[C. 5.18.]
Czechoslovakia and Hungary [1933-1938]
[JDC in Subcarpathian Russia]
Another area in which JDC
spent sizable sums of money and considerable energy was Subcarpathian
Russia (or PKR, in Czech initials), the easternmost tip of
Czechoslovakia. A mostly Orthodox Jewish community lived there,
subsisting on petty trade, agriculture, and forestry. There was a
famous Hebrew secondary (p.218)
school at Munkács (Mukachevo) and a number of yeshivoth. In 1933 JDC
started a feeding program for children.
(End note 88: JDC report for 1933)
Occasionally small sums were granted to vocational establishments or
small Jewish workshop cooperatives, mainly in the automobile repair and
textile branches. Most of this work was done in conjunction with the
Jewish Social Institute in Prague and a parallel organization in
Bratislava.
About 15,000 Jews from
Czechoslovakia succeeded in reaching Palestine
between the autumn of 1938 and the end of 1939, the overwhelming
majority by means of "illegal" immigration.
(from: Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971): Zionism, Vol. 16, col. 1113)
[JDC in Hungary]
In neighboring Hungary, JDC did not operate at all in the 1930s though
it followed developments there with increasing anxiety. The Jewish
population in Hungary was actually declining, as a result of numerous
conversions among the upper strata of Jewish society and a decline in
the birthrate. There were 444,500 Jews in Hungary in 1930. With the
annexations of parts of Slovakia and PKR in late 1938 and in March
1939 [and by the accession of a part of Transilvania in 1940] the
Jewish population grew to 725,000 by 1941.
In Hungary proper (as contrasted with PKR), and especially in Budapest,
Jews tended to be a prosperous middle-class community. In early 1939 it
was estimated that 43 % of Hungarian commerce was handled by Jews; 49.2
% of the lawyers and 37.7 % of the doctors were Jewish. Industry, too,
was partly in the hands of Jews.
(End note 89: R46, reports for January 1939. The population statistics
are taken from Erno Laszlo: Hungary's Jewry: A Demographic Overview,
1918-1945; In:
Hungarian Jewish
Studies, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York, 1969), 2:157-58)
[Horthy government]
Yet Jews in Hungary were still considered to be strangers, despite the
fact that they had lived in the country for many centuries and despite
their own keen desire to be regarded as Hungarians. The regime of the
archconservative regent, Admira Horthy, wavered between personal
friendship for Jewish elements in the Hungarian aristocracy and
anti-Semitism.
[May 1938: Percentage law for
businesses - Jews are considered as outlawed]
In May 1938, under the influence of Nazism, Hungarian anti-Semitism won
its first great victory in a bill that decreed that by June 1943 not
more than 20 % of people working in any establishment could be Jews. As
a result, a large number of Jews were thrown out of their professions.
Hungary's politicians followed the German example closely in other ways
too. In late 1938, after the Sudeten crisis in the autumn of that year,
the Hungarian government published the text of a second bill, which was
finally passed in March 1939. The preamble (p.219)
to that law stated quite explicitly that the Hungarians were outlawing
Jews as part of a general movement: "Before the (1938) law was
promulgated, only one of the neighboring states, Germany, had taken
energetic measures to drive the Jews out of the country. Since that
time, however, many other states in Europe have followed this example.
...
The Jewish question is an international problem like many other
questions of international interest, such as world traffic, world
economy, hygiene, and instruction." An international solution - that
is, mass emigration and expulsion by international consent - was
consequently desired.
[Supplement: No Haavarah agreement
for East European Jews]
For German Jews there is the Haavarah agreement. But there is no
Haavarah agreement for East European Jews. This is the point that the
Yiddish Jews should be exterminated, the German Jews not. It can only
be assumed that Zionists are steering this process].
[1939: Hungary: More
discrimination laws: Citizenship questions - profession discriminations]
The 1939 bill itself provided for the invalidation of the citizenship
of certain classes of Jews who had obtained their Hungarian nationality
after 1914; in effect, it revoked the Jewish franchise by instituting a
separate Jewish poll in the national and municipal elections; and it
barred Jews from positions in the civil service, municipalities, and
public corporations, and from working as public notaries and
editors-in-chief. The number of Jews in the legal, medical, and
engineering professions was limited to 6 %. Publication of papers owned
by Jews was forbidden, and state contracts for Jewish enterprises were
withdrawn. Most serious of all was the provision that no trade
concessions or licenses could be granted to Jews unless the percentage
of Jewish license holders dropped to less than 6 %.
The definition of a Jew was clearly Nazi in origin: a Jew was a person
of Jewish faith, a Christian born of Jewish parentage, or the offspring
of a mixed marriage if the Jewish parent had not been baptized before
the marriage.
It was quite clear that very soon Hungarian Jewry would be calling for
active help from JDC.
