This is a black and white photograph taken in Miskolc, Hungary in 1950 of Eva and Pal Vari and their daughter Zsuzsa. Everyone is smiling in the photograph. Eva was pregnant with twins in the photo; she only learned that she was having twins when they were born. Pal is wearing sportswear which includes a knitted vest. Eva is wearing a flowered dress with a coat over it. Zsuzsa is being held between her parents and is wearing a scarf on her head and a jacket.
Eva was born in Pest, Hungary in 1924. After her parents divorced and her mother remarried, the family moved to Miskolc, where Eva attended Jewish primary and middle schools and learned to read Hebrew. She trained as a tailor but, as a Jew, she could not get a job when she finished her training in 1942. In April 1944, after the Nazis occupied Hungary, Eva’s family was taken to the ghetto. They were deported to Auschwitz in June 1944. Her grandparents were taken away on arrival, and she never saw them again.
After being sent from camp to camp, Eva and her mother were liberated in Terezin (also known as Theresienstadt) in the spring of 1945 by the Russians. After returning to Hungary, Eva discovered that her father had also survived the Holocaust. A day or two after she arrived back in Miskolc, Eva met her future husband, Pal, while shopping for a dress. Pal was 20 years older than Eva. Before the war Pal had been married with a 12-year-old son. His wife, son, and parents were all killed in the Holocaust. Pal and Eva married and had three children.
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The Jewish Community of Hungary – Jews have lived in Hungary for approximately 600 years. Attitudes towards the Jewish community differed depending on the leaders; some were very welcoming, while others subjected the Jews to harsh taxation and blood libels and expelled them from certain areas of Hungary. By the mid-nineteenth century Jews had achieved full emancipation and the community prospered, with many belonging to the social, academic, and financial elites of the country. The Jewish community at the time consisted of Orthodox, traditionalist (Status Quo Ante), and Neolog communities. Prior to World War I, the Jews comprised around 5 percent of the total Hungarian population and 23 percent of the population of Budapest. By the outbreak of World War II, the Jewish population numbered around 825,000. In 1944, towards the end of the war, the Nazis took over Hungary, and within a very short period most of the Jews were murdered. Around 200,000 Hungarian Jews survived the war. After the war, only 140,000 Jews remained in Hungary, while others immigrated to Israel and other western countries. In the following years, the Jews remaining in Hungary were challenged once again, this time by communist rule. However, after the fall of communism in Hungary in 1989, the community rebuilt itself and is today the largest in East-Central Europe with around 75,000–100,000 Jews. Most Hungarian Jews live in Budapest, where there are 20 active synagogues and a variety of Jewish religious and cultural institutions.
The Jews of Hungary During the Holocaust – In the years before World War II, the Jews in Hungary comprised five percent of the population. They were very successful, and many belonged to the commercial, political, academic, and social elites. Their success caused much resentment, and there was widespread anti-Semitism including the passing of anti-Jewish laws and the emergence of fascist parties such as the Arrow Cross Party. Under the rule of Miklós Horthy (1920–1944) Jews lost most of their rights and were called up to serve in unarmed labour service units, where many died due to the difficult conditions. In March 1944 the Nazis took over Hungary, and Jews were rapidly rounded up and sent to ghettos. The deportation of Jews to Auschwitz began in May 1944 under the supervision of Adolph Eichmann with the assistance of the Hungarian authorities. Ninety percent of the Hungarian Jews were killed upon arrival. Few efforts were made by the Hungarians to rescue the Jews, however international efforts by the US president and the Swedish king urged a halt to the deportations, and diplomats such as Raoul Wallenberg, Carl Lutz, and others took heroic steps to protect Jews. Finally Horthy ordered the discontinuation of the deportations, and Eichmann left Hungary. The situation for the Jews remained dire, and the Jews of Budapest were sent to live in the ghetto. Thousands of Jews were murdered on the banks of the Danube and others forced to march to the Austrian border. In all around 565,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered, most of them in a short period of eight weeks.
