Nadene Goldfoot
Today, some of Abraham's Jewish descendants. They could be the Satmar (Yiddish: סאַטמאַר; Hebrew: סאטמר; Hungarian: Szatmár; Romanian: Satmar) is a Hasidic group originating from the city of Szatmárnémeti, Hungary (now Satu Mare, Romania), where it was founded in 1905 by Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum. Following World War II, it was re-established in New York, becoming one of the largest Hasidic movements in the world.
Abraham knew he needed to leave Ur. The people would destroy what he would want his children to be like. My grandfather also knew he had to leave Lithuania. He saw the writing on the wall. His future children would not grow up in Lithuania. By a stroke of luck, he left Lithuania just in time. I am so lucky to have been born in Oregon considering that 6 million Jews were killed in Europe from 1939 to 1945 and I am a remnant, a 3rd generation remnant in our particular family. It was our grandfather, Nathan Abraham Goldfus/foot of Lithuania, who left this old country for America. He, however, was not so lucky. Nathan Goldfoot died in 1912 in a horse and wagon accident in Portland, leaving his wife with 4 tiny children, a new born girl, a 1 year old girl, a 4 year old boy, my father, and a 6 year old boy.
As I watched THE LAST DAYS on Netflix about the Hungarian Jews, I was mortified. This was the actual bare facts of their last days were like, and it was worse than gruesome, but true. It's told by the survivors. They thought the Holocaust was happening in other countries, and would never come to Hungary. They didn't get out.
Hungarian Jews in 1944 was the last country that Hitler got around to killing all the Jews of the world. Jews had lived in Hungary since the 2nd century CE. By the 13th century, the decrees of the Lateran Council segregated Jews from their neighbors were put into effect and Jews had to wear a distinctive badge. When Bel IV (1235-1270( reigned, many Jews settled in Hungary as his property, like the slaves in America before the Civil War.
In 1349, Jews were then expelled as pressure from the Pope came to fruition. They even did it again in 1360. Jews from neighboring countries entered in 1364 when it was revoked. The badge was abolished, finally, during the rule of Joseph II (1780-90) This is when Jews had to adopt German surnames. They gave support for the 1848 revolution brought severe reprisals by the Austrians. In 1867, Jews were finally granted full civic and political rights. Did this bring on the divide now in their own religion between orthodox and liberal Judaism? Probably.
Jews played an important part of an economic and cultural role in Hungary before they became revolutionaries. A fast integration of Jews into the country's life received a brief setback with the rise of 19th century anti-Semitism, culminating in the Tiszaeszar Ritual Murder libel. On April 1, 1882, a 14 year old girl was missing. The parents spread the charge that the Jews killed the girl in order to use her blood at the approaching Passover (April 4). On May 4 her mother accused the Jews before the local judge of having murdered her daughter, and urged him to make an investigation. The Tiszaeszlár Affair was a blood libel which led to a trial that set off anti-semitic agitation in Austria-Hungary in 1882 and 1883. After the disappearance of a local girl, Eszter Solymosi, Jews were accused of ritually murdering and beheading her. After her body was found some time later in a river, she having apparently drowned, it was claimed that the body was not that of Eszter, but had been dressed in her clothes. A lengthy trial followed, eventually resulting in the acquittal of all the accused.
Béla Kun (born Béla Kohn; 20 February 1886 – 29 August 1938) communist regime found a lot of Jewish Hungarians who joined. This only gave fuel to the fire of future anti-Semitism. He was born Jewish but after becoming a communist, disliked all religions. Taken prisoner of war by the Russians in 1915, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1918 and the next year was returned to Hungary. He became commissar for foreign affairs and effective dictator of the sanguinary new regime. On its fall in August 1919, he returned to Russia where he conducted agitation in Germany and Hungary. In 1937, he was indicted and imprisoned for criticism of the Communist policy, and later was executed. He wrote about socialist problems.
After the advent of Nazism in Germany, the scope of anti-Jewish measures enacted by the government increased. By 1941, over 17% of Budapest's Jews had converted to the Catholic Church. By then perhaps some heard about what had happened to Jews in other countries. A sudden surge of conversions was their hope, like the Spanish Jews had had in 1492, main year of the Spanish Inquisition.
These measures applied to the 300,000 Jews in territories which then Hungarians annexed from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania during WWII. Starting in 1938, Hungary under Miklós Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures in emulation of Germany's Nürnberg Laws.
Hungary joined with the Axis powers (Germany, Austria, and Italy) and thus annexed parts of Slovakia, Transylvania, Yugoslavia and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia; most of these areas belonged to Hungary, before World War I. By mid-1941, the annexation increased “Great Hungary’s” Jewish population to 800,000.
A “Third Jewish Law” was passed prohibiting intermarriage and changing the definition of Jew to a racial definition. Many Christians thus became “Jews” and the estimated number of “Jews” may have actually been 850,000 in mid-1941.
