Victor Karady Bucarest, 24

Victor KARADY

Victor Karady, (1936, Budapest) has done all his career (to become directeur de recherche émérite in 2003) as fellow with the French CNRS and member of the Parisian Centre de Sociologie Européenne under the late Pierre Bourdieu. A part time university professor (since 1993) at the History Department of the Central European University in Budapest, his main fields of teaching and research concern the comparative social history of intellectuals and contemporary Jewry. He was in charge (2008) of an 'Advanced Team Leadership' project of the European Research Council to survey the formation of pre-socialist educated elites in six multi-cultural societies of East Central Europe. Last books in English : The Jews of Europe in the Modern Era. A Socio-Historical Outline, Budapest, New York, Central European University Press, 2004; (with Peter Tibor Nagy), Educational Inequalities and Denominations. Database for Transylvania, 1910, Budapest, John Wesley Publisher, 2009; Ethnic and Denominational Inequalities and Conflicts in Elites and Elite Training in Modern Central Europe, Budapest, John Wesley Publisher, 2012. See : http://mek.oszk.hu/10900/10980.

Abstract

The study offers a quantified analysis of trends of Jewish baptism in Hungary on the strength of serial data emanating from published sources as well as socio-historical surveys on baptised Jews in Budapest and other cities. These trends are all embedded in long term processes of Jewish assimilation as well as in escape behaviours in anti-Semitic crisis situations, like in the 1919-20 White Terror or in 1938-1944 marking the period of Nazification. The parallel scrutiny of apostasy in other denominations and the entries into Judaism (most conspicuously after the prohibition of mixed marriages in the ’Third anti-Jewish Law’ in 1941) point to heuristically significant contrasts between Jewish and non Jewish motivations for changes of religion. Motivations together with the numbers of baptised concerned and the direction of conversions show serious alterations in time, like before and after Liberation in 1945. If in Hungary one cannot identify a relative over-representation of converts to Protestantism under the liberal monarchy, this situation evolves after 1919. During the post-1945 transition converts opt preferentially for Protestants, a marked shift from earlier habits. The socio-demographic patterns of converts oppose them sharply to collective characteristics of rank and file Jewry, as exemplified in the case of Budapest.

Key words

Assimilation, social integration, religious indifference, nazification, anti-Semitic crises, social stigmatization of Jews, escape from stigmaized identity

Jewish Conversions in Modern Hungary from the Multi-Ethnic Nation State to Socialism (1896-1960)

in Andrei Cornea, Mariuca Stanciu (eds.), To be or not to be a Jew. On Conversion to or Renouncing Judaism, Bucarest, Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2014, 159-180..

Historical introduction

Modern Hungary was a uniquely multi-cultural society, an exceptional case of state formation in Europe during the long 19^th century. Up to 1900 the country was lacking an even formal ethnic-linguistic majority in the sense that the majority of the population was not speaking the state language as a mother tongue. A Magyar linguistic majority was achieved only by 1900 following a long process of linguistic assimilation of several minority groups, among them the ‘linguistic loyalty’ of many bilingual Jews, Germans and Slovaks weighed heavily in relevant census data. The core Magyar population, the politically dominant cluster, represented according to early 19^th century statistical reports no more than 35-45 % in the country. Moreover there was a not less significant denominational disparity in the denominational field as well. No religious group had a qualified majority with (by 1880) 47 % Roman Catholics, 14,7 % Calvinists, 8,2 % Lutherans, 0,4 % Unitarians, 25 % Eastern (Greek) Christians and a growing number - 4-5 % - of Jews. The country became much more homogeneous after the calamitous collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918 and the not les tragic peace treaty at the Trianon Palace in Versailles, whereby the former multi-cultural state lost some two thirds of its territory and population (among them a million and a half Hungarian speakers proper).

As to the situation of Jews modern Hungary has changed from an ‘assimilationist’ nation state friendly to its minorities, like Jews, who were ready to accept the ‘assimilationist social contract’ offered to cultural minorities by the liberal Magyar aristocracy and gentry, to a small ethnically quasi-united nation state with more or less strongly anti-Jewish policies leading to the Holocaust in 1944 and to Communism afterwards. Since our present study will cover most of this long period, herewith the main milestones of political history for reference, including several major socio-political upheavals (with radical breaks of continuity and stability) and regime changes :

o 1867 Compromise with Austria (following the 1848-49 war of independence against Vienna) allowing the building of a liberal nation state with a multi-ethnic population – Dual Monarchy with philo-semitic policies.

o 1918-19 defeat in WWI, anti-monarchic revolution, followed by a temporary Communist take-over (with significant participation of Jewish intellectuals).

o 1919 August, counter-revolutionary White Terror conducive to the anti-liberal and anti-semitic ’Christian Course’ regime which introduced academic ’numerus clausus’ in 1920 to curb Jewish enrollments in universities, as the first anti-Jewish law in contemporary Europe in a country having proclaimed Jewish emancipation in the 19^th century.

o 1938-1944 Nürnberg-type ’Jewish laws’ leading to the Holocaust after the German occupation of the country (19. March, 1944), an ally of Nazi Germany in the war against Soviet Russia. Deportation of provincial Jewry and part of the Jews of Budapest with the diligent participation of the collaborationist Hungarian authorities, administration and police forces.

o 1945 Soviet occupation with transitional democratic government (excluding rightist parties).

o 1948 Communist rule of Stalinist type (strong Jewish-Communist participation)

o 1956 October anti-totalitarian revolution - largely prepared by Jewish ’reform Communist’ intellectuals (suppressed by the Red Army)

The movement of Jewish baptism was connected – as a socio-historical precondition – precisely to the West European type of the process of assimilation to the Hungarian ruling class in the country. This was a triple faced process based on a set of constraints Jews met in the nationalist environment of the Magyar nation building process, the attraction of the same offering integration in a society under modernization, and the result of strategic agency for socio-professional mobility, economic success and search for integration in elite circles. We cannot go into details as to the complexities and even contradictions of this process. Let us just quote its main strategic actions and technicalities :

- language switch of Jews by adopting Magyar as a mother tongue up to 87 % by 1910;

- religious modernization following precepts and principles of the Berlin Haskalah : schism

between reform Jewry (’Neologs’) and their Orthodox counterparts after the 1868 ’Jewish Congress’

- significant over-investment in Hungarian schooling and advanced education (even as against Jewish traditional sducation)

- movement of nationalization of Jewish surnames (60 % of surname magyarizations due to Jews in 1893-1913)

- growth of mixed marriages (up to 20 % in 1915 and again in 1937 for Jewish grooms i the capital city)

- political ’Magyarism’, that is the adoption of the values, ideals and projects of the Magyar nation state, self-identification of Jews to Magyar nationalism

However it was, baptism represented a borderline action and behavior in this context of assimilation and national acculturation, because it consisted in the most radical form of self-denial via rejection of Jewish identification, abandonment of the inherited community ties, refusal of religious and ethnic solidarity, and cutting the thread of self-reproduction of the group along family lines. Let us summarize, there again only succinctly, the main socio-historical background conditions of the development of the movement of Jewish baptism in the long run.

