Jozsef, who attended both a religious and a secular school as a child, paints for us a picture of growing up in the bustling, small Jewish community of the small Hungarian town of Kiskoros. His father, an orthodox Jew, served in the First World War and had a small leather goods shop.
Jozsef attended yeshiva, and in 1939 emigrated to Palestine, where he worked in a dressmaker's shop in Tel Aviv . Jozsef left his orthodoxy behind and married a Yemini woman, Zarum Mazal, who he met through the Communist party. His family, who remained in Hungary, were all killed during the Holocaust.
Jozsef and Zarum retumed to Hungary in 1948 and changed their name from Fogler to Faludi (more Hungarian sounding). They had three sons. Although not in the film, Jozsef did not pass on Jewish traditions to his sons; none married Jews.
Jozsef joined the Communist Party in 1949, which helped him find a job as a manual laborer. Jozsef never returned to Judaism, but gives private Hebrew and Yiddish lessons at home.
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KISKOROS AND PREWAR HUNGARY
Jozsef and his family lived in the small town of Kiskőrös: find it on a map of Hungary here. Having been populated since the Stone Age, Kiskőrös has a long history and rich archaeological legacy, with the remains of five villages and seven cemetaries having been discovered there.
Before 1918, Hungary had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Empire was formed in 1867 under Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, combining the power of Hapsburg-led Austria with that of Hungary. The Empire also included Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Slovakia, as well as part of what are now Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Read more about Franz-Joseph and the formation of the dual monarchy here.
The Empire was dissolved at the end of the First World War in 1918. This marked Hungary's independence after centuries of Hapsburg rule. This marked Hungary's independence after centuries of Hapsburg rule. After a revolution in 1919, a communist state was created known as the Hungarian Socialist Republic, first under Mihály Károlyi, and later Belá Kun. This, however, lasted only a very short time. The monarchy was restored following a counterrevolution, and from 1920-1946 the Kingdom of Hungary operated under regent Miklos Horthy.
For an overview of Hungary's involvement in the First World War, the subsequent peace negotiations, and political turbulence, read this article.
Following the massive economic downturn of the 1929 Great Depression, Hungary's enconomy gradually improved, largely through trade with Germany. Hungarian authorities fostered a positive relationship with Germany, feeling that the policies of its National Socialist government was in line with Hungary's own aims and values.
A result of this relationship was that in the 1938 Munich Agreement, negotiated between the major Western powers and Germany, Hungary received back some of the territories it had lost in the Treaty of Trianon after World War One. The 1938 Agreement was signed between England, France, Italy, and Germany. This Agreement ceded the Sudetenland to Germany, dividing Czechoslovakia. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, a key figure in the negotiations, believed appeasing Adolf Hitler’s territorial ambitions was the most logical way to avoid another large-scale war. Read more about Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement here. The agreement was negotiated among Europe’s major powers without any Czechoslovakian representative- today’s Czechs and Slovakians often refer to the agreement as "the Munich dictate" or the "Munich betrayal". Read a transcript of the original text here.
JEWISH LIFE IN HUNGARY
Kiskőrös has had a Jewish community since the 1700s. As the only Orthodox community among a number of Neolog towns, its population rose steadily until the 1930s. Read more about the history of Jewish Kiskőrös here.
Jozsef remembers his lessons at the Jewish school in Kiskőrös being taught in Yiddish (though most of the pupils spoke only Hungarian). In his later years, Jozsef spoke and taught both Yiddish and Hebrew. Read more about the Yiddish language in this article from the Jewish Virtual Library.
Hungary’s Jewish population has a long history: read about it here. The largest Jewish community in Hungary was in Budapest, its 1930 population being 204,371. It also housed over 125 synagogues, the biggest being located on Dohany Street, currently the largest operating synagogue in Europe.
Following the 1867 formation of the dual monarchy, life for Jewish communities in Austria-Hungary improved significantly. Jewish people gained full civil rights and began to enter professions that had been previously closed to them. This Centropa video, Jewish Soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian Army, has more information on the condition of Jewish life under emperor Franz Joseph, as well as facts about the First World War, a conflict in which Jozsef’s father fought.
