History of the Jews in Carpathian Ruthenia

Beginning of Jewish settlement in Upper Hungary

(to be written)

Turkish occupation

(to be written)

Habsburg times

Czechoslovakia

(to be written)

Jewish-local relations in the eve of WWII

Memoirs and historical studies provide much evidence that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Rusyn-Jewish relations were generally peaceful abd harmonious. In 1939, census records showed that 80,000 Jews lived in the autonomous province of Ruthenia.

The attitude of some Ruthenians to their Jewish neighbors is vividly represented in the play by Oleksandr Dukhnovych (1803-1865), "Virtue is More Important than Riches briefed here. There were never any pogroms in the "Subcarpathian Rus"; this stands in strong contrast to other Ukrainian territories.

Final solution

During World War II, once the legal government of Hungary was overthrown by the Germans, the "Final Solution" was also extended to Carpathian Ruthenia.

In April 1944, 17 main ghettos were set up in cities in Ruthenia. 144,000 Jews were rounded up and held there. Starting on May 15, 1944: 14,000 Jews were were taken out of these sites to Auschwitz every day until the last deportation on June 7, 1944.

By June 1944 all the Jews from ghettos of Carpathian Ruthenia had been exterminated, together with other Hungarian Jews. Of more than 100,000 Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia, around 90,000 were murdered. Exept for those who managed to flee, only small number of Jews were saved by Rusyns who hid them.

Since the fall of Communism, archives have recently been opened to allow study of the facts about the implementation of the Final Solution in the province. The most discussed issue is whether, and to what extent, local collaborators helped the Nazis in performing the tasks and to what extent such collaboration was forced upon those collaborators by the threat or actuality of brutal violence against themselves.

References

• Alexender Dukhnovych, Virtue Is More Important Than Riches (translated by Elaine Rusinko), East European Monographs, 1995, 85pp., ISBN 0880332905.
• Henry Abramson, Collective Memory and Collective Identity: Jews, Rusyns, and the Holocaust, Carpatho-Rusyn American, vol. 17 (1994), no. 3.
• Agnes Sagvari,
  • Studies on the History of Hungarian Holocaust, Budapest, Napvilag, 2002. ISBN 9639350109, 151pp. (in English)
  • Tanulmanyok a magyarorszagi holokauszt törteneteböl, Budapest, Napvilag, 2002. ISBN 963935001x, 132pp. (in Hungarian)

External links

• Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base
• Ruthenian Holocaust
• Dr. Agnes Sagvari, "The Holocaust in Carpatho-Ruthenia" A historian analyzes the place of Carpathian Ruthenia in Hungarian irredentism, the scientific falsification of census records, the impact of the Hungarian administration, an archival review with full documentation.

Referenced By