Communisms Jewish Question (Europäisch-jüdische Studien – Editionen, 3)

Communisms Jewish Question

Europisch-jdische Studien
Editionen

European-Jewish Studies
Editions

Edited by the Moses Mendelssohn Center
for European-Jewish Studies, Potsdam,
in cooperation with the Center for Jewish Studies
Berlin-Brandenburg

Editorial Manager: Werner Tre

Volume 3

ISBN 978-3-11-041152-2

e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-041159-1

e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-041163-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Cover illustration: Presidium, Israelite National Assembly on February 20-21, 1950, Budapest (photographer unknown), Archive Az Izraelita Orszgos Gyls fnykpalbuma

www.degruyter.com

To the surprise of many, antisemitism resurfaced in East-Central Europe almost concurrently with the collapse of Communism. It was present not only in publications by minor political groups and in the texts of fringe politicians, many of whom were returning migrs, but was also present, at least in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, and with increasing frequency, in pronouncements made by public figures with close ties to the political centre. One frequent claim was that antisemitism was a tool for political and intellectual actors to rally support among social groups most affected by the transitional crisis. While this explanation is clearly a possibility, or even a likelihood, it fails to explain why such efforts were positively received by certain groups, or why a small but not insignificant minority in post-Communist countries proved receptive to the ideological message of political antisemitism.

Antisemitic politicians and ideologues were not acting in a vacuum. Sociological research conducted in the years immediately following the collapse of Communism showed that although the public expression of antisemitic views had been a punishable crime throughout the decades of Communism, and Communist regimes official ideology had rejected and condemned antisemitism, a substantial part of society continued to harbour antisemitic prejudice. Indeed, surveys have shown that in the early 1990s, at least 10 per cent of the adult population in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary could be regarded as strongly antisemitic. This proportion is clearly greater than what might be explained by the presence and activities of antisemitic lite fringe groups, which were still rather insignificant at the time. We may conclude therefore that in the four decades after World War II, anti-Jewish prejudice had survived beneath the surface of society, despite the prosecution of public displays of antisemitism, and the states official rejection of antisemitic ideology. Indeed, in view of the enduring nature of Communist regimes, whose tenure spanned several generations, it seems likely that antisemitism also received new impulses. This volume the documents published and commented upon herein supports the hypothesis formulated elsewhere that antisemitism: