András Kovács

Analyzes the results of a survey conducted in Hungary in March 1995, based on questionnaires distributed to ca. 1,500 subjects aged 18+ years. 29% of the population are not antisemitic; 25% are antisemitic (8% of them extreme antisemites); 32% accept traditional antisemitic stereotypes, but are not antisemitic. Antisemitism in Hungary is currently a Budapest phenomenon; prejudice is scant in other localities. No significant correlation was found with age, education, and socioeconomic status. Feelings of frustration and anomie, in combination with religious-conservative ideology, lead to xenophobia. Compares this survey with one conducted in 1991 (by the American Jewish Committee), in 1995 and 1996 (by Vienna University), and others by Hungarian scholars.

Antisemitic Prejudices in Contemporary Hungary

In the last two decades a large amount of previously secret documents on Jewish issues emerged from the newly opened Communist archives. The selection of these papers published in the volume and stemming mostly from Hungarian archives will shed light on a period of Jewish history that is largely ignored because much of the current scholarship treats the Shoah as the end of Jewish history in the region. The documents introduced and commented by the editor of the volume, András Kovács, will give insight into the conditions and constraints under which the Jewish communities, first of all, the largest Jewish community of the region, the Hungarian one had to survive in the time of the post-Stalinist Communist dictatorship. They may shed light on the ways how “Jewish policy” of the Soviet bloc countries was coordinated and orchestrated from Moscow and by the single countries. The archival material will prove that the ruling communist parties were restlessly preoccupied with the “Jewish question.” This preoccupation, which kept the whole issue alive in the decades of communist rule, explains to a great extent its open reemergence in the time of transition and in the post-communist period.

Jewish Issues in Communist Archives

Communism's Jewish Question

Guy Miron

Raphael Vago

Judit Frigyesi

Tamás Turán

Victor Karády

Levente Salat

Viktória Bányai

Szabolcs Szita

Tamás Gusztáv

Attila Gidó

Balázs Ablonczy

Attila Papp Z.

On May 4-6, 2011 in cooperation with historians from Hungary and Israel, the Balassi Institute organized a conference entitled “Between Minority and Majority” on the history of the Hungarian and Jewish diaspora and the shifting meanings of notions of Hungarian and Jewish identity. The conference had the support of Deputy Prime Minister Tibor Navracsis and József Pálinkás, the president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Aliza bin Noun, at the time the Israeli ambassador to Hungary, gave an opening speech. An exhibition of a selection of the pictures of photographer Doron Ritter was also held in connection with the conference. The exhibition, which was entitled From the Old Country to the New Home – Hungarian Speaking Jews in Israel, was held again in October the same year, in Zagreb, Croatia. This book contains essays based on the presentations given at the conference. CONTENT Preface (Pál Hatos – Attila Novák) - 7 Levente Salat The Notion of Political Community in View of Majority–Minority Relations - 9 Tamás Turán Two Peoples, Seventy Nations: Parallels of National Destiny in Hungarian Intellectual History and Ancient Jewish Thought - 44 Viktória Bányai The Hebrew Language as a Means of Forging National Unity: Ideologies Related to the Hebrew Language at the Beginning of the 19th and the 20th Centuries - 74 Victor Karády Education and the Modern Jewish Experience in Central Europe - 86 Raphael Vago Israel-Diaspora Relations: Mutual Images, Expectation, Frustrations - 100 Szabolcs Szita A Few Questions Regarding the Return of Hungarian Deportees: the Example of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp - 111 Judit Frigyesi Is there Such a Thing as Hungarian-Jewish Music? - 122 Guy Miron Exile, Diaspora and the Promised Land – Jewish Future Images in Nazi Dominated Europe - 147 Tamás Gusztáv Filep Hungarian Jews of Upper Hungary in Hungarian Public Life in Czechoslovakia (1918/19–1938) - 167 Attila Gidó From Hungarian to Jew: Debates Concerning the Future of the Jewry of Transylvania in the 1920s - 185 Balázs Ablonczy Curse and Supplications: Letters to Prime Minister Pál Teleki following the Enactment of the Second Anti-Jewish Law - 200 Attila Novák In Whose Interests? Transfer Negotiations between the Jewish Agency, the National Bank of Hungary and the Hungarian Government (1938–1939) - 211 András Kovács Stigma and Renaissance - 222 Attila Papp Z. Ways of Interpretation of Hungarian-American Ethnic-Based Public Life and Identity - 228 About the Authors - 259

Hungarian and Jewish/Israeli ethnical and cultural experiences in recent centuries

Between Minority and Majority

Anti-semitism and the Young Elite in Hungary

Analyzing the results of several sociological surveys in post-communist Hungary, this book offers insight into the nature and social background of one of the most disturbing phenomena in a newly established European democracy: antisemitism.

Antisemitic Prejudices in Post-Communist Hungary

The Stranger at Hand

András Kovács

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