The overarching condition of the multiplication of conversions is linked to the relative anonymity of life style in urban environments. City life involved, among other things, various forms of quotidian togetherness, cohabitation and collaboration of Jews and non Jews, providing Jews with the experience of the Christian way of life and belief system as well as the objective possibility to change religion without actually changing one’s living conditions.The exceptionally rapid urbanization of Jews in Hungary (like elsewhere) when it became legally possible (practically after the 1840 law of ‘semi-emancipation’ only) opened the door to the this form of dissidence by severance of community ties. Most conversions actually took place in Budapest and bigger cities, as it is demonstrated below on tables 1. and 3. To this it must be known that by 1910 some 22,4 % of Jews by religion in the country were inhabitants of Budapest as against a mere 3,9 % of non Jews.

The decisively high level of secular advanced education of Jews was another positive condition of the multiplication of conversions. In school benches Jews and non Jews mixed together, especially in Protestant gymnasiums, the preferential choice of secondary schools by Jews, especially in Budapest and some other cities. In Christian schools the proselytizing efforts of the Church authorities concerned should not be neglected, obviously enough in this context. Now, relative over-schooling became the mark of Jewish efforts at cultural integration, professional mobility (in the educated middle class) and social ‘assimilation’ in the same. Thus in the half century following the legal emancipation of Hungarian Jewry (1867-1919) Jews made up permanently around 22 % of secondary school graduates and by 1900 some 30 % -55 % of students in university faculties of Medicine, Law, Engineering, Architecture, Veterinary science, etc.

Educational mobility was leading directly to non the less strong trends of the exceptionally fast professional mobility of Jews in modern middle class brackets, especially in the so-called ‘free or liberal professions’. By 1910 up to 40 – 60 % of lawyers, medical doctors, vets, architects, engineers, managers and executives of the whole private economy were Jewish, with a share of Jews in the population not exceeding 5 %. It is true that this excessive over-representation of Jews among those secondary school and university graduates active in competitive private economic markets was in part due to the fact that Jews with similar degrees and educational credentials could not or could rarely be admitted without baptism to civil service or local administrative positions. Candidates to these were openly encouraged if nor properly pressured to get converted even in the Liberal Monarchy before 1919. Afterwards, under numerus clausus in universities, even conversion did not help Jewish aspirants, the date of eventual conversion counting in their chances of access to or advancement in a middle class post controlled by public authorities.

In more concrete terms, converts were often asked by those in charge of registering conversions – both on the Jewish and the Christian side concerned – about their motivations. Now such declarations may have obeyed to situational needs to explain away an action which those of the abandoned community would consider as shameful, the evocation of motifs did also respond – beyond situational convenience of the moment – to a logic of historical practicality, as this will be appear most relevantly in the last two lines of table 9. below. Other empirical observations of motifs mentioned by Jewish apostates lead to a number of potentially convergent (not necessarily exclusive) elements in the motivation structure of Jewish conversions. They may indeed overlap or coincide, liable to complete each other, as follows :

o Religious motifs - ‘change of ‘faith’ : real conversion, proselitism, attraction of the Christian belief system;

o Cultural attraction of Christianity, Christian civilization (music, painting, architecture, Gregorian songs, picturesque divine service, etc.);

o Professional advancement in a field of career chances defined by the non Jewish status (like access to or promotion in civil service careers);

o Social conformism : adoption of the majority or a socially dominant cult, ‘assimilation’ : formal step to the integration in majority society where identity is still influenced or defined by religion;

§ Such a step was often accompanied or completed or conditioned by other forms of ‘assimilationist strategies’ and actions like Magyarization of the surname, mixed marriage, enrollment of children in a school run by a Christian Church, etc.;

o Scheme to avoid a mixed Jewish-Gentile marriage;

§ Of course the Christian partner in such a match could (between 1895 and 1942) also convert to Judaism. This happened not quite infrequently for Christian brides, for example, but then this was an option for the socially disadvantageous status of a ‘Jewish family’;

o Escape from a stigmatized community and identity under menace (under Nazification), life saving illusion during the Shoah, without or with just limited religious implications proper;

o Final stage of secularization : giving up public religious identity (by becoming ‘without religion’ as among Jewish Communists);

o Formal ‘spiritual homogenization’ of a family (with baptized or Christian born members).

§ Ex. Desire of a partner in a denominationally mixed couple to be buried together in the same cemetery and tomb

The movement of baptism has been inscribed and embedded in the ever-changing societal conditions of Jewish integration in Hungarian society. My study is directly or indirectly based on the exploitation of data drawn from the following sources :

- published global statistics on changes of religious affiliation in Hungary

o on the country level

o specially for Budapest;

- computerized prosopographical surveys on those leaving or entering Judaism in Budapest according to relevant records of the Budapest Neolog Rabbinate (as well as those in Ujpest, a suburb of the capital city) – several years for 1900-1960 (with lacking years);

- on similar surveys in Pécs (1920-1944) and Szeged (1900-1948);

- specific surveys in 14 Budapest Christian parishes and community offices on baptism records from 1895 to 1960 (with some years lacking).

Trends of baptism before full swing Nazification

Let us start the overview of some essential global results with the changing quantitative trends of baptism over time, as presented in Table 1.

1. Global trends of Jewish baptisms (average yearly numbers) in Hungary and Budapest (selected years, 1896-1943)[1]

	Hungary	% women	Budapest	% Budapest
1896-1904	424	49,1	171	40,3
1910-1913	508	48,4	cc. 101 ?	23,8 ?
1914-17	518	50,4	?	?
1919	7146	42,1	5940	83,1
1920	1925	43,1	1352	70,2
1921	827	51,9	505	61,1
1922	499	54,5	328	65,7
1925	412	60,0	285	69,2
1931	636	59,1	379	59,6
1932	688	53,8	467	67,9
1933	909	55,9	607	66,8
1934	1128	52,9	732	64,9
1935	1261	53,6	890	70,6
1936	1647	51,1	1141	69,3
1937	1598	50,9	1058	66,2
1938	8584	49,8	6127	71,4
1939	6070	55,5	3558	58,68
1940	3245	59,1	1866	57,5
1941	3072	55,4	1607	52,3
1942	3662	53,7	2052	56,0
1943	?	?	1601	?

	Hungary	% women	Budapest	% Budapest
1896-1904	424	49,1	171	40,3
1910-1913	508	48,4	cc. 101 ?	23,8 ?
1914-17	518	50,4	?	?
1919	7146	42,1	5940	83,1
1920	1925	43,1	1352	70,2
1921	827	51,9	505	61,1
1922	499	54,5	328	65,7
1925	412	60,0	285	69,2
1931	636	59,1	379	59,6
1932	688	53,8	467	67,9
1933	909	55,9	607	66,8
1934	1128	52,9	732	64,9
1935	1261	53,6	890	70,6
1936	1647	51,1	1141	69,3
1937	1598	50,9	1058	66,2
1938	8584	49,8	6127	71,4
1939	6070	55,5	3558	58,68
1940	3245	59,1	1866	57,5
1941	3072	55,4	1607	52,3
1942	3662	53,7	2052	56,0
1943	?	?	1601	?

	Hungary	% women	Budapest	% Budapest
1896-1904	424	49,1	171	40,3
1910-1913	508	48,4	cc. 101 ?	23,8 ?
1914-17	518	50,4	?	?
1919	7146	42,1	5940	83,1
1920	1925	43,1	1352	70,2
1921	827	51,9	505	61,1
1922	499	54,5	328	65,7
1925	412	60,0	285	69,2
1931	636	59,1	379	59,6
1932	688	53,8	467	67,9
1933	909	55,9	607	66,8
1934	1128	52,9	732	64,9
1935	1261	53,6	890	70,6
1936	1647	51,1	1141	69,3
1937	1598	50,9	1058	66,2
1938	8584	49,8	6127	71,4
1939	6070	55,5	3558	58,68
1940	3245	59,1	1866	57,5
1941	3072	55,4	1607	52,3
1942	3662	53,7	2052	56,0
1943	?	?	1601	?

There were rather few cases per year and population size (5-6 per 10.000) in the Liberal Monarchy, before 1918. There was however a spectacular growth in the 1918-20 revolutionary and counter-revolutionary crisis years. The frequencies in question grew significantly under the post-1919 regime of ‘Christian Course’ (cc. 10-12 per 10 000 up to the 1930s, marked initially by a strongly anti-Semitic agitation and the introduction of anti-Jewish academic numerus clausus (1920). A significant increase in the numbers is perceptible after the Nazi take-over in Germany (January 1933). This was leading up to the crisis years of 1938 and 1939, date of the first ‘Jewish Laws’ in the country, followed by several major legislative restrictions imposed on Jews in terms of employment, middle class economic or professional activities, possession and exploitation of landed estates, mixed marriages and sexual contacts with non Jews, etc. The later war years, after the recapture of territories lost at the Trianon Peace Treaty in 1921, brought about a relative decrease of the frequency of baptisms, but still on a high level. In the years before the Shoah (1944) the yearly proportion of Jewish converts oscillated around 50-60 per 10 000.

But Table 1 and further on Table 3 offer insights into basic demographic characteristics of converts over time. It is important to note that (especially after 1918) a permanent and very high over-representation of Jews from the capital city can be observed in all periods concerned before the Shoah. As stated initially, baptism was a heavily urban occurrence with very small impact on more traditional minded rural Jewry. The over-representation of Budapest diminished naturally in the years of World War II, due to the growth of provincial (and rural) Jewry in the newly reconquered regions. While in the inter-war decades Budapest Jewry made up close to half of the Jewish population in the country, after 1940 its share went down again to less than one quarter. This was of course also accountable to the fact that earlier conversion trends also affected much more decisively the Jews in the capital.

As to the gender balance, a slight male majority before 1918 became a not quite decisive female majority afterwards. This can be interpreted with some precaution as follows. In the liberal monarchy the main motivation of baptism must have been of socio-professional nature, touching above all active males, since women appeared on the labor market in relatively limited proportions only. During the years of the ‘Christian course’, conversion would not much help any more active males to get admitted or promoted in civil service positions after conversion. Other motivations, more often affecting women, would thus replace earlier professional ones. It may also be added that among young Jewish males, liable to seek baptism, many died in the Great War and others emigrated after the failure of the 1918-19 revolutions and under the menace of the White terror, a behavior of escape less typical of middle class Jewish women, possibly prone to baptism. The upturn of the gender balance in and after the war can be detected in the figures of Jewish baptism as well.

Special statistical observations of baptismal trends in the 1918-19 crises may bring us closer to the interpretation of baptism in situational terms in particular historical junctures in the short run for which data on baptisms are available on a monthly basis.

2. Conversions during the 1918-1919 socio-political crises (survey data for Budapest)[2]

	Average monthly numbers	Relative numbers 1918 = 1,0
1918	3,1	1,0	Defeat in the war, October revolution fall of the Dual Monarchy
1919 January-March	11,0	3,4	Precarious ‘liberal democratic’ rule
1919 April-July	80	19,8	Soviet Republic
1919 August-December	40,2	13,4	White Terror
1920	11,4	3,9	End of White Terror
1921	2,8	1,2	New ‘Christian Course’ regime

On the basis of the numbers recorded in 1918 – still a ‘normal year’ for all practical purposes in this context – the growth of the first panic reactions can be observed already at the end of the transitory ‘democratic rule’ following the Hungarian October Revolution. With several Jewish participants in the new government and thanks to the support of the radical-socialist circles (like the Galilei circle or the Society for Social Science) with a majority of Jewish intellectuals among members, the transitory regime quickly earned the reputation of a regime under Jewish influence. This triggered a manifest reaction among Jews with ‘assimiliationist’ proclivities, liable to fear an expectable anti-Jewish backlash, objectified in the multiplication (by more than three times) of the number of baptisms. Such ‘preemptive conversions’ reached a very high tide under the forthcoming Communist rule of the Hungarian Republic of Soviets during its 133 days in the Spring months of 1919. Communism in Hungary could be even more easily associated with Jews, because of the presence of Jewish communist intellectuals in most leading positions of the self-proclaimed revolutionary regime allied and associated with Soviet Russia. Professional an ‘bourgeois’ Jews were just as heavily persecuted under Communist rules as others considered as acolytes of the old regime, but Jews concerned could expect – and duely so, with the benefit of hindsight – an even worst anti-Jewish reaction afterwards. Hence the radical increase of the number of baptism as a preventive scheme, rather typical among representative of the highest circle of the Jewish entrepreneurial class. One could expect a further growth of conversions under the murderous anti-Jewish White terror, but this did not happen. Apparently most of those ready to engage themselves in the classical pattern of escaping from Judaism did so already as a preemptive measure. Conversions did continue, to be sure, with a high but diminishing frequency in 1920, but stopped afterwards, immediately when the ‘consolidation government’ took over in 1921. This case of ‘situational assimilation’ can be regarded as a good example for the extent to which the trend of Jewish conversions could essentially obey the rule of temporary outside pressures when specific Jewish clusters, especially in big towns, had been earlier prepared for this final step of self-denial after longer processes of acculturation, secularization and social togetherness with their Christian counterparts.

