Földvári Books

The First Parliamentary Account of the 1946 Miskolc Pogrom

[Lévay, Zoltán]

[Lévay Zoltán (msz) napirend előtti felszólalása a miskolci, budapesti és nyíregyházi kilengések tárgyában.] A nemzetgyűlés 46. ülése. 1946. évi augusztus hó 1-én, csütörtökön, Varga Béla és Kéthly Anna elnöklete alatt. (Nemzetgyűlési Értesítő.)

[Budapest]: [az Athenaeum Rt. nyomása], [1946]. First edition. Stitched, otherwise unbound as issued. Columns [705]–756. Paper uniformly toned. First and last leaves with marginal chipping and edge wear, the final leaf with occasional spotting. Otherwise in very good condition.

Issued only two days after the first Miskolc lynching, this official printed transcript of the Hungarian National Assembly preserves the earliest parliamentary discussion of the Miskolc pogrom and one of the most immediate contemporary documents relating to the postwar anti-Jewish violence in Hungary.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Hungary struggled with economic collapse, hyperinflation, food shortages, and political instability, while Holocaust survivors returned to rebuild their lives and reclaim their homes and property. In 1946, these tensions culminated in a series of anti-Jewish disturbances, most notably at Kunmadaras and Miskolc, both in eastern Hungary. The outbreaks unfolded during the fierce political struggle preceding the Communist seizure of power. Following the elections of 1945, the Communist Party, which controlled the Interior Ministry and the political police, launched an intensive campaign against alleged “speculators” and “enemies of the new currency.” The campaign served the Party’s broader strategy of mobilizing industrial workers, demonstrating the authority of the new Communist-controlled security apparatus, and redirecting popular anger over economic collapse toward politically useful enemies. The anti-“speculator” campaign readily merged with long-established antisemitic stereotypes, while the Party’s organized mobilization of industrial workers around this campaign provided the immediate context for several of the major outbreaks of 1946, including those in Miskolc and Kunmadaras.

The Miskolc pogrom began on 30 July 1946 with the arrest of the Jewish mill owners Sándor Rejtő and Ernő Jungreisz on charges of black-market offences. As the two men were being transferred under police escort to an internment camp, an anti-speculator workers’ demonstration intercepted the convoy in the centre of Miskolc. Before thousands of demonstrators, the detainees were dragged from police custody, beaten through the streets, and subjected to a prolonged public lynching. Jungreisz was murdered, while Rejtő survived with severe injuries. On the following day, the violence resumed when another crowd seized and killed the Jewish police captain Artúr Fogarasi, who had directed the investigation into the first attack. Together, the two days of violence became known as the Miskolc pogrom, the most notorious outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in postwar Hungary.

The present pamphlet is the official printed transcript of the National Assembly sitting of 1 August 1946. Printed shortly after the debate, it preserves the complete proceedings, opening with the pre-agenda address (napirend előtti felszólalás) of Zoltán Lévay (1908–1983), lawyer, journalist, and Member of Parliament for Borsod County, whose constituency included Miskolc, and by then a member of the recently founded Hungarian Freedom Party, one of the principal anti-Communist opposition parties. His speech had originally been announced as dealing with the disturbances at Miskolc, Budapest, and Nyíregyháza, but, after exhausting his allotted speaking time, he was able to discuss only the Miskolc events in detail before being called to order by the Speaker. Delivered while the official investigation was still underway, Lévay’s address preserves not a retrospective account but the first parliamentary attempt to interpret the Miskolc pogrom.

Drawing upon both contemporary press reports and information emerging from the official investigation, Lévay rejected the suggestion that the violence had been a spontaneous outburst. Referring to workers summoned by telephone, the apparently prearranged convergence of the demonstration with the police convoy transporting Rejtő and Jungreisz to the internment camp, and evidence uncovered during the investigation, he argued that the events bore the marks of “an organized action operating with clockwork precision.” Without identifying those responsible, he repeatedly insisted that the pogrom could not be dismissed as accidental and called for a thorough parliamentary and governmental inquiry. His speech thus appears to contain the earliest parliamentary argument that the Miskolc pogrom had been organized rather than arising spontaneously, capturing the moment when contemporaries themselves first began to question the political forces behind one of the defining outbreaks of postwar anti-Jewish violence in Hungary.

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Price: €1,000.00