Jozsef’s grandfather was a rabbi in Csepel, located on Csepel Island in the Danube. Jozsef later moved there with his second wife.
For an overview of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, explore this page.
Jozsef moved to Tel Aviv in 1939. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Zionist organisations grew throughout Europe, with many people leaving to live in Palestine. Invented and popularised in Theodor Herzl’s influential book Der Judenstaat (in English, The Jewish State), Zionism called for the return of Jewish people to their ancient homeland of Israel. For a more detailed definition of Zionism, see this short article.
Read about Jewish life in Hungary after the Second World War here.
In the years following World War Two, discussion of any aspect of the Holocaust and Jewish life were taboo- including expressions of anti-Semitism. These topics were among those covered by dissident intellectuals in the last decades of the Soviet Union. The Yivo Institute for Jewish Research provides a thorough summary of Jewish life in the postwar years and the present day.
WWII
The Second World War began in September 1939, when the German army invaded and occupied Poland. France and Britain, Poland's allies, responded by declaring war on Germany.
Allied to the Axis powers, anti-Semitic legislation began to appear in Hungary in 1938. Despite having been the one to initiate these restrictions, president Miklos Horthy later resisted German pressure to deport the Jewish population of Hungary to concentration camps in Poland. While a large portion of Jewish communities from rural Hungary were deported (either to concentration camps or to the capital city), many Jews were able to survive the war in Budapest. This essay discusses the growth of anti-Semitism in Hungary before the war, while this page for an overview of the restrictions placed against Hungarian Jews, and life in Hungary before the German occupation of 1944.
Hungary officially joined the Axis Alliance in 1941, declaring war on the Soviet Union. Hungarian forces took part in the invasion of Russia, however after heavy losses and a terrible defeat at Stalingrad, Horthy attempted to leave the alliance, arranging armistices first with the Western powers, then the Soviet Union. These armistices were made void when the German army invaded and occupied Hungary, toppling Horthy's government. Read more about Hungary's involvement in the war here. In October 1944, seven months after the invasion, German powers installed Ferenc Szalasi as president. Szalasi was the head of the Arrow Cross Party, Hungary's fascist and brutally anti-Semitic political faction. The Arrow Cross operated a reign of terror between Szalasi's October appointment and the Soviet liberation in April 1945.
Jozsef’s family remained in Hungary throughout the war, and he lost many of them when they were transported to Auschwitz. One of the largest concentration camps in the Third Reich, read more about Auschwitz here.
The situation in wartime Budapest had not been good for its Jewish population. However following the German invasion, conditions worstened significantly. June 1944 saw the creation of yellow-star houses in Budapest. These were crowded and poorly supplied living quarters for Jews, marked with a yellow star over the doorway. Prior to the formation of the Budapest Ghetto, it was believed that scattering Jewish residency throughout the city would deter Allied bombing attacks, whereas condensing the Jewish population to one area would leave the rest of the city open to destruction. When this strategy proved ineffective, the Budapest Ghetto was established in the city centre in November 1944.
Jozsef’s brother Imre survived the war in forced labour. This scheme, from 1944, required healthy Jewish men to undertake physically demanding tasks, often construction or strategic fortification near front lines. Conditions were harsh and supervisors could be brutal, with many labourers dying. However those who performed forced labour were not taken to concentration camps, and many people survived the war this way. Learn more about the Hungarian forced labour scheme here.
More information on life in Hungary after the 1944 invasion can be found here.
PALESTINE/ISRAEL
Jozsef moved to Palestine in 1939. Then under British mandate, the number of people allowed to immigrate to Palestine each year was restricted so to preserve positive British-Arab relations. However with the increasing anti-Semitism in Europe, large numbers of refugees who were unable to access official channels began to enter Palestine illegally. Clandestine immigration in this period, between 1920 and 1948, is referred to as Aliyah Bet.
Jozsef lived and worked in Tel Aviv throughout the war. Read more about the city here.
Though Palestine was initially not involved in the war, the necessity of protecting the Middle East and need for manpower prompted the formation of fifteen Palestinian Jewish batallions in 1940. The Jewish Brigade Group was a part of the British Army, but fought under the Zionist flag.
The State of Israel was formed in 1948.