3. Entries into Judaism and returnees (formerly Jewish) in Hungary : annual average numbers

	Judaizers	Among them returnees	% of women among Judaizers	% of women among returnees	% of retur- nees in the provinces
1898-1904	79,4	32,4 %	56,9 %	43,4 %	?
1905-1913	112,3	25,3 %	60,1 %	43,4 %	?
1914-1917	86,8	18,7 %	70,4 %	42,9 %[3]	?
1919-1920	152,5	18,0 %	68,9 %	?	?
1921-1929	276,4	49,0 %	61,5 %	39,2 %[4]	?
1930-1937	165	33,2 %	71,8 %	53,6 %	24,4 %[5]
1938-1940	109	33,1 %	53,1 %	32,1 %	31,4 %[6]
1941-1942	269,5	26,2 %	88,9 %	66 %

Table 3. offers a quite exceptional set of qualification of Christian Judaisers, those opting for a formal entry into Jewish communities. Their numbers change significantly over time. In pre-1919 Hungary they represented a mere one fifth or one sixth of Jewish apostates. Their raw numbers grew considerably, but their proportions obviously decreased during and after the 1918-19 crisis. This seems to be an astonishing result in times of anti-Semitic backlash, when many Jews did their utmost to escape from Judaism. A similar situation will emerge in the late 1930s and most conspicuously in the early 1940s, the years when the first anti-Jewish laws were already enacted and implemented. The explanation might be found in a dual mechanism generating conversions into Judaism. First, when there is a sudden increase of abandonment of Jewry, it is followed in due course by the reconversion – return – of some recent apostates after the appeasement of the crisis situation, the relaxation of the menace having provoked panic reactions of escape and/or via the logic of deception in the fold of the new faith, the adopted Christian Church. This may be observed particularly in the 1920s, as attested by the high proportion of returnees in these years, almost half of the converts concerned. The high numbers of Judaizers in the early 1940s responded to another logic.

Indeed one must not disregard the attraction of Jewry precisely in periods of anti-Jewish hysteria, due to the moral superiority of the innocently persecuted or those with whom solidarity ties had been earlier established in the course of political, educational or other forms of cooperation and interaction. The latter include obviously sexual togetherness as well. This is most evidently demonstrated in the 1940, before the 3^rd anti-Jewish law, that outlawed sexual relations between Jews and non Jews after the 1. November 1941. Since by that time the conversion of the Jewish partner into a Christian faith would not affect his (or her) legal status as a Jew, the only way to elude the Nazi type racist legislation consisted in the Judaization of the Christian partner in such a match. Attraction of Jewry in times of mounting anti-Semitic crisis is proven by other indicators as well notably by those of mixed marriages. In Hungary (particularly in Budapest) the rates of matrimonial mixing reached their highest proportions in the very years preceding the passage of the first anti-Jewish law (1938). More official public opinion turned anti-Jewish, more there were people endorsing and cultivating forms of solidarity with Jews, sometimes even objectified by getting converted to Judaism and/or accepting mixed marriages.

This was most typical of Christian women, by the way, as shown by the constant female majority of Judaizers, while women were always just a minority among returnees. This may be interpreted in terms of the unequal power relations between genders in the contemporary marriage market in general, most specifically in the majority of Jewish-Gentile marriages. In the patriarchal family structure of the time the man was most often the head of the family as the bread winner, the older partner in the couple and – following traditional values – the male, corresponding to the traditional principle of male superiority. To this must be added in a relatively high proportion of Jewish-Gentile marriages the social superiority too of the male partner in terms of education or/and social class. Due to this, more Jewish bridegrooms than brides could actually convince or oblige their Christian brides to get converted into Jewry before marriage, in order to avoid formal heterogamy and secure the Jewish upbringing of future offspring, even if on the whole such ‘preemptive Judaizations’ never ceased to constitute a minority only among Jewish-Gentile matches. A similar imbalance could be observed at the expense of women in figures related to pre-matrimonial contract related to the religion of would-be children.

The higher proportions of males among ‘returnees’ as in Table 3. may be explained probably by the higher proportions of earlier ‘opportunistic conversions’ among them, baptisms for professional advancement. When such advancement was blocked or became inoperative after retirement, for example, many of such converts would return to the religion of their ancestors.

Finally let us have a look of Jewish conversions before the Shoah in a comparative view, in the framework of the general trend of changes of religion affecting all other faiths established in the ‘religious market place’ of old regime Hungary. Clearly enough, there have been enormous discrepancies in proclivities to proselytism both over time and among religious clusters. On the whole, the long established, biggest Western

4. The number of conversions by 100 000 populations in various denominations in Hungary - selected inter-war years[7]

	Rom. Cath.	Greek Cath.	Calvi- nists	Luthe- rans	Greek Orthod.	Unita- rians	*Jews*	Bap- tists	Alto gether
1920	17	42	58	57	153	257	*407*	655	55
1925	31	45	95	115	338	776	89	447	55
1930	39	81	118	160	625	1484	*147*	830	76
1935	44	87	122	155	789	566	*299*	767	85
1938	38	99	98	113	861	853	*2.113*	636	152

Christian clusters showed the lowest conversion scores of all, Lutherans being the relatively most inclined among them to religious mobility, followed by Calvinists and Catholics. Smaller Churches like the Baptists, the Unitarians or the Greek Orthodox proved to be much less capable to deter their believers from apostasy. Thus mobility in general appears to have been largely a function of size, bigger churches being more in a position to control their faithful. But none of the Christian churches exhibited, in spite of heavy oscillations in their figures, any systematic trends of growth or decrease of the proportions of converts over the two decades under scrutiny. For Jews the figures of Table 4. on the contrary display the already discussed trend of development. The high rate of 1920, still a year under the aegis of White terror, drops to a low one in 1925, only to confirm the steady rise in the further inter-war years reaching an apogee of sorts in 1938, the date of the first anti-Jewish law proper. On the whole and obviously enough, Jews proved to be much more ‘convertible’ during these ominous decades (under the dominant mood of anti-Semitic menace) than their Christian counterparts, not exposed to any kind of specific collective danger, except for the proselytizing agency of their brotherly churches.

The balance sheet of Jewish baptism during Nazification and afterwards[8]

Table 5. gives a retrospective overview of the territorial and residential distribution of the population with Jewish affiliations as it was observed in the 1941 census, in the very midst of the process of Nazification.

5. Residential distribution of Jews and Christians of Jewish origin in 1941 following the ‘Second Jewish Law’[9]

	Jews and Christians of Jewish origin Altogether	Among them % of Christians regarded as ‘Jews by Law’	Among them % of those of Jewish back ground regarded as ‘Christians by Law’	% of all Chris-tians of Jewish background
Budapest	222.384	10,0 %	7,1 %	17,1 %
Cities in Tria-non Hungary	43 880	4,2 %	4,6 %	8,8 %
Cities returned to Hungary (1939-41)	91.041	?	?	4,1 %
Counties of Tri-anon Hungary	131 387	4,1 %	4,6 %	8,7 %
Other counties	229 190	?	?	1,95 %
Altogether	786 555	?	?	7,8 %

Indeed the 1939 ‘Second anti-Jewish law’ classified Jews in three categories following closely the Nuremberg legislation of Nazi Germany, Jews by religion, Christians (mostly converts since 1. August 1919) regarded as Jews and Christians of Jewish background (mostly earlier converts) regarded as Christians. One can consider these data as delimitating clusters by their objectified degrees of ‘assimilation’, however imprecise such definitions may have been. The basic differences suggested by these figures are anyhow quite sharp, offering a hierarchy of sorts of residential patterns of ‘assimilation’. Budapest is the very champion in this context with one sixth of Christians among its population with Jewish affiliations. Even among those of Jewish background, earlier converts – regarded as Christians by law – prevail over more recent converts, regarded as ‘Jews by law’. Big cities and counties of provincial Hungary follow suit with half of the Budapest proportion of converted Jews, representing one out of eleven in the relevant groups of residents. Interestingly enough, there was practically no difference here between big towns and other settlements, though it is known from other sources that by that time most Jews were actually urbanized in smaller townships or living in large rural communities. Clearly enough, much less Jewish converts were identified in cities and other counties reoccupied by Hungary in the years 1939-1941. Such differences may be understood with reference to both the generally lesser degree of ‘assimilation’ in the peripheries of the old kingdom marked by both ethnically mixed populations and the absence or weakness of proselytizing pressures in less anti-Semitic social environments (as in Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia of the inter-war years). Wherever (like in Romanian Transylvania) anti-Semitism was prevalent throughout the inter-war decades, it was heavily combined with anti-Magyar pressures as well, so that mostly Magyarized Jews could not hope to escape it via simple baptism. On the whole 13,4 % of people of Jewish background in Trianon Hungary and 7,8 % of the temporarily enlarged territory of the state were Christians by religion in the period preceding the Holocaust. It is confirmed hereby that the capital city was the hotbed of ‘assimilation’, more than other cities in the country.

