Magyarországi Zsidó Hitközségek 1944. április
Függelék
Some copies of the circular addressed to small village communities came back unopened, or was returned with a remark like: „Addressee unknown", or „The letter was not claimed for", etc. One letter came back stamped by the military censorship. But most of the communities addressed answered within 48 hours as asked for by the Central Council, and sent along detailed information on their situation. Subsequently, the data sent to the Central Council were recorded on printed file cards. It was these file cards that survived in the Hungarian Jewish Archive. Enclosed to the data file cards, a number of letters were found. The letters were written and mailed by the community official, or a member of the community, who happened to be in charge of affairs, and, in this quality, had to respond to the circular. Some of the letters were simply attached to the forms, were written on typewriter and signed by two or three officials. But quite a number of them were written by unexperienced hands, with lots of misspellings in Hungarian, and are very personal in style and content. Some of them render account of a very difficult situation, and make reference to the situation, in which the answer requested for was prepared. (Rabbi missing, community president absent, most of community members, the men, on labor service, general poverty of families, no income, life danger, community buildings taken away, in some cases even the concentration in brick factories or the next town's stadium already going on, etc.) In a town in Southern Hungary, the letter was written and signed by a woman. In one of the letters, the writer explicitly says that there is no educated person in the village who would be able to perform intellectual activity for the community. A postcard written by the president of the orthodox community in Nagydobrony, a village in Sub-Carpathia, at that time under Hungarian administration, and dated from April 16, 1944, says that all Jews living in the village are packed up and waiting for the developments, for they are to be transferred to Ungvár [Uzhhorod] that same day at six o'clock in the evening, please ask about their destiny in Ungvár [The city where a concentration camp was set up.] And so on. The present volume publishes some of these letters, 40 altogether. (The selection was made by György Landeszman and Joseph Schweitzer for the preliminary edition in 1985-1991, with but 10 letters, and expanded for the present edition by Kinga Frojimovics, adding some 30 letters to the original selection.) The letters are moving documents of the situation in communities outside the capital, days or a week or so before their deportation to Auschwitz. It seems that the communities, despite the terrible news on the destiny of the Jewish population in neighbouring countries, found it absolutely unthinkable that they had to face deportation very soon. As to the content of the comprehensive survey required by the Central Council, the communities had to answer the questions as follows. Affiliation and administrative status of the community Name and profession of the president of the community Name(s) of the rabbi(s) of the community Number of members Number of tax paying members Schools Total number of paid functionaries and officials of the community Institutions operated by the community, their capacity and total number of their employees Associations operating on behalf the community Foundations, their assets and property Amount of state taxes paid by members of the community Financial situation of the community: Assets, income, expenses, etc. The files show the structure, financial situation, property, both movables and immovables, situation of religious life, institutions and charity organizations of Hungarian Jews by their three confessional directions or organizations. The time the survey was made is only weeks after the German occupation in Hungary, that is, during the period this considerable in its size and influence organization still existed and was even able to operate to a certain extent. In the capital, Budapest, there were five Jewish communities existing at that time. They are as follows: (1) the Budapest orthodox community, (2) the Pest liberal (neológ or in the official terminology, kongresszusi 3) community, (3) the Buda liberal (neológ) community, (4) the liberal (neológ) community of Kőbánya (a separate district within the capital), and the öObuda (another district in the capital) liberal (neológ) community. Újpest, north to Budapest proper, on the eastern side of the Danube, was that time an 3 Named after the National Congress of Israelites in Hungary, 1868/69, on that the separation between the neológ and orthodox communities took place. 886
