The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHIVES - Hungarian Jewish Archives by Zsuzsanna Toronyi

BY ZSUZSANNA TORONYI HUNGARIAN JEWISH ARCHIVES T

he Hungarian Jewish Archives is owned by the Association of Jewish Parishes of Hungary and the Jewish Parish of Budapest. In the research room where most of its written up (records) material can be found in the wings of building of the synagogue on Dohány street. Research is allowed by special permission from the hours of 10 a.m. to 15 p.m. on Monday Wednesday and on Friday (Requests must be made in advance.) Researches are helped with fond registers, which are developed now, inventory lists about some parts of the material and small archives study-aid the material of which does not include Jewish History in Hungary; it includes just some supplementary data, Gazetteer, encyclopaedia, dictionaries and so on. The following are needed for research permission: valid identity card or passport, purpose of research, tutorial, thesis. The fond register of the Hungarian Jewish Archives found here are only partially completed. Since the archives are owned by the Archives of Israelitish Parish of Pest (Hungarian abbreviation: PIH), the first fond, I - X includes the material of the departments of PIH. The XI and XII fond include the documents of subsidized state institutions, independent denominational organizations that have close relationship with the parish e.g. Women's Association, OMIKE, or that of partly subsidized ones , as in the Ferenc József National Rabbinical Training College. The XIII fond should include the documents of Chevra Kadisa burial society, that officially does not belong to the parish, but, unfortunately, most of the documents of Chevra were destroyed and its material is in poor condition. The fond no. XIV contains the documents of the Israelitish Parish of Buda that was independent until the unification in 1950 but not in such quantity as the documents of PIH. You can find the documents of the country parishes in fond no. XV in alphabetical order of the parishes. Although we treat the country series of registers as a separate collection we show here whether the different parishes have registers or not. We gave XVI fond to central bodies, (1867 - 1950 MIOI, 1950 - 1990 MIOK, 1990 - Mazsihisz) and which had very strong and personal and organic affiliation to PIH. We should mention here that during the strongly centralized years of the fifties and sixties many of the old institutions were taken over by ECCLESl .