A two-day conference entitled “Hungarian Jewry in the Twentieth Century, ” which included the participation of historians from Israel, was held here last week, the World Jewish Congress reported today.
The main topics examined during the conference, which was held at the prestigious Hungarian Academy of Sciences, were anti-Semitism and the deportation of Hungarian Jewry in 1944.
A WJC spokesman pointed out that the presence of Israeli participants at the conference was significant in that Hungary, since the 1967 Six-Day War, has not had diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. “Of equal importance, ” he added, “was the fact that official Hungarian media sources reporting on the conference noted the presence of the Israeli participants in both domestic and foreign broadcasts.”
Earlier this month, representatives of the Hungarian Jewish community arrived in Israel to participate in the opening of an exhibition on Hungarian Jewry in Tel Aviv’s Beth Hatefusoth, the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Diaspora. In May, Jews from around the world took part in memorial observances in Budapest marking the anniversary of the Nazi deportation of Hungarian Jewry.
In his opening address, the noted Hungarian academician, Gyoergy Ranki, said that the conference was an attempt “to give a comprehensive account of the Hungarian Holocaust by surveying the economic, social, political and intellectual process of the period and the role of Jews in these processes.”
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.
