“The most tragic of all the European Jewries”: The JDC and Hungary’s White Terror, 1919–1922

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

Abstract

The Great War was a watershed moment in many respects including the growth and transformation of humanitarianism and international philanthropy efforts aimed at, among other things, “war relief” in the war-torn provinces of the Dual Monarchy. The Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), an organization founded in the wake of the declaration of war in 1914, committed itself to distributing relief funds and materials to Jewish victims of war, particularly in Russian and Polish lands. However, the humanitarian and political crises which were consequences of the war did not abate after the November, 1918 armistice as refugees continued to pour westward in response to the Russian revolution, pogroms against Jews erupted in Ukraine and Poland, and anti-Jewish persecution related to Hungary’s failed communist experiment raged. The financial capacity of the JDC to respond to these persistent crises, however, diminished as it became increasingly difficult to raise the monies needed to assist victims of a conflict which many people regarded as “finished.”

This paper homes in on the JDC’s response to the persecution of Jews during Hungary’s White Terror in this transitional period between war and peace. Using an intersectional perspective, it will analyze the JDC leadership’s descriptions of the violence against Jews committed by the Hungarian counter-revolutionary regime and militias, as well examine the responses the JDC leadership subsequently proposed and developed in reaction to the White Terror. It also explores the JDC leadership’s portrayal of the Hungarian Jewry in relation to Hungary’s recent past which played an important part in the development of their philanthropic and publicity efforts into the 1920s. In so doing, it reveals the troubled interaction of Hungarian Jews with those coming from “outside” to assist in relief efforts, which was shaped both by the needs of the Hungarian community, but also by anxieties among the JDC leadership about the fragility of Jewish life in Europe and the United States, even after seemingly remarkable economic and political prosperity.

author

• Emily R Gioielli, Central European University, Department of History