Fraternity-Testvériség, 1961 (39. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1961-10-01 / 10. szám

18 FRATERNITY well us that of working conditions in the cities. The moderator of the Budapest City Presbytery was the moving spirit in this regard, questioning in public the taking of interest on money, the effect of capitalism upon the workers, and such like. Another reason for the renewed vitality of the Church was the influx of several tens of thousands of Jewish citizens into all three of the Churches — Roman Catholic, Reformed and Lutheran — that took place after the rise of Hitlerism, and which continued into the war years. Although perhaps half of these Jewish-Christians perished in the gas chambers during the War, there are still many left in the Reformed Church, with all the zeal and fervour of first-generation converts. On the question of the rise of anti­semitism during this period the Reformed Church took from the beginning a very decided stand, exposing, when it was even dangerous to do so, the Rosenberg blood and soil myth, and teaching the anti-Christian basis of discrimination against the Jew. It is true that the church leaders were not unanimous in the Jewish question, but once active persecution of the Jews began in Hungary, the Church immediately closed its ranks in de­fence of the Jew. When, in 1944, the terrible deportations to the gas chambers of Poland be­gan, all the Reformed bishops of Hungary formed a united deputation to the occupying authorities to protest in the name of Christ against such trade in human lives. On a particular Sunday a declaration was read from every pulpit in the land calling on the people to do all they could to stop the terrible deportations. The Church could express its mind on the question in this way alone, as the censor would not allow the persecution of the Jews in Hungary to be dealt with in the church papers. Then next a com­mittee known as “The Good Shepherd” was set up, at first by individuals, but which, before the end of 1944, had become a committee of the Conventus. It accomplished a remarkable relief work amongst the Jews, half-Jews and Jewish-

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