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“Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars”: Contested Jewish Loyalty in Interwar (Czecho)Slovakia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2009

Rebekah Klein-Pejšová
Rebekah Klein-Pejšová
Affiliation:
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
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Extract

On the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, October 28, 1926, the Neolog Jewish Community of Bratislava (Pozsony, Pressburg) gathered for a commemorative service led by their chief rabbi, Dr. Samuel Funk. They were joined by representatives of the government administration and other religious confessions. Toward the end of his sermon, an increasingly agitated Rabbi Funk turned and pointed with an angry finger at the members of the assimilationist Union of Slovak Jews (Sväz slovenských židov) in attendance from his position behind the podium. He publicly accused them of destroying Jewish unity and making it impossible for the Jewish Party to win a parliamentary mandate. He concluded his sermon by recalling a meeting that he had recently enjoyed with the president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. President Masaryk, Funk related, regarded it as very embarrasing that in spite of the 100,000 votes that the Jewish Party had received in 1925, it was not able to obtain even one parliamentary mandate. Funk reported that Masaryk only respected those Jews who declared Jewish as their nationality.

Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , November 2009 , pp. 341 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2009

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References

1. These were, in fact, the main arguments of the Jewish national movement in Slovakia against all other Jewish political groups. The Czechoslovak state understood that the Zionist struggle against the Union of Slovak Jews stemmed from the threat that the latter posed to winning a Jewish national mandate in Parliament; see Slovenský národný archív (SNA)/fond Policajné riaditeľstvo (PR)/556/69–70.

2. The Jewish Party received a total of 98,845 votes in 1925; see Manuel statistique de la République Tchécoslovaque III (Prague, 1928), 256, table XI 3, Votes valuables, exprimés aux élections pour la Chambre des Députés, en Tchécoslovaquie, en novembre 1925 et mandates attributes.

3. SNA/PR/kárton 556/1–3. Kongruová náboženská obce židovská v Bratislave—Stažnost sväzu slovenských židov.

4. SNA/PR/kárton 556/9.

5. Sinkoff, Nancy argues in her recent book Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2004)Google Scholar that nothing is more important than Jewish–state relations for understanding how Jewish history develops.

6. Antonín Boháč, “Národnost či materský jazyk?” [Nationality or mother tongue?], ČSV, ročník I (Prague, 1920), 273. Yiddish was not considered to be a viable national language for the Jewish population in Czechoslovakia because its use was not widespread, but remained limited to population blocs in northeastern Slovakia and in Subcarpathian Ruthenia.

7. The northernmost sixteen counties and four municipalities of the former Kingdom of Hungary became, in whole or in part, the territory of Slovakia after the First World War.

8. Howard N. Lupovitch, Jews at the Crossroads: Tradition and Accommodation during the Golden Age of the Hungarian Nobility, 1729–1878 (Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2007); Gyurgyák János, A Zsidókérdés Magyarországon, (Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2001); Peter Haber, Die Anfänge des Zionismus in Ungarn (1897–1904) (Köln Weimar Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2001); Karády Viktor, Önazonositás, Sorsválasztás: A zsidó csoportazonosság történelmi alakváltozásai Magyarországon (Budapest: Új Mandatum, 2001), William O. McCagg, Jr., A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670–1918 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); William O. McCagg, Jr., Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary (New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1972).

9. Letter from Vavro Šrobár to the Republique Tchecoslovaque legation à Londres, September 14, 1919. The full text of the document can be found in Rabinowicz, Aharon Moshe, “The Jewish Minority,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, ed. Rothkirchen, Livia (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 226–27Google Scholar.

10. Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1860–1914 (Princeton University Press, 1981).

11. Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 133–140; and Hillel Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

12. Census data from: Österreichische Statistik, vol. 63, Pt. 3 (1902), 178; on the Czech-Jewish movement: Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry; Kateřina Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé? Národní identita Židů v Čechách, 1918–1938 (Praha-Litomyšl: Paseka, 2005), 93–105.

13. Sčítání lidu 1921 (Praha, 1924), 90 část textová, tables 104 and 105 combined: “Israelité československé státní přislušnosti podle národnosti.”

14. Čapková, 71, 93.

15. For a detailed discussion of the organization, proceedings, and implications of the 1868 congress, see Jacob Katz, A House Divided: Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-Century Central European Jewry, trans. Ziporah Brody (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998).

