Tag #136332 - Interview #78490 (Katalin Kallos Havas)

I was a member of the Jewish community even before 1989 – I was in contact with it. I was an active member in the sense that I did some social work, I used to visit the elderly. I didn’t mind that the Party didn’t like this. The Jewish community was an officially recognized organization anyway, so they had nothing to comment on. My husband wasn’t a member though because he taught at the Department of Marxism, and this was incompatible with life within a religious community. Besides, he was very busy, he was completely absorbed by teaching. Neither of us was religious. This was an odd situation: the Jewish community isn’t in fact a religious organization, just a Jewish organization, regardless of its members’ religiousness. The community has members who converted to Christianity and there are wives or husbands who are members even though they are Christians.