We can go further in the study of ‘situational changes’ in monthly trends of Jewish baptism thanks to local survey data, notably those of Budapest. Evidence here is of course incomplete, even for the city, since it does not take into consideration the relevant data liable to be collected from other sources of the capital (the Orthodox rabbinate of Pest, the Buda and Óbuda rabbinate and those from the important Jewish community of suburban settlements, like Újpest or Kőbánya). However, given the overwhelming size of the Pest neolog community within the urban agglomeration, these figures can exemplify developments for the whole country.

6. Jewish baptisms in Budapest during the Shoah and under Communism[10]

	Monthly average numbers	Historical events
1944 January – March 18	65	‘Jewish laws’ applied, but no persecutions proper
1944 March 20-30	310	German occupation since 19 March
1944 April	981	6 April, yellow star enforced
1944 May	661	15 May, deportations start in the provinces
1944 June	420	Deportations continue in the provinces
1944 July	587	8. July deportations halted for Budapest
1944 August	340	Peace searching government appointed
1944 September	184	Secret negotiations for peace
1944 October 1 – 11 only	36	15. October, local Nazis seize power
1944 Oct. 11 – 1945 March	No data	Murderous rule of local Nazis in the city
1945 March 12 – 31 Dec.	29	18 January 1945, Liberation of Pest Ghetto by Red Army
1946	25,5	Transitional democracy
1947	19,1	Transitional democracy
1948	17,5	Communist take-over
1949	8,8	Beginning of Stalinist type Communist rule
1950	6,9	Stalinist dictatorship
1951	4,8	- “ -
1952	3,4	- “ -
1953	3,2	- “ -
1954	3,5	- “ -
1955	3	- “ -
1956 January - November	1,8	- “ -
1956 December	12	23 Oct – 4 November national uprising, followed by mass emigration
1957 January – February	10	beginning of post- revolutionary consolidation
1957 March – December	2,7	Kadar’s regime established
1958 – 1959	1,9
1960	0,8
1961-1975	0,2

Monthly numbers were high enough already before the German ‘invasion’ (greeted by a good part of the administration and the population) on the 19^th of march 1944. But the presence of the Wehrmacht, followed almost immediately by drastic anti-Jewish measures (the yellow star was imposed on April 6) triggered off a vast wave of ‘escapist’ type baptism, a tide five times exceeding that of the precedent months. In April the tide went up to the level fifteen times higher than earlier and remained on almost comparable scale (exceeding 8-9 times the pre-invasion level) during the months of the deportation of provincial Jewry (15. May till early July 1944). A relative recess occurred in August as a visible consequence the halting of deportations on the 8^th of July and the appointment of a new government in August in charge of peace negotiations with Moscow, given the crossing of the Eastern borders by the Red Army. In this new situation allowing for the hope of the end of the war and the persecutions the monthly figures fell in the first days of October to a level much below that preceding the entry of Germans. There are no further data in community records for the period following the mid-October 1944 marked by the ghettoization of most of Budapest Jewry and the murderous ravages of local Nazi bands till the liberation of Pest by the Red Army on the 18. January and the whole city by the 13. of February 1945.

This is nevertheless far from being the end of this story. Historical junctures did play a role further, though with less ample oscillations, in continued trends of Jewish conversions after the end of the anti-Jewish regime. Instead of being exhausted as a function of the old political regime, the trend continued on a relatively high level. If absolute numbers were somewhat diminishing in the three post-war years, compared to the 1944 crisis year, given the enormous population losses suffered by Budapest Jewry in the meantime, their level corresponded henceforth to those already on the rise in the early 1930s. For many survivors – among them a number of widows, orphans, members of dismantled families, with horrible experiences behind them - the return to normality represented another form of ordeal: with their homes occupied, confiscated or destroyed, their furniture and personal goods robbed, some of their former persecutors (the ‘petty Nazis’) turned Communist party activists. This post-traumatic situation demanded decisive responses by survivors. Some opted for Communism, a quasi-natural choice, given the prestige of the liberating army. Others joined Zionist groups in search of a new spiritual haven or – especially for younger people – to prepare the final break with the country that had betrayed their trust. Some secularized survivors turned back to religious practice, while others would reject it even more vehemently than before. Among them many continued to look for self-denial and complete integration in a Christian church. This is what explains the high level of the trend of baptism in Budapest during the post-war transition to Communism.

This situation came to an end after the ‘Year of the turn’ (1948) in Hungarian communist historiography. In an atheist political dictatorship there was no point in adopting a new religious identity, since religion as such became target of a rapidly progressive process of marginalization, when not persecution proper.

The fast drop in the numbers, reduced to a one digit figure in the years following 1948, is a witness to this change. Still one observes another upturn of the trend, however limited it appears to be, during and after the national uprising in October-November 1956. The new crisis situation, though it was not comparable to the earlier ones, brought about the same reaction of escape among a limited number of Jews in the months of reolutionary and post-revolutionary turmoil, accompanied also – as it is well known from other sources – by a much larger wave of emigration to Israel and to the West. Anyhow, compared to the months before and after the 1956 crisis, there is a clear sign in the figures of Table 5. to demonstrate the effect of the crisis on a restricted scale. Afterwards however the trend seems to have reached a phase close to extinction with less than one case per months after 1959. Though, quite exceptionally in an East European communist society with facilities to emigrate (that is, outside the Soviet Union), Hungary has kept may be half of its surviving Jewry even after 1956, communist atheism, modernist secularism, the generalization of religious indifferentism in the younger generations made the baptism of Jews irrelevant and inoperative for the construction of new patterns of identity for those liable to be concerned. To explain this one also has to add that the historic compromise achieved by the Kádár regime in Hungary contributed effectively to alleviate the burden of Jewish identity. Not only anti-Semitism was quasi inexistent in Hungarian communist politics (unlike in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Romania with various crisis situations over time), but the regime did accomplish a successful and temporary neutralization of anti-Jewish biases in the population at large, thanks notably to the enforcement of a quasi taboo on matters both Jewish and anti-Semitic.