16. “Neology (Neologism),” Encyclopedia Judaica (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 951–954; Kinga Frojimovics and Rita Horváth, “Jews and Nationalism in Hungary,” The European Legacy 7, no 5: 642; Leonard Mars, “Discontinuity, Tradition, and Innovation: Anthropological reflections on Jewish Identity in Contemporary Hungary,” Social Compass, 46 (1999): 26.

17. “Náboženství a církve,” Deset let československé republiky. Svazek první (Prague, 1928), 442; Bušek, Vratislav, “Poměr státu k církvím v Československé republice,” in Janda, Bohomil, ed., Československá vlastivěda díl V. Stát (Prague, 1931), 355–56Google Scholar. The 52 Neolog and Status Quo Ante communities came together under the name Svaz židovských náboženských obcí na Slovensku Jeschurun. Out of the 217 Jewish religious communities in Slovakia, 165 belonged to the Organization of Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Communities.

18. Paul A. Hanebrink, In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890 –1944 (Ithaca, NY, 2006).

19. Paul Hanebrink, “Transnational Culture War: Christianity, Nation, and the Judeo-Bolshevik Myth in Hungary, 1890–1920,” The Journal of Modern History (March 2008): 80.

20. Katzburg, Nathaniel, “Hungarian Jewry in Modern Times,” in Hungarian Jewish Studies, ed. Braham, Randolph L. (New York: World Federation of Hungarian Jews, 1966), 155Google Scholar.

21. Mária M. Kovács, Liberal Professions and Illiberal Politics: Hungary from the Habsburgs to the Holocaust (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 50, 51, 64.

22. From the interview with Erzsébet Weiss conducted by Éva Kovács in the late 1980s for her 1991 dissertation, “A Kassai Zsidóság Etnikai Identitása A Két Világháborü Között (1918–1938)”, submitted to University of Szeged, Hungary [The ethnic identity of Kassa (Košice) Jewry between the two world wars].

23. SNA/PR/kárton 556, “Stažnost sväzu slovenských židov,” 4.

24. SNA/PR/kárton/9.

25. SNA/PR/kárton/6.

26. SNA/PR/kárton/6.

27. SNA/PR/kárton/7.

28. SNA/PR/kárton/7.

29. This idea was orginally expressed by Max Brod; see “Orthodoxie, Zionismus, Nationaljudentum,” Jüdische Volkszeitung, November 28, 1919. “Ich bin nichts als Jude. Ich gehöre (bei voller Beobachtung meine staatsbürgerliche Pflichten) keinem andern Volk an als dem jüdischen.”

30. SNA/PR/556/69–70. Kongruová náboženská obce židovská v Bratislave—Stažnost sväzu slovenských židov.

31. “Sväz slovenských židov,” Národný denník, November 9, 1926.

32. “Pán rabín Funl vo “Slováku,” Slovenský dennik, September 12, 1928.

33. Štátný oblastný archív Bratislave, fond Župný úrad v Bratislave, file 8833/1925, in Crhová, Marie, “Jewish Politics in Central Europe: The Case of the Jewish Party in Interwar Czechoslovakia,” in Jewish Studies at the Central European University, vol. 2, 1999–2001, ed. Kovács, András and Andor, Eszter (Budapest: Jewish Studies Project, Central European University, 2002), 289–90Google Scholar.

34. SNA/PR/kárton 79/836/report submitted in Bratislava, February 25, 1926. The reports concerning possible irredentist activity within Jewish national associations in Slovakia are located in carton 79, and date from 1926.

35. SNA/PR/kárton 79/842. Report submitted in Komárno, March 9, 1926.

36. “Židia u nás,” in Nitrianské noviny, April 28, 1929.

37. “Židia v Košiciach,” in Slovenský Východ (Košice), November 19, 1929. Interestingly, the example of the Orthodox elementary school in Košice also shows an auspicious overlap between Slovak linguistic and political pressures and the fulfillment of religious obligation. From the Orthodox Jewish perspective, hiring non-Jewish Slovak teachers ensured that the students at the Orthodox school would never see their Jewish teachers breaking the Sabbath during Saturday classes. A former student of the Orthodox school on Kazinczy Street in Košice, the same school to which the author of the article refers, recalled asking why the teachers at his school were Christian. The answer was that the religious community did not want the children to see their Jewish teachers pick up the chalk and write on the blackboard on Saturday, as they did in the Neolog school. From an interview with Jenő Silber conducted by Éva Kovács for her 1991 thesis, “A Kassai Zsidóság Etnikai Identitása A Két Világháborü Között (1918–1938).”

