Between Poland and Hungary: The Process of Jewish Integration from a Comparative Perspective

In the wake of the First World War Poland and Hungary became independent states. Poland, which for some 130 years had been partitioned between its neighbouring empires—Russia, Austria, and Prussia—now gained independence, including in its territory some predominantly Ukrainian and Belarusian areas which had been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Hungary, which had enjoyed extensive autonomy since the Ausgleich (Austro-Hungarian Compromise) of 1867, was now severed from the defunct Habsburg empire and became independent, but its boundaries were dramatically reduced as a result of the Treaty of Trianon. The two states, whose independence was part of a new European order based on the principle of national self-determination, were supposed to function as democracies and respect the rights of their minorities. In the immediate aftermath of 'the war to end all wars', there was reason to hope that the recognition of the Jews as equal citizens would lead to a golden age of Jewish integration. In practice, the reality was different. Both Poland and Hungary were established as independent states amidst violent internal and external conflicts over their boundaries and the nature of their regimes. In both states, these struggles, which continued throughout the whole interwar period, increasingly led to the dominance of an exclusionary nationalism. Jews were the central, although not the only, minority targeted by this policy of exclusion. Of course, the anti-Jewish violence that occurred during the struggles for the independence of both Poland and Hungary and the anti-Jewish policies and legislation of the 1920s and especially the 1930s should not be regarded as foreshadowing the Nazi catastrophe—which was primarily the result of actions by an external force—however, there is no doubt that in both countries Jewish integration was seriously endangered during the interwar period.

This chapter takes a comparative look at the integration of Jews in Poland and Hungary. The low point to which this process came on the eve of the Nazi occupation of both countries does not necessarily invalidate the hopes expressed at its beginning and during its development; however, the complexity and sensitivity of the issue was evident in both Poland and in Hungary from its inception. As will be shown below, throughout the modern era the attitude of the local nationalist elites to the Jews in both countries was characterized by tension and sometimes even by a vacillating movement between inclusion and exclusion. As has been convincingly argued by Artur Eisenbach, the prolonged and confrontational process of emancipation of the Jews should be seen as part of the general process of emancipation which also involved other social groups (burghers, peasants, women, other national minorities).¹ In both cases the question of the emancipation of the Jews was part of a broader struggle over the character of society and of the national movement.

Any comparative historical discussion raises questions over the subjects of comparison and the time periods being compared. Thus, for example, comparing the process of emancipation in France and in Germany is problematic because of the fact that France was a unified country throughout the era of emancipation and, indeed, well before, while in Germany until unification in 1871, the process unfolded in parallel at a different pace and with different features in the different German states.² In the case of Poland and Hungary, the data serving as a point of departure for comparison are even more complex. Throughout most of the period of the emancipation process, these countries were not fully independent political entities and much of the policy towards Jews was influenced and sometimes even determined by external forces—Habsburg Austria in Hungary's case, and, to even a greater extent, the three empires that had partitioned Poland. In Hungary, it is possible, at least, to speak of a more or less uniform process of development of the Jews' status and of the policy toward them and to the existence of a central discourse on the issue—within both the Habsburg government and the Hungarian elite. In Poland, by contrast, the status of the Jews from the late eighteenth century...