“We are looking with confidence into the unknown future”: Orthodox Jews and the Border Provinces in Postwar Hungary

• In Event: Violence, Virtue, and VATERLAND: Hungarian Jewish Responses to the Long Great War

Abstract

In 1920, when Hungary was dealing with the aftermath of a terrible world war and the shockwaves of two revolutions, what many had dreaded became a reality: the territorial dismemberment of the Old Hungary was a fact. Trianon had a lasting impact, and while in other parts of postwar Europe there was room for nostalgic imperial reflections, in Hungary the situation was so extreme that the immediate present demanded all physical and mental effort in order to stay afloat. The Jews of Hungary, who had previously belonged, relatively comfortably, to dominant Magyar society, now found themselves a small minority. With anti-Jewish violence raging in all corners of the newly truncated nation, Hungarian Jews were confronted with their sudden dislocation on the national level, and, as a result, were forced to adopt new strategies of national belonging.

This paper concentrates on Jewish spokespeople and laypersons in the Hungarian provinces and the Orthodox communities. As a result of the historical chasm between the Neolog (Reform) and the Orthodox communities, both during and after the war the experiences of Jews in the provinces existed in a prolonged tension, at times even a disconnect, with those of Jews in Budapest. Furthermore, as a result of the territorial revisions, many villages in the provinces suddenly had to reinvent themselves as border towns, and were cut off from important trade regions. Highlighting these unexplored regions of Jewish experience, the predicaments of Jewish soldiers, merchants, war widows, and invalids in the provinces are analysed in dialogue with the more formal voices of local community spokespeople; who, in turn, were debating the fate of Hungarian Jewry on a national level both with their colleagues in Budapest and with those from abroad, such as the representatives of the JDC. The question is posed whether narratives of violence in the Hungarian provinces diverged from those of their urban brethren at the most immediate level, or whether different narratives emerged only at a later stage, when internal politics and diverging viewpoints of the Jewish past present and future came into play.

author

• Ilse Josepha Lazaroms, Center for Jewish History