(By Our Budapest Correspondent)
Hungarian anti-Semitism is a peculiar phenomenon which has it own ways, and the madder it get the more ridiculous it becomes in the eyes of the Hungarian people.
Budapest was the home of a world-famous gynecologist, Professor Barzonyi. When he died he left a huge fortune and an only child, a girl under age. His will appoints his daughter as his sole heiress and the mother as guardian until she becomes of age. The Professor has, however, made a condition. His daughter is to inherit his fortune only if she marries a hundred per cent Christian Aryan. If she marries a Jew or a Christian whose forebears back to the fourth generation have a drop of Jewish blood in their veins, she will get nothing, not even a dowry, and all his money will go for scientific and medical purposes exclusively for the benefit of Christian Aryans.
As soon as this condition in the will was made known all the numerous suitors for the hand of the heiress withdrew. There was not one willing to face an examination into his ancestry lest there should prove to have been Jewish blood somewhere in his veins.
So the heiress and her family are living in constant fear that either she will remain unmarried or that if she marries someone may suddenly render her destitute by discovering that unknown to anyone hitherto her husband has a drop of Jewish blood in his veins. It is a terrible thing not to know whether one will not wake up one morning and fine oneself withone one’s husband or without one’s fortune. The mother as the chief guardian has petitioned the Hungarian Court of Inheritance to set aside this will. She demands that the Court should certify her husband insane. Her husband, being a famous scientist, she says, ought to have known that there was no means of scientifically discovering in human blood the difference between one race and another, and especially of establishing the difference between Jewish and Aryan blood.
The brother of the dead Professor, on the other hand, who is a Liberal and not at all anti-Semitic, is trying to get the Court to declare that the will is valid. He is a well-known Hungarian writer and if his niece does not marry anybody of Jewish origin he is to get a share of his brother’s fortune. So, in spite of the fact that he himself is an outspoken opponent of anti-Semitism and has a daughter, who is married to a Jew, he is for his own personal interests, supporting his brother’s will.
The Hungarian Court is faced with a dilemma. The anti-Semitic judges are in a tight corner. Whom are they to consider–the dead Professor, or his living daugher? The judges hesitate to make a decision and for the present have postponed the case until the autumn. Meanwhile the case will continue to be the subject of everyday gossip for the whole of Budapest society.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