Religious and socio-professional determinants of trends of Jewish baptism over time

An essential aspect of Jewish conversions concerns the direction of baptisms in an exceptionally multi-denominational society – as it was reminded in the introduction. Tables 7. and. 8. give precise clues about it.

7. Trends in the direction of Jewish baptisms in Hungary in years selected for various historical junctures[11]

		Rom. Cath.	Calvinist	Lutheran	Unitarian	Other	All
1896	Men	57,4	25,0	12,0	1,9	3,7	100
	women	67,9	19,6	11,6	-	9,8	100
1905	Men	67,9	27,8	2,9	1,4	-	100
	women	72,2	21,4	2,7	1,4	2,3	100
Non Jewish Population 1910		51,9	15,0	7,5	0,4	25,2	100,0
1913	Men	67,8	24,4	5,5	0,7	0,7	100
	Women	69,8	22,3	5,3	0,4	2,2	100
1915	Men	68,5	19,6	11,0	0,9	-	100
	Women	68,3	20,5	8,0	0,5	2,7	100
1919		58,9	27,2	12,1	1,5	0,3	100
Non Jewish Population 1930		68,3	22,0	6,5	0,01	2,9	100
1920		56,4	29,1	13,0	1,7	0,7	100
1921		58,6	31,6	8,1	1,2	0,5	100
1925	Men	51,5	32,1	9,1	4,8	2,5	100
	Women	61,9	24,3	10,5	2,4	0,9	100
1930	Men	65,0	24,8	9,2	0,3	0,7	100
	Women	65,1	24,9	8,9	0,5	0,6	100
1938	Men	59,9	16,0	20,6	2,5	1,0	100
	Women	61,7	15,9	18,8	2,3	1,3	100
Non Jewish Population, 1941		56,3	20,9	5,8	0,4	16,5	100
1941	Men	55,7	27,9	11,6	3,6	1,2	100
	Women	61,2	23,9	14,0	0,2	0,7	100
1942	Men	59,7	26,4	12,7	0,1	1,1	100
	women	61,1	26,1	11,2	0,5	1,1	100

The general trends regarding the pre-Shoah period displays three permanent features. One is the extreme rarity, indeed quasi absence of baptisms in a faith of Greek ritual. That kind of ‘assimiliationism’ was almost exclusively directed towards and governed by Western Christianism. This is understandable if one knows that the ruling elites and most of the middle class clusters of old regime Hungary (before 1919 and even more after that) were Roman Catholic or Protestant. Second only the small Unitarian Church, established mostly in Transylvania, attracted almost in every year for which data are given in Table 6 a relatively disproportionately high percentage of Jewish converts, as compared to it population size. This may be attributed to the essentially Magyar direction of Jewish assimilation and the fact that Unitarians constituted an exclusively Magyar speaking church. Third, there is a constant gender based imbalance as to the direction of baptisms in the sense that women always opted significantly more often for Roman Catholicism, the relatively largest denomination in the country, the former state religion (and that of the court before 1919), marked by strongly conservative political and social stances. This bias of women cannot be easily explained by objective indicators, like the direction of mixed marriages. Jewish women indeed tended to be somewhat less often involved – compared with Jewish men – in marriages to Roman Catholics, especially outside the capital city. One may suppose – as a working hypothesis to be confirmed or infirmed by further research – that Jewish women might have been more attracted than men by the cultural appurtenances of the Roman Church, as compared to the more puritanical ritual outfit of Protestantism.

Beyond these generalities Table 6. shows a significant shift in the direction of Jewish conversions in Trianon Hungary comparatively to previous times (when of course the Jewish population had been more than twice larger than after 1919). In the liberal Dual Monarchy the two biggest Churches – Roman Catholics and Calvinists - prevailed in capturing Jewish converts, while the Lutherans lagged somewhat behind them, their share among the baptized displaying considerable oscillations above and much below their proportion in the population. This pattern of orientation may be principally attributed there again to the fact that Jewish assimilation was decisively oriented to the Magyar speaking groups (notably to the gentry elite and the Magyarized middle class) which were mostly Roman Catholics and Calvinists, together with Unitarians. The three above churches integrated already in 1880 more than 93 % of Magyar Christian speakers – a date when linguistic assimilation of ethnic minorities was at an initial stage.[12] Thus, contrary to some neighboring Central European country (like Austria or the Czech lands) one cannot perceive any general ‘Protestant bias’ in Jewish conversions in liberal Hungary. The over-representation of the churches among Jewish apostates followed the logic of social and ethnic domination, the religious composition of the Magyar majority and ruling class.

This changed rather significantly afterwards. Roman Catholics achieved a more than two-thirds majority in Trianon Hungary, a proportion which was apparently not attained by that of Jewish converts. Conversely Jews continued to turn somewhat preferentially to the Protestants when they were seeking baptism, but henceforth much more decisively to Lutherans and Unitarians (in relative figures) than to Calvinists. Lutherans and most specifically the rare Unitarians remaining in Trianon Hungary were perceived in this context as passably liberal counterparts of the dominating churches, hence this statistically marked bias (more often justified in fact for Unitarians than for Lutherans). This relative preference for Lutherans could henceforth be also grounded on the fact that Luther’s adepts in inter-war Hungary were almost exclusively Magyar speakers (since their Slovakian or German coreligionists remained in the territories detached from the former kingdom). This general trend appears to be slightly modified during the first war years, under the drastic anti-Jewish legislation. In the new population structure after the temporary territorial gains obtained in 1939-1941 (re-annexation by Hungary of Northern Transylvania, Southern and Eastern Slovakia as well as part of the Banat region in the South-Eastern Plain), the proportion of Roman Catholics among converts tended to exceed the lower proportions of the latter in demographic terms. In the years of high anti-Jewish pressure the attraction of the socially dominant church was clearly strengthened.

8. Shifts in the direction of Jewish baptisms in Budapest during Nazification and Communism[13]

	Roman Catholic	Calvinist	Lutheran, Unitarian	Greek Catholic Orthodox,	Without Religion	All
*Christians* *1941[14]*	*75,3*	*16,0*	*6,2 + 0,3*	*2,2*	-	*100,0*
1935	62,7	24,6	12,4	0,3	?	100,0
1938	66,0	13,4	19,4	1,3	0,2	100,0
1944	83,3	13,0	2,6	1,0	0,2	100,0
1945-47	54,4	23,5	12,0	1,1	9,1	100,0
*Christians* *1949[15]*	*74,6*	*16,6*	*5,8 + 0,3*	*2,2*	*0,5*	*100,0*
1948	51,5	19,9	11,1	0,6	16,5	100,0
1949-50	45,4	9,2	8,1	0,6	37,3	100,0
1951-55	52,4	23,0	6,8	1,0	16,8	100,0
1956-60	42,5	44,2	10,8	-	2,5	100,0

The latter observation will be confirmed with a vengeance in our data for Budapest offered on Table 7. The baptismal picture in the capital is similar to that of the whole country in the sense of the absolute domination of Western Christians, given their social eminence in the majority population, especially in the elites. In the years before the anti-Jewish laws (1938) one can already observe a clear though not decisive anti-Catholic and pro-Protestant bias – particularly in favor of Lutherans and Unitarians - among Jewish converts. This preferential orientation disappears, all of a sudden, for the fatal year 1944, date of the holocaust in the country. In the months of the harshest menace, when a good part of Budapest Jews were actually deported or assassinated on the spot, most of those seeking baptism under utmost external pressure turned for mostly inoperative solace to Catholic parishes, offices of the most powerful Christian Church in the country. However illusory such recourse would most often proved to be, since such late-coming baptism would not change a jot the legal predicament of those concerned, the Catholic Church could, occasionally, grant efficient assistance to persecuted Jews of the capital, with all its monasteries, priestly palaces, philanthropic organizations and elite networks in the (not infrequently pro-Jewish) ‘legitimist’ aristocracy or even in some fractions of the middle class (like among Christian lawyers committed to the rule of law as against arbitrary Nazi muddle).