38. “Židia na Slovensku,” in Národný denník, June 2, 1929.

39. SNA/PR/kárton 556/5.

40. SNA/PR/kárton 556. “Neolog žid. cirkevná obec v Bratislave—vnutorné rozpory,” November 12, 1932, 9.

41. SNA/PR/kárton 556/1.

42. SNA/PR/kárton 556/report filed November 6, 1930, 4. Rabbi Akiba Schreiber was a descendent of Rabbi Moshe Schreiber (the Chatam Sofer), belonging to the Schreiber dynasty of Orthodox rabbis. He served from 1906 to 1939, and then immigrated to Jerusalem, where he died in 1959.

43. SNA/PR/kárton 556/1.

44. SNA/PR/kárton 556/125. The full text of both Stein's and Masaryk's comments can be found in the October 24, 1930, article “Das slovakische Judentum begrüßt den Staatspräsidenten,” in Jüdisches Familienblatt.

45. SNA/PR/kárton 556/report filed November 6, 1930, 1.

46. SNA/PR/kárton 556/report filed November 6, 1930, 4.

47. The most publicized of these was the installation of Rabbi Dr. Resovski, formerly the rabbi of Abony in Hungary, as the rabbi of Lučenec (Losonc). Materials relating to this matter, including a police report and newspaper clippings from the Magyar and Slovak press, are located in SNA/PR/557. The head of the Rabbinical Association in Slovakia, the Orthodox rabbi Stein of Trnava (Nagyszombat), believed that the election of Rabbi Resovski would have a disastrous impact on the development of loyalty among Jews in Slovakia, and that it would set a precedent for other places where the hostile influence of Budapest worked behind the scenes; see SNA/PR/557, “Voľba rabína v Lučenci,” March 12, 1929, 4.

48. SNA/PR/557, “Voľba rabína v Lučenci,” March 12, 1929, 4.

49. Funk testified that Stein, Dezső, and Porzsolt would always officially take a stand against the Hungarian government, but that they were bound to Hungary by their property holdings in southern Slovakia; see SNA/KU/266/Neologické žid. Náboženské obec v Bratislave—činnost.

50. SNA/PR/kárton 556, “Neolog žid. cirkevná obec v Bratislave—vnutorné rozpory,” November 12, 1932, 7.

51. SNA/PR/kárton 556, “Neolog žid. cirkevná obec v Bratislave—vnutorné rozpory,” November 12, 1932, SNA/KU/266/Neologické žid. Náboženské obec v Bratislave—činnost.

52. Andor, Vér, “Világháború” [World war], in Magyar Zsidó Lexikon, ed. Ujváry, Péter (Budapest: A Magyar Zsidó Lexikon Kiadása, 1929), 950Google Scholar.

53. Ministerstvo zahraničních věcí české republiky (MZV), sekce II, řada III, krabice 326, 113601/29.

54. MZV, sekce II, řada III, krabice 326, 111943/29.

55. Frojimovics, Kinga et al. , Jewish Budapest: Monuments, Rites, History (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), 294Google Scholar.

56. SNA/PR/kárton 558, 56.347/29.

57. SNA/PR/kárton 558, 56.347/29.

58. Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

59. SNA/fond Krajinský úrad (KU)/kárton 266, 1602/29.

60. SNA/KU/266, 3161/29.

61. Ibid.

62. MZV, II, III, 326, 1.470, March 25, 1930.

63. MZV, II, III, 326, 5279, April 14, 1930.

64. I wish to thank Maroš Borský, author of Synagogue Architecture in Slovakia: A Memorial Landscape of a Lost Community (Bratislava, Slovakia: the Jewish Heritage Foundation—Menorah, 2007), for his help in locating these memorials.

65. In the words of Rabbi Samuel Reich of Vrbové, from his article “Die Bedeutung der jüdischen Wahlpartei,” Juedische Volkszeitung, April 16, 1920.

66. Oscar K. Rabinowicz, “Czechoslovak Zionism,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, 55.

67. SNA/PR/501/643.