History of the Jews in Hungary
| Total population | |
|---|---|
( Hungary  Israel 152,023 (total estimated)48,600 (core population, estimation) (2010) 120,000 (estimated population) (2012) Israel 32,023 (immigrants to Israel) (2010)10,965 (2011 census)) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Budapest | |
| Languages | |
| Hungarian, Hebrew, Yiddish |
Jews have a long history in the country now known as Hungary, with some records even predating the 895 AD Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary and it is even assumed that several sections of the heterogeneous Hungarian tribes practiced Jewish religion. Jewish officials served the king during the reign of Andrew II. From the second part of the 13th century the general religious tolerance decreased and Hungary's policies became similar to the treatment of the Jewish population in Western Europe.
The Jews of Hungary were fairly well integrated into Hungarian society by the time of the First World War. By the early 20th century, the community had grown to constitute 5% of Hungary's total population and 23% of the population of the capital, Budapest. Jews became prominent in science, the arts and business.
Anti-Jewish policies grew more repressive in the interwar period as Hungary's leaders, who remained committed to regaining the lost territories of "Greater Hungary", chose to align themselves (albeit warily) with the fascist governments of Germany and Italy – the international actors most likely to stand behind Hungary's claims. Starting in 1938, Hungary under Miklós Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures in emulation of Germany's Nürnberg Laws. The vast majority of Jews who were deported were massacred in Kameniec-Podolsk (Kamianets-Podilskyi). In the massacres of Újvidék (Novi Sad) and villages nearby, 2,550–2,850 Serbs, 700–1,250 Jews and 60–130 others were murdered by the Hungarian Army and "Csendőrség" (Gendarmerie) in January 1942. A Jew living in the Hungarian countryside in March 1944 had a less than 10% chance of surviving the following 12 months. In Budapest, a Jew's chance of survival of the same 12 months was about 50%. Jews from the Hungarian provinces outside Budapest and its suburbs were rounded up. The first transports to Auschwitz began in early May 1944 and continued even as Soviet troops approached. During the last years of World War II, they suffered severely, with over 600,000 being killed (within Hungary's 1943 borders) between 1941 and 1945, mainly through deportation to Nazi German-run extermination camps.
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