Les Juifs de Pest-Budapest

Budapest, born from the union of Buda, Óbuda, and Pest, became in the nineteenth century one of the greatest centers of Jewish life in Central Europe, driven by an emancipation granted within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The community saw intense development of the Neolog (Hungarian Reform) and Orthodox currents, and was a center of Jewish press, literature, and scholarship. The great synagogue on Dohány Street, completed in the mid-nineteenth century, is one of the largest in the world. From May 1944, following the German occupation of Hungary, provincial Jews were deported en masse to Auschwitz, and the Jews of Budapest were confined to a ghetto and subjected to the violence of the Arrow Cross; a significant proportion nonetheless survived, partly thanks to the actions of diplomats from neutral countries. Budapest remains today one of the principal Jewish communities in Europe.

Sources & resources

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan