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Behind the Aegis

(53,831 posts)
Mon Jan 19, 2015, 04:23 AM Jan 2015

Hungarian Jews mark 70 years since Budapest ghetto liberation

Budapest (AFP) - Hungarian Jews and Soviet army veterans gathered Sunday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation by the Red Army of the Budapest ghetto in World War II.

Several hundred people, including dozens who survived the ghetto, attended the memorial service in the Grand Synagogue, Europe's largest place of Jewish worship.

---snip---

Some 600,000 Hungarian Jews perished during the Holocaust, most deported to Nazi death camp Auschwitz after the German occupation began.

Around 100,000 Jews remained in Budapest when the entire city was liberated on February 13, 1945.

more...

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Prior to WWII, there were about 650,000 Jews in Hungary, after the war about 200,000 Jews remained. 70% of the Jewish population of Hungary ceased to exist.

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Hungarian Jews mark 70 years since Budapest ghetto liberation (Original Post) Behind the Aegis Jan 2015 OP
.. Cha Jan 2015 #1
. irisblue Jan 2015 #2
... Rhiannon12866 Jan 2015 #3
... shenmue Jan 2015 #4
How many survivors are still with us? oberliner Jan 2015 #5
Thank you for posting this. Bohunk68 Jan 2015 #6

Bohunk68

(1,364 posts)
6. Thank you for posting this.
Mon Jan 19, 2015, 10:07 AM
Jan 2015

Over the last year, I have discovered quite a bit of my Hungarian heritage. My last name by birth is Tobias, which is Hebrew for "god is great." I was not raised with my dad's family after the divorce, as a result, I knew little about them. It has come about in the last year that I have had proof of my dad's Jewish heritage. I had found years before that his gf was Jewish and his gm was Hungarian. What I did not know was dad's mom's heritage. That I have discovered with the help of my Tobias cousins. Dad's mom turns out to also be Jewish, making dad 3/4 Jewish, and me, 3/8. None of us cousins ever knew except for the research we are all doing. Grandma came over in 1914 from the village of Satoraljaujhely in the Province of Zemplen, on the border with present-day Slovakia. According to Wikipedia, the town had had the second largest Jewish population in Hungary, by 1945, they were all gone. Hauled off to Auschwitz. Since I know that grandma left relatives behind, I am sure that I had cousins back in Hungary who went to the camps. It is a strange thing to know this now, so late in my life. Dad's grandmother came from Leles, Slovakia and was a Dobos, Reformed Church. According to the records that I have found to date, she and a lot of other Hungarians that came to my home town were from area. I recognized many surnames there in the Baptismal records that are names I knew from my hometown.

It has been an interesting search. It also turns out that I have also found several gay cousins. Woo woo.

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