top of page
Part 1: Mother and Munkács
Leslie Rübner
BACKGROUND
18th and 19th Century Munkács
The first purpose-built synagogue in Munkács was founded in 1768. A yeshiva was set up in 1851. The first recorded Chief Rabbi of Munkács was Rabbi Haim Sofer, a direct descendant of the great Hatam Sofer of Pressburg. He was followed to the post by the first Munkácser Rebbe, Rabbi Shlomo Spira, in 1881.
In the truly multi-cultural Munkács, there were Ukrainians, Ruthenians, Czechs, and Slovaks, Gypsies and Magyars living side by side, but by far the largest ethnic group was made up of Jews. The Jewish population of Munkács grew from 2,131 in 1825, to 15,000 during the 19th century (a little over half of the town’s population). There were Galician & Hungarian Chassidic Jews rubbing shoulders with assimilated Jews, Zionists from Hanoar Hatzioni on the left, to Betar on the right. There were also non-Chassidic, Orthodox Jews and even some Neolog (Conservative) Jews. Most spoke Yiddish as their mother tongue and some Hungarian.
20th Century Munkács
Jews in general, and Carpathian Jews in particular, were better treated in Czechoslovakia, an enlightened and westernised country, than anywhere else in continental Europe.
From 1913 until his death in 1937, the Chassidim were led by Chief Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira, who had succeeded his father, the illustrious Rabbi Zvi Hersch, Rabbi Shlomo Spira’s son. The Rebbe, Chaim Elazar Spira had an only child, a girl named Chaya Frima Rivka. Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira, a highly respected person, was of unsurpassed dignity.
Chief Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira’s vast knowledge of Jewish, as well as secular matters, drew world leaders, such as the Czechoslovak presidents, Edvard Beneš and Tomáš Masaryk, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, and many others to seek his advice.
Some Jews, as well as Gentiles, considered Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira capable of miracles. His work on Jewish Law, at the tender age of eleven, started his literary career. He published about twenty works on Torah Law, Chassidism, Jewish philosophy, and customs, as well as on other subjects. His best-known work, the six-volume Minchas Elazar, is a highly regarded scholarly publication.
The Munkácser Rebbe, Chaim Elazar Spira, found the competition of Issachar Dov Rokeah, the Belzer Rebbe, difficult to handle. A war of words broke out between the two Chassidic sects and in 1925, the Belzer Rebbe returned to Poland and set up court back in Belz.
In 1933, the Rebbe’s daughter Chaya Frima Rivka married her father’s great-nephew, Rabbi Boruch Rabbinovitz. The marriage was the highlight of Munkács’ social calendar. See rare footage here: www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=8sWe603vHoY
The town was flooded with tens of thousands of Chassidim from all over the Globe. The Czechoslovak government waved all formalities at the border crossings to ease the journey of guests coming to celebrate. The wedding lasted eight days, beginning with 2,000 women leading the bride to the ceremony.
The Rebbe arrived at the venue in a carriage pulled by four white horses, surrounded by his Chasidim. The groom was carried over head to the chuppah (marriage canopy). Finally, after the ceremony, the groom was allowed to see his bride for the first time.
Munkács had many Jewish publications, including dailies in Yiddish, Hebrew and even Hungarian; Munkács became an important Jewish publishing centre.
Zionism in Munkács
Zionism came late to Munkács and while Zionists were never numerous, their outstanding achievement was the establishment of two successful schools.
Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira had considered Zionism an anachronism and therefore, he fought hard to eradicate it.
In the 1920s, a new Jewish elementary school opened, and it was followed in 1926, by the Hebrew Secondary School, the Gimnázium, where all instructions were conducted in Modern Hebrew. These schools catered for the numerically small, but influential Zionists. The Rebbe considered them to be heretics or atheists. He predicted that parents together with their families, by sending their offspring to this “house of abomination”, would be “wiped out”. The School sued the Rebbe in the secular courts and won. The Rebbe was fined for 1000 Korunas.
The Czechoslovak President, Thomas Masaryk, by giving a personal donation of 10,000 Korunas for this unique school, made a point of supporting Jewish aspirations; and the headmaster the Gimnázium, Chaim Klugel, was a leader of the Czechoslovak Jewish Party, who was elected to the national parliament in 1935.
Here is an example from his maiden speech: “…It is completely impossible to adequately describe the poverty in the area. The Jews… are affected equally along with the rest…. I strongly wish to protest any attempt to blame the poverty of the Sub-Carpathian Ruthenian peasantry on the Jews”.
Summing Up
Following the Great War, on 4th of June 1920, the peace treaty, signed at the palace of Trianon in Versailles, regulated the status of an independent Hungarian state and re-defined its borders. Compared to the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary (a part of Austria-Hungary), post-Trianon Hungary remained with only 28% of her original territory. The northern and north-eastern lands, including the town of Munkács, were awarded to the newly created Czechoslovakia and renamed Mukačevo.
Eighteen years later, on the 2nd November 1938, at the First Vienna Arbitration, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy returned the largely Magyar-populated territories of southern Slovakia and Carpathian Rus to Hungary. After the Second World War it was the Soviet Union who had annexed Carpathian Rus and attached it to the Ukraine.
Sadly, the Second World War also put an end to the Jewish golden age in Czechoslovakia. After the restoration to Hungary, Sub-Carpathian Jews were the first ones deported to Auschwitz and their destruction by the Germans and Hungarians, put an end to a thriving, vibrant and unique community.
MY MOTHER
My Maternal Family History
What's in a name?
On the 2nd of September 1907 Moshe (Mor) Bernstein and his wife Golda Rochel (Gizella) nee Spira of Munkács, were blessed with a first-born baby girl, my mother to be.