All this seemed to turn to its contrary with Liberation. Henceforth the trend of Jewish conversions favored Protestants, especially the Lutheran and Unitarian minority churches, more openly and massively than earlier. In the post-Shoah years the entries into Catholicism concerned hardly half or less of the converts, particularly in the 1950s, the years under Stalinist dictatorship and afterwards. Since conversions occurred rarely hereafter and were most often motivated by reasons alien from professional advancement, there was not much point to look for the biggest Christian church for integration. As a contrast and a clear sign of communist times, the earlier quasi inexistent Jewish converts becoming ‘without religion’ started to multiply, representing henceforth a sizable proportion of the converts. This had to do now not with a change of religion, but the formal abandonment of religious practice as it was required by the precepts of communist atheism. It is worth to be remarked in this context that the proportion of those ‘without religion’ suddenly drops to almost nil in and after the 1956 crisis. In a situation when the specter of old dangers and menaces appeared on the wall, the few Jews attempting to escape from Judaism by baptism, tended to choose Catholicism for reasons of – once again – some kind of illusory need for security against (not quite unduly) imagined dangers.

Socio-demographic characteristics of converts under pressure

Finally let us consider a number of quantified indicators offering insights into the social conditions of baptisms in the last periods under scrutiny : during the years of Nazification, the transition to communism and the first socialist decade, as drawn from survey data of converts in the Hungarian capital city.

9. Socio-demographic indicators of the conditions of Jewish baptism in Budapest under Nazification and Communist rule[16]

		*1936-* *1937*	*1938-* *1939*	*1940-* *1941*	*1942-* *1943*	*1944*	*1945-* *1947*	*1948-* *1960*
1	*% Below 30 Years of age*	43,9	24,2	31,4	27,4	12,8	47,2	?
2	*% Above 50 Years of age*	8,4	15,8	15,4	19,8	35,1	23,2	?
3	*% of women*	50,7	52,0	57,0	55,6	61,5	50,7	57,5
4	*% born in Budapest*	59,8	56,5	57,1	54,8	48,5	63,1	69,4
5	*% with Magyar surname*	27,9	18,8	20,4	17,8	7,3	22,4	23,9
6	*% men with Magyarized surname*	20,1	28,4	17,8	21,7	18,1	30,8	39,6
7	*% 1^st witnesses with Magyar sur name*	51,4	48,1	?	46,5	35,0	?	?
8	*% 2^nd witnesses with Magyar surname*	46,4	47,8	42,9	46,3	34,7	53,7	55,4
9	*% of Roman Catholics*	65,9	61,6	65,0	63,8	74,1	56,5	49,9
10	*% of men with (dr, etc.) titles*	7,8	11,5	5,4	8,0	3,6	5,2	7,4
11	*% from higher middle class districts (5. and 6. Districts – highly ‘neolog’)*	45,9	50,4	38,1	46,0	24,3	39,1	31,4
12	*% from lower class districts (7. – ‘Ghetto’ - and 8. District – highly traditional and Orthodox)*	36,4	32,1	38,6	24,8	55,4	36,2	38,5
13	*% from lower (working) classes*	30,1	20,7	?	34,8	51,5	30,7	?
14	*% from the petty bourgeoisie*	9,6	13,5	?	16,6	22,4	18,7	?
15	*% men justifying baptism by ‘faith’*	16,9	18,8	35,6	29,2	88,5	17,5	15,5
16	*% women justifying baptism by ‘faith’*	29,1	27,7	36,5	28,7	56,3	13,1	26,2

The first two indicators (1 and 2) concern the age of converts. Logically, if the social advantages expected from Jewish apostasy are considered, the younger it occurs, the more benefits it procures over the life cycle of those affected. This is obviously reflected in the relevant data for 1936/7, the last years before the first anti-Jewish law : the proportion of the young generation was the highest – close to half - before the Shoah (1944) and, conversely, the proportion of the elder converts the lowest in these years. Equally logically enough there was a significant decline of the proportions of the young and a parallel increase of those of the elderly during the years of anti-Jewish legislation. These trends reached their (quite opposite) apex in 1944, when during the months of May and June provincial Jewry was globally deported to Auschwitz and Austria and later – after October 15. – local Nazi rule started with all its savagery in Budapest (wherefrom no systematic deportations had been allowed by regent Horthy till he was in charge). It is understandable that this year of absolute emergency the previous age balance was completely reversed and more that one third of converts belonged to the then most advanced age groups who, ‘in normal times’ would not regard apostasy as a possible solution to their Jewish predicament. After the passage of this fatal danger for those who survived, the age balance of further converts returned to a ‘quasi-normal’ situation with proportions of more than twice as many young people than elderly. The logic of maximization of social benefits in the conversional transaction has been thus reestablished during the transition years to communism.

As to the proportions of women (indicator nb. 3), it evolved following quite different mechanisms. On the average women made up a slight majority of converts in the capital ‘in normal times’. Their proportions tended to grow during the anti-Jewish legislation and attained a clear maximum in 1944, the year of the Shoah, only to come back to earlier lower levels afterwards. Though the difference here between yearly data were far from as dramatic as for age groups, the explanation of it may rely on evidence deductible from a circumstantial reference to differences in the exposure to dangers for men and women. Jewish men were after 1939 irregularly but often drafted for shorter or longer periods in forced labor army units and – after the entry of Hungary into the war (27 June, 1941) many of them sent to the Russian frontlines. Fatalities on the front were very high, thus a large number of Jewish men from the country, including the capital, simply disappeared before the Shoah proper. Survivors of active age in 1944 found themselves mostly outside Budapest with their army units. Those who still remained, fell probably more often victims of random deportations after October 15 since the Germans and their Hungarian acolytes collected preferentially men as a workforce to build trenches and fortifications against the advancing Red Army. All this may have produced a serious imbalance of genders among Jews in Budapest by 1944. This may have been to the effect that one might raise the question, whether men were actually not over-represented among the 40 odd % of converts, considering the heavily diminished size of the male population liable to be affected. Such questions can though be answered via further in-depth investigations only.

