Description
Book SynopsisAt the beginning of the twentieth century, the Jewish communities of Poland and Hungary were the largest in the world and arguably the most culturally vibrant, yet they have rarely been studied comparatively. Despite the obvious similarities, historians have mainly preferred to highlight the differences and emphasize instead the central European character of Hungarian Jewry. Collectively, these essays offer a different perspective. The volume has five sections. The first compares Jewish acculturation and integration in the two countries, analysing the symbiosis of magnates and Jews in each country’s elites and the complexity of integration in multi-ethnic environments. The second considers the similarities and differences in Jewish religious life, discussing the impact of Polish hasidism in Hungary and the nature of ‘progressive’ Judaism in Poland and the Neolog movement in Hungary. Jewish popular culture is the theme of the third section, with accounts of the Jewish involvement in Polish and Hungarian cabaret and film. The fourth examines the deterioration of the situation in both countries in the interwar years, while the final section compares the implementation of the Holocaust and the way it is remembered. The volume concludes with a long interview with the doyen of historians of Hungary, István Deák.
Table of ContentsPART IPOLAND AND HUNGARY: JEWISH REALITIES COMPAREDIntroduction
François Guesnet, Howard Lupovitch, and Antony PolonskyJEWISH ACCULTURATION AND INTEGRATIONThe Magnate–Jewish Symbiosis: Hungarian and Polish Variations on a Theme
Howard LupovitchEthnic Triangles, Assimilation, and the Complexities of Acculturation in a Multi-ethnic Society
Kristian GernerBetween Poland and Hungary: The Process of Jewish Integration from a Comparative Perspective
Guy MironThe Ashkenaz of the South: Hungarian Jewry in the Long Nineteenth Century
Victor KarádyJews and Poles, 1860–1914: Assimilation, Emancipation, Antisemitism
Theodore R. WeeksJewish Women in Poland and Hungary
Katalin FenyvesMorality, Motherland, and Freedom: The Arduous and Triumphant Journey of Michael Heilprin to America
Ferenc Raj and Howard LupovitchGender and Scholarship in the Goldziher Household: Jewish Men and Women in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Hungarian Academia
Katalin Franciska RacJEWISH RELIGIOUS LIFEPolish Hasidism and Hungarian Orthodoxy in a Borderland: The Munkács Rabbinate
Levi CooperPolish ‘Progressive’ Judaism and Hungarian Neolog Judaism: A Comparison
Benjamin MatisJEWS IN POPULAR CULTUREIntegration and Its Discontents: Humorous Magazines and Music Halls as Reflections of the Ambiguous Transformation of Budapest Jews into Magyars of the Jewish Faith
Mary GluckCabaret Nation: The Jewish Foundations of Kabaret Literacki, 1920–1939
Beth HolmgrenThe Politics of Exclusion: The Turbulent History of Hungarian and Polish Film, 1896–1945
Susan M. Papp and Antony B. PolonskyTHE INTERWAR YEARSAbnormal Times: Intersectionality and Anti-Jewish Violence in Hungary and Poland, 1918–1922
Emily GioielliSuicides of the Polish and Hungarian Types: Jewish Self-Destruction and Social Cohesion in Interwar Warsaw and Budapest
Daniel RosenthalTHE HOLOCAUST AND ITS AFTERMATHOn the Margin of a Historic Friendship: Polish Jewish Refugees in Hungary during the Second World War
Tamás Kovács Placing the Ghetto: Warsaw and Budapest, 1939–1945
Tim ColeWarsaw and Budapest, 1939–1945: Two Ghettos, Two Policies, Two Outcomes
Laszlo KarsaiPolish and Hungarian Poets on the Holocaust
George Gömöri ‘Anti-Fascist Literature’ as Holocaust Literature? The Holocaust in the Hungarian Socialist Literary Marketplace, 1956–1970
Richard S. EsbenshadeHolocaust Remembrance in Hungary after the Fall of Communism
Zsuzsanna Agora‘Nicht vor dem Kind!’ Testimonies on the Yellow-Star Houses of Budapest
Gwen Jones ‘Non-Remembering’ the Holocaust in Hungary and Poland
Andrea PetőJews in Museums: Narratives of Nation and ‘Jewishness’ in Post-Communist Hungarian and Polish Public Memory
Anna ManchinPERSONAL REFLECTIONSPolish and Hungarian Jews: So Different, Yet So Interconnected: An Interview with István Deák
Howard LupovitchPART IINEW VIEWSPolish National Antisemitism
Ireneusz Krzemiński