The first massacre of Hungarian Jews took place in July 1941 when 20,000 Hungarian Jews were expelled from the Galicia region, in Kamentes-Podolski, where the SS and Hungarian troops killed them in the autumn of 1941. Another massacre of 1,000 Jews took place in January 1942, in Bacska region. A third set of Jews, about 50,000, died on the battlefield against the Soviets.
Also in 1942, Hungary’s Prime Minister, Miklos Kallay, ordered that Jewish property be expropriated and he restricted the economic and cultural life of Jews. He proposed a “final solution of the Jewish question,” calling for the resettlement of 800,000 Jews. The Arrow Cross party in Hungary was also responsible for anti-Jewish rhetoric, as well as for persecution.
By 1943, Jews were no longer involved in Hungary’s public and cultural life; however, the Kallay government began holding secret talks with the allies and toned down its anti-Jewish rhetoric.
Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944 because Kallay did not deport the Jews, which was seen as cooperation with the allies. By the time of the German occupation, 63,000 Hungarian Jews had been killed.
In April 1944, ordered the removal of 400,000 Jews from the provincial towns, cities and villages around Hungary to . Deportation to began in May 1944. All communities besides those in Budapest were put in ghettos or . In June, the first group of deportees (about 7,000 of the city’s 12,000 Jews) from Debrecen were sent to Austria and about one-half of these survived the war. Most of the other Jews were deported to .
About 2,000-2,500 Jews were able to escape to Romania during the ghettoization period. Others escaped to Budapest. Relief efforts were sponsored by the , who helped Jews with fake passports, food, clothing and places to hide. The was actively involved in trying to save Hungarian Jewry. Two famous paratroopers that attempted to save lives included (1921-1944) and Perez Goldstein. She was one of 37 Jewish SOE recruits from Mandate Palestine parachuted by the British into Yugoslavia during the Second World War to assist anti-Nazi forces and ultimately in the rescue of Hungarian Jews about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz. Szenes/Senesh was arrested at the Hungarian border, then imprisoned and tortured, but refused to reveal details of her mission. She was eventually tried and executed by firing squad. She is regarded as a national heroine in Israel, where her poetry is widely known and the headquarters of the Zionist youth movements Israel Hatzeira, a kibbutz and several streets are named after her.
Another 1,658 Jews were bought and were delivered to Switzerland for $1,000 a person. The fate of the Hungarian Jews was published in the Swiss press and in other neutral countries, leading to a suspension of deportation ordered by . Many Hungarian Jews were placed in the protection of neutral states, Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal.
Two well-known individuals involved in saving Hungary’s Jews were Charles Lutz, a Swiss diplomat in Hungary, and , secretary of the Swedish Legation in .
The deportation process of Budapest’s Jews began in October 1944. The majority of the Budapest Jews were sent to a central ghetto, while some managed to live in “protected ghettos” in quarters protected by various neural states.
Death marches to Austria were ordered for the Budapest Jews and it is estimated that about 98,000 Jews from Budapest lost their lives in these marches by January 1945. 
At the end of the war, 69,000 Jews remained in Budapest’s central ghetto and 25,000 remained in the “protected ghetto.” Approximately 25,000 Jews came out of hiding in , a few thousand lived in Red Cross children’s homes and others returned from labor camps, from the Soviet Union and from other regions. Of the original 825,000 Jews before the war, 260,000 Hungarian Jews survived and 565,000 perished. About 4,000 Jews from Debrecen survived the war. The other survivors were mainly from ; most of the Jews from the small towns were murdered.
Of the 14.5 million people living in Hungary, the majority of the 825,000 Jews were law-abiding and loyal Hungarians, and proud of it. They were well assimilated, and many saw themselves as Hungarians of Israelite confession. Despite their increasing awareness of the eradication of European Jewry, they felt little sense of danger, as they trusted in the law and in Regent Miklós Horthy. Most of them were wiped out on the eve of the allied victory against Hitler. It was during these months that the long hidden secrets of the industrial genocide became known to the leaders of the great powers, to the western public and also to the Hungarian government and Jewish leaders.Following the German occupation of Hungary on 19 March 1944, Jews from the provinces were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp; between May and July that year, 437,000 Jews were sent there from Hungary, most of them gassed on arrival.
- Tony Curtis - (1925-2010) born Bernard Schwartz in New York. Father of actor Jamie Lee Curtis. Best known for Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Defiant Ones (1958), and the comedy Some Like It Hot (1959). He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the last two films. Jewish Hungarian ancestry.
Resource
Resource
THE LAST DAYS, Netflix presentation-news -reel evidence of Hungarian Jews in WWII
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Hungary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hungarian_emigrants_to_Mandatory_Palestine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiszaeszl%C3%A1r_affair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_Kun
https://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/998
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hungary-virtual-jewish-history-tour
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satmar_(Hasidic_dynasty)
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/690647054/hungarys-new-holocaust-museum-isn-t-open-yet-but-it-s-already-causing-worry
No comments:
Post a Comment