The following indicators (from nb. 4 to 8) may be interpreted as expressing levels of ‘assimilation’ and Magyarization, including – possibly – levels of integration in the non Jewish environment. This is obvious for those with Magyar surname, but it can be connected also with the place of birth. Jews born in Budapest may have found more connections with their compatriots than those who came to live in the capital at a later stage of their life cycle. Taken as such, it is indeed quite remarkable that all these indicators display approximately the same level, whatever this may be, without much oscillation up to the Shoah. In 1944 there is a systematic and very significant covariation at the expense of the ‘more assimilated’ to the benefit of the ‘less assimilated’. The ones born in Budapest become a minority from an earlier majority, those with Magyar or Magyarized names show a serious decline in their proportions and even the witnesses present at signing the record of apostasy (a legal obligation at the times) – chosen presumably among social allies or at least acquaintances – were suddenly much less often bearing a Magyar name than before. This is a case of typical panic situation, when many of the less ‘assimilated’, who would earlier not regard apostasy as a viable way of escape, were made to decide so under the mortal pressure of the moment, however illusory the efficiency of the act may have appeared under Nazi terror.

The illusion of potential escape may have commanded the option of converts for Roman Catholicism. The choice of the majority church had already in ‘normal times’ was high on the agenda of Jewish apostates for the simple reason that their contacts with Catholics and their Church staff was more frequent than with members of other Christian denominations, given the 75 % of Catholic in the capital. It is all the more interesting to observe that from a systematic relative under-representation before the Shoah, the proportion of Catholics among Jewish converts reached suddenly the very level of three-quarter, that is exacly the proportion of Catholics in the local population. This preferential or at least proportional turn to the most powerful Christian Church may have been grounded precisely on the desperate belief that this might secure for them more operative protection than other denominations, less endowed with monasteries, nunneries and other potential places of shelter. Whatever the issue, it is once again worth noticing that after the Shoah the choice of Catholicism by further Jewish converts reverted back to a probably historical low, in relative terms. In spite of the truly Christian behavior of many courageous Catholics and among them some heroic nuns and priests (among whom some were murdered by local Nazis), the reactionary image of the Catholic Church was rather poor in surviving Jewish circles. It was regarded anti-Jewish as a whole, with prestigious members of its hierarchy having been deeply compromised in the build-up of the anti-Jewish establishment of the post Trianon state and society. This is reflected in the relatively large scale rejection of Catholicism by would-be Jewish converts. This meant, as it was discussed above, that apostates in the transition year and under communism turned either to Protestantism or – even more referentially over the years - to a state of ‘without religion’ as dictated by socialist secularism.

The next bunch of indicators (from nb. 10 to 14) refer to the social class standing of converts over time. ‘Normally’, before the years of anti-Jewish legislation, those accepting baptism were recruited more frequently from the intellectual middle classes and from higher middle class neighborhoods. The hierarchy of social class responded quite closely to proclivities to abandon the faith of ancestors, a way of drawing the final consequence of sorts of the process of secularization, cultural ‘assimilation’ and social integration in Gentile (that is Christian) society. The lower working class or petty bourgeois Jews (craftsmen and above all traders of all sorts) – the majority in Jewish milieus – participated much less in the movement for having remained closer to ancient customs, usages, rules of behavior, beliefs, faith. This is clearly demonstrated in our figures showing a vast over-representation of higher ‘bourgeois’ districts, a significant presence of men with titles (a statistically insignificant minority), etc. among converts before the Shoah, though, though relevant numbers tended to change significantly over the war years of misery and deprivation. Relatively more and more people, in proportion, of presumably traditional districts and tradition minded clusters opted henceforth for baptism. In 1944 this quantitative progress turned into a qualitative rupture in the trend. Working class districts and members of these classes provided suddenly the majority of converts. Under the mortal pressure of lawless Nazi persecution, many of those who would ‘normally’ refuse to consider such break with their values and habits decided to abandon their faith, let alone formally. There again, after the passage of murderous Nazi danger, the movement regained its previous ‘normal’ configuration as to much lower participation of traditional districts and clusters and the return of a higher middle class majority among those survivors who would still regard important to switch their religious identity after liberation.

Finally we have two last statistical indicators of rather controversial meaning (nb. 15 and 16 on table 9.) – the proportion of Jewish converts declaring religious convictions to justify their request for baptism. Rabbis, obliged to record the exit from the Israelite community, regularly (and often passionately) demanded some justification for such acts they regarded as a form of treason. Most of the time the culprits would mention social or personal necessities like advancement in professional careers, mixed marriage situations, the religious homogenization of the family (where members had already been baptized), etc. ‘Faith’, change of religious beliefs would not often come to the fore in these pleas for self-legitimization before the Shoah. Now, there was a clear dual change of the trend in 1944. First, earlier women tended to evoke more often ‘faith’ for their move as compared to men. In 1944 however they would be much more numerous to say so, but this times relatively less often than men. Second, Jewish men deciding for baptism would in 1944 almost exclusively (up to nine out of ten) use ‘faith’ as an alleged pretext for conversion. This is a dramatic switch indeed. One can understand it as a bitterly ironical way out of the dilemma how to justify the unjustifiable, accepted only under murderous duress, especially for men, when other ‘normal’ justifications would appear as even more manifestly obsolete or fake. In the post-Shoah years ‘faith’ was once again relegated among justifications marginally resorted to only, adopted by a relative female majority (like earlier) during the first communist decade.

All these statistical indicators confirm the usual living experience of survivors that the fatal year 1944 was indeed a ‘time...out of joint’ as Hamlet would put it. But the study of Jewish conversions might also be concluded in the same sense. It was a process with admittedly multiple direct functions and motivations for those affected. The ultimate interpretations nevertheless must converge upon the fundamental emergency situation continuously generated by the forcefully unbalanced Jewish-Gentile relations in modern Europe.

[1] From information in the Hungarian statistical yearbooks and the Statistical yearsbooks of the residential city Budapest.

[2] Survey data from ’records of entries’ in 14 Christian parishes and church offices of Budapest.

[7] Figures calculated from data in Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyvek /Hungarian statistical yearbooks/.

[8] See for other details my following studies : « Les conversions des Juifs à Budapest après 1945 », Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 56, mars 1985, 58-62; "Traumahatàs és menekülés. A zsidó vallásváltók szociológiája 1945 elött és utàn", /Trauma effect and flight. Sociology of Jewish conversions before and after 1945/,Múlt és Jövô (Budapest) 1994/2, 84-104; "Patterns of Apostasy in surviving Hungarian Jewry after 1945", History Department Yearbook, 1993, Central European University, Budapest, 1995, 225-263.

[9] Magyar Statisztikai Szemle, 1944 (22), 4-5, p. 102.

[10] From the ‘apostates’ records’ of the Pest ‘neolog’ rabbinate

[11] From yearly data of the Statistical Yearbooks of Hungary

[12] See Lajos Láng, József Jekelfalussy, Magyarország népességi statisztikája /The population statistics of Hungary/, Budapest, 1881, p. 180.

[13] Data from archival records of the Pest ’neolog’ community.

[14] Calculated from census data in Magyarország településeinek vallási adatai (1880-1949), /Religious data on Hungarian settlements – 1880-1949/, I. volume, Budapest, 1997, 14-15.

[16] From the ’Apostates’ record’ of the Pest Neolog Rabbinate.