Judaism in Hungary - Communist Rule

Communist Rule

It is estimated that inside the post-war borders of Hungary, 190,000 people of Jewish descent were living at the end of 1945. The last census that asked about religion was in 1949 until the renewal of this question in 2001, when 12,871 people claimed to be "Israelite" vs 133,861 in 1949.

Tens of thousands of Jews were murdered in Hungary, by Hungarians between 1941 and 1945. One hundred forty-six people were executed for war crimes in 1945-1948 and 3 in 1967.

Under Communist rule, from 1948 to 1988, Zionism was outlawed and Jewish observance was curtailed. The previous upper class, Jews and anti-Semites alike, were expelled from the cities to the provinces for 6–12 months in the early 1950s.

However, the reality is more complex. The Communist governments of Béla Kun (mid-1919) and Mátyás Rákosi (1948–1954) included a large number of (atheist) Jews in prominent and influential decision-making positions. Certain Hungarian Communists who did have a Jewish background like Mátyás Rákosi, Ernő Gerő (Prime Minister and effective head of state in 1956) and Peter Gabor (at one time head of the feared AVO/AVH secret police) had totally repudiated Judaism (per pure Communist doctrine, which was strictly atheistic) and sometimes expressed anti-Semitic attitudes themselves.

During the 1919–1920 "White terror" period and the 1956 uprising, the backlash targeted not only Communist party members but Jews in general, and there were lynchings. On the other hand, some of the armed rebel leaders in 1956 were Jewish (István Angyal, an Auschwitz survivor, was executed on December 1, 1958), and the uprising was supported by a number of Jewish writers too (for instance, Tibor Déry was imprisoned from 1957 to 1961). After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, about 20,000 or so Jews fled the country. For instance, an estimated 20% of the Hungarian refugees entering Canada in 1957 was Jewish. By 1967, only about 80,000–90,000 Jews (including non-religious Jews) remained in the country, with the number dropping further before the country's Communist regime collapsed in 1989.

Under the milder communist regime of János Kádár (ruled 1957–1988) leftist Jewish intelligentsia remained an important and vocal part of Hungarian art and sciences. Diplomatic relations with Israel were severed in 1967, but it was not followed by antisemitic campaigns as in Poland or the Soviet Union.