.
Still in the hope of regaining the lost territories, Horthy, now ruling as regent, aligned Hungary with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The extreme fascist Arrow Cross Party was founded in 1935. Then, starting in 1938, Horthy passed a series of Nuremberg-style laws to restrict the numbers of Jews in business, the professions and the press. A second law, in 1939, now defining Jews racially, restricted numbers to the six percent of their proportion in the population and forbade completely their employment in government at any level. A quarter of a million Jews lost their livelihoods – and their vote.
Popular culture in the capitals
By the latter part of the nineteenth century Jews had become more urbanized, comprising a large percentage of the population in many major towns. Enthusiastically patriotic in both Poland and Hungary, proud of their traditions but also espousing modern ideas, always aware of their tolerated position, they were natural sceptical observers of the rapidly changing world. Jews were foremost among the pioneers of new forms of popular entertainment, which often had a satirical, anti-establishment side.
In Warsaw, where half the middle class were Jews, the period after the First World War saw the arrival of Kabaret Literacki, which attracted a loyal following of Poles as well as Jews. Budapest, with its comparably Jewish character, had long enjoyed the sharp wit of Borsszem Jankó (‘Johnny Peppercorn’), a magazine that poked affectionate fun at society. Later came its famous music halls, such as the Blaue Katze, which was patronized by the aristocracy and nobility as well as the Jews who lived around it.
Both countries had a lively film industry, though Poland’s divisions prevented a full flowering. Almost all Hungary’s successful films were produced and directed by Jews. Horthy sought to subject filmmaking to the ‘proportionality’ principle, but there were simply not enough non-Jewish skilled professionals. Compromises were made and many films were credited to Christian ‘fronts.’ Eventually, in 1944, with the fascist regime encouraging attacks on Jews in the street, the industry collapsed. Many Jewish filmmakers were killed, some managed to escape. Others had left before them. After making over sixty popular films in Hungary and other European countries, Mihály Kertész (born Manó Kaminer) arrived in America in 1926 and, as Michael Curtiz, made dozens more, including perhaps Hollywood’s finest anti-Nazi film, the 1942 “Casablanca.” The world he left behind now faced the greatest catastrophe in its history.■