This is a photograph taken in 1949 in Pardes Hanna of Ferenc Leicht (right) and his cousin, Miklos Rosenberg (left). They are smiling and embracing in front of a military tent. At the time of this photograph Leicht was 20 years old and Rosenberg was 19. The photograph was taken when Leicht was visiting Rosenberg during his army leave.
Ferenc Leicht was born in Keszthely, Hungary. He attended a Jewish elementary school which taught him the basics about Judaism, but his family was not observant. In 1939, Ferenc was not accepted to the non-Jewish high school, and he and his family experienced other forms of anti-Semitism. They thought about leaving Hungary but stayed since the only country accepting Jewish refugees was Uganda. When the German Army invaded Hungary, Ferenc’s Jewish school was closed due to Nazi restrictions and orders. His father was sent to forced labour, and Ferenc, his mother, and other family members were rounded up and sent to the ghetto. From the ghetto Ferenc was sent to Auschwitz, where he was assigned work as a locksmith. When the Russians liberated the camp, Ferenc was in hospital, but later he returned to Hungary and rejoined his father and mother who had both survived the camps. In 1946 his parents joined the communist party and wanted him to join a leftist youth organisation, but Ferenc declined, aware that many of the members were anti-Semitic. Ferenc had many uncertainties about his identity. In his biography he wrote:
In the lager [German for camp] I had learned that I was Jewish, but I didn’t know what to do with this identity of mine. Because I wasn’t religious, I hated the people from the Jewish community, I hated the Zionists because of my teacher, I didn’t like anything or anyone who would have bound me to the Jewry. But I was still very Jewish. I don’t know if you can imagine how confused a 16-year-old boy can be, who had had such experiences.
In 1946, Ferenc met a Zionist youth worker, and joined Habonim and traveled to Pest for a six-week agricultural training seminar with 40 other young men and women. After the vote on the UN Partition Plan on November 29, 1947, Ferenc enlisted in the Haganah, and in September 1948 he arrived by ship in Haifa. After a short training, he fought in the army for two years. Miklos Rosenberg, seen in the photograph, was Ferenc’s only surviving cousin. Rosenberg moved to Israel in 1946 and was living on a kibbutz in Pardes Hanna. Both men eventually returned to Hungary. Ferenc married and had a family in Hungary. His son later immigrated to Israel.
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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.
War of Independence – Israel’s War of Independence began after the 1947 UN vote on the Partition Plan, dividing Palestine into two separate states: a Jewish and an Arab state. The Jewish side accepted the plan, while the Arab side rejected the plan and launched a war to annihilate the Jewish state. The war was fought along the entire border of Israel. The first stages took place from November 29, 1947 until the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. During this stage Arabs from within the borders of Israel fought against the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community). Control of the roads was crucial, and the Arab fighters had the upper hand, although the Haganah had some success in the weeks leading up to independence. The next stage of the war began after the declaration of the State of Israel. The various military groups that had been operating previously, such as the Haganah, Etzel, and Lehi, were combined to form the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Once Israel was an independent country, the surrounding Arab countries declared war and fought alongside the local Arab militias. The IDF defeated the Arab forces, setting the borders of the state. In 1949, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt signed armistice agreements with Israel, and the war officially ended on July 20, 1949. The War of Independence spanned the entire country and consisted of 39 military operations. Over 6,000 Israelis were killed and 15,000 were wounded. Many of the soldiers were new immigrants to Israel and Holocaust survivors.