My Zeida, a talmid haham (a title given to someone well versed in Jewish law, a Torah scholar), was ignorant of the larger world. He spoke little or no Hungarian. He made a modest living by selling hay and fodder to the Hungarian Army garrison stationed in town. Gizella, on the other hand, was a worldly woman who spoke a couple of the local dialects including Hungarian. They decided to name the baby Zissel.
As only a Hungarian name could be registered, my grandmother instructed my grandfather to enter the name of Szerèn, by the time he reached the Registry Office he had forgotten the name and put her down as Rozália, but Szerèn remained her actual name.
The couple was blessed with a second little girl. My grandmother named her Gittel and in Hungarian Klari. My Zeida had gone through the same procedure as before and registered her as Sàra. One cannot help but wonder whether my grandfather had an agenda here. One more child, a boy, was born to Moshe and Golda Rochel, he was named Shimon (Simon).
Gizella and her sister Miriam (Mariska) were very close and she often came for long visits. She adored her sister’s children.
My Mother - a Child of the Great War
The Great War presented a dilemma for the Jews of Munkács. On the one hand, they wanted to do their duty to their Motherland but on the other, how can you keep the Torah commandments in a Christian Army? As it happened, despite the dilemma, a large number of recent Jewish immigrants in Munkács seized this opportunity to gain Hungarian Citizenship by joining up.
At the start of the Great War my mother was in the second year of a Hungarian language elementary school. After school she usually made it her business to visit her aged great-grandfather or when it was her turn, to play with the Rebbe's daughter Frima (Chaya Frima Rivka).
In 1915, the Russian Forces approached Munkács. One Shabbat, my mother’s great-grandfather was left at home while the rest of the family went to shul; a Cossack rode his horse into the house. In his fright he fell off his rocking chair, breaking his neck.
During the Great War, Jewish refugees mainly from Galicia, including the Belzer and Vishnitzer Rebbes, were flooding into Munkács. The community’s institutions were straining under the pressure the influx created. The Great War also brought famine and epidemics to Munkács and the surrounding areas. My mother and her mother went down with typhus. My mother survived, but her mother [my Grandmother] did not. Mariska [my Grandmother’s sister], after a decent time, married my grandfather, for her nieces and nephew to have a mother figure, but soon after the wedding she was also claimed by the epidemic. It fell on my mother, being the oldest, to keep house.
My mother told us the story about her brother Simon’s new pair of trousers. The trouser legs were too long. My mother shortened one leg and then the other, but one always ended up longer, so she continued until there were virtually no legs left!
The Years Between the Two World Wars
Bela Kun (Kohn) was a Hungarian Jewish prisoner of war in Russia where he caught the Communist bug and took part in the Bolshevik, October Revolution. November 1918, Kun with several hundred Hungarian Communists, Jews and Gentiles, were repatriated.
Rampant inflation, mass unemployment and food and energy shortages followed the Great War bringing about civil unrest and widespread protests. In October 1918, a shaky democratic coalition government was established in Budapest.
On 4 November 1918 Kun founded the Hungarian Communist Party and began a propaganda campaign against the government coupled with frequent marches and rallies and organised strikes. On 21 March 1919, Bela Kun declared a Soviet Republic in Hungary (Magyar Tanácsköztársaság).
At the same time, in the south an alternative fascist government was formed by Rear Admiral Miklos Horthy, a one-time Admiral of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The militia, called The White Guard was enforcing this alternative governments orders by a campaign of murder, torture and humiliation.
Summary executions of people whom they suspected of being Communists were common; these victims were often hanged in public and left hanging for a long time to serve as a warning to others. Horthy blamed the Jews for the many misfortunes befallen the Hungarians, including, for the Red Revolution.
On 6th August 1919 Admiral Horthy de Nagybánya, with the aid of French supported Romanian forces, entered Budapest. The Communist government collapsed, and its leaders fled back to the Soviet Union. In retaliation, these reactionary forces exacted revenge in a two-year wave of violent repression known as the White Terror. Horthy appointed himself Regent, head of state in March 1920.
International events saved Munkács’ Jewry from this rabid anti-Semite. On 4th June 1920, by the terms of Trianon, Munkács, with the rest of Carpathian Rus, became part of the newly created Czechoslovakia. My mother and her siblings, as the rest of the children of the area, had to switch from Hungarian to a Ruthenian language education.
My grandfather thought he would lighten my mother’s burden of house keeping by getting married for a third time. As a Cohen, in Jewish law, he could not marry a divorcee. Being middle aged, poor with no prospects, but with three children, his chances of a decent shidduch were not too great.
My grandfather was introduced to a girl with a limp and they married. As it turned out, she was not only lame, but clumsy too and in need of care. From then on, my mother had an extra person with serious disabilities to look after. Soon two new sisters, Olga and Bluma were born in quick succession. My Grandfather had little patience with his latest wife and life became difficult. The wife with her two daughters left the family home.
My mother married my father in 1935 and settled in Subotica, Yugoslavia, where I was born. In 1938 the Yugoslav authorities expelled them for being enemy (Hungarian) nationals. They found a flat in Budapest where they lived until 1956. Staying in Budapest saved my mother’s and our lives. Owing to the Red Army’s rapid advance, the Nazis had no time to liquidate all the Jews of Budapest.
Rabbi Boruch Rabbinovitz, who took over from his father-in-law also managed to escape to Budapest and eventually, despite of his anti Zionist convictions, found refuge in Palestine, but moved to America as soon as he could.
The Soviet Authorities re-settled Russians in the newly acquired Carpathian Rus and among them were Jews too. Today there is a Jewish community in Mukachevo (Munkács), but this community has no connection to the one that was destroyed in 1944.
bottom of page