I have had a book called
Jewish Budapest for a long time but until yesterday I'd only ever used it to look up in the index the street where I live and bathe in the reflected glory of the fact that the Catholics in two of its buildings bravely hid Jews during World War Two.
Yesterday, though, I started to read a bit more of the text and discovered that, while, (as I knew already), in the 1920s the Hungarian Prime Minister Pal Teleki introduced laws restricting those of Jewish origin from various activities, these laws were subsequently repealed - or at least fell into abeyance for a while. However, in 1938 a new series of laws were introduced that once again restricted the activities of the Jewish citizens of Hungary - and, despite the fact that there are quite a few things I've read about Pal Teleki that attempt to deny or at least mitigate his anti-Semitism, on the evidence provided in
Jewish Budapest, it does appear that his role was absolutely to be deplored, (a speech of his from a parliamentary debate on the introduction of one of the (Anti-) Jewish laws on 15 April 1939 is quoted as follows:
"I support this bill based partly on my own conviction; I agree with its main points, by and large, but at the same time I must emphasise that had I submitted a bill drafted entirely by me, certain portions would have been much stricter ... This Act introduces the alien ideology [sic] of race and blood into Hungarian legislation and mentality ... I have been convinced of the appropriateness of this attitude in its scientific and social aspects for more than 20 years now, as I have argued in words and writing."
Possibly Teleki is being selectively quoted but, if his sentiments were as this passage suggests, the softness of many commentators in discussing his behaviour is wrong and the Hungarian statesman from that time whom we should all be admiring is Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, who paid for his bravery in arguing against anti-Semitic measures by being murdered by members of the hateful Arrow Cross movement in 1944).
Once the first of the new (Anti-) Jewish Laws (as the book calls them) was passed, no Jewish authors could publish their works except in the Jewish press, no Jewish actors or musicians could perform, except among their own race. As the book says, "In the cultural and intellectual sphere, the ghetto was set up before its actual walls were erected in Budapest."
Showing great initiative, the Jewish community set about providing its own artistic forums in various places around Budapest, but most prominently at 7 Wesselenyi