8vo. 259 pages. Illustrated with tables. In Hungarian. SUBJECT (S) : Jews Hungary Heves Megye history; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Hungary Heves Megye; Heves Megye (Hungary) history. OCLC lists 23 copies worldwide. Reviewed below by Randolph L. Braham: "In historical terms, the Jewish communities of Heves County were relatively short-lived. As was the case of their counterparts in virtually all other provinces of Hungary, most of these communities lasted just a little over one hundred years. While some of the settlements were established toward the end of the eighteenth century, most came into being only during the nineteenth century. The Jews were originally encouraged to settle on the estates of the feudal landlords, who were eager to see them engage in trade and commerce - economic pursuits the landed aristocracy found demeaning and the basically illiterate peasantry was not qualified to fill. By 1840, the number of Jews living in the county was 1, 953; it reached a peak of 10, 928 in 1880. During the decades that followed, the size of the county's Jewish population gradually declined, and by the time of the anti-Semitic drive of the 1940s was only a little over 7, 000.The many historical, political, and socioeconomic factors determining the rise and fall of the Jewish communities in the county, including, among others those of Eger, Gyöngyös, Hatvan, Heves, and Tiszafüred, are described and analyzed in this well documented work by Dr. Ágnes Szegö Orbán, head of the public library of Tiszafüred. The author of A tiszafüredi zsidóság törtenete és demográfiája, Orban skillfully exploits the archival resources of the county to document the evolution of the communities, differentiating between the various phases of Hungarys national history. Using the tools of the social sciences, she highlights the social structure and the religious and welfare organizations of the communities, identifies the branches of trade, commerce and industry in which Jews played a pioneering role, and documents the increasingly difficult political climate in which the communities struggled to survive, especially after the end of World War I. As elsewhere in truncated Hungary, the anti-Jewish drive in Heves County intensified in 1938, following the adoption of the First Anti-Jewish Law. This was followed in rapid succession by many increasingly more ominous anti-Semitic acts, culminating in the tragedy that engulfed all of the Jews of Hungary after the German occupation of March 19, 1944. The last section of the book is devoted to the Holocaust era. It succinctly describes the measures that were enacted by the central and local authorities, including the humiliation, isolation, and expropriation of the Jews. It also reveals the horrible conditions that prevailed in the various ghettos, including those of Eger, Gyöngyös, Hatvan, Szúcsi-Bagólyuk, and Tiszafüred, and documents the inhumane conditions under which the Hungarian instruments of state power the civil service, the police and gendarmerie -- carried out the deportations. The attempt to reestablish some of the communities after the war was basically unsuccessful. It was doomed to failure from the beginning. For one thing, only a pitiful number of the relatively few survivors were eager to establish new roots in the towns and villages from which their loved ones had been so brutally deported to Auschwitz. Some of the survivors decided to relocate in the larger cities that for a while at least -- still had viable Jewish communities; others decided to emigrate at the first opportunity. Moreover, the policies of the Soviet-supported Communist regime that came to power shortly after the war discouraged the nurturing of traditional Jewish values or the reinvigoration of religious communities. Fine condition. (Comhist-13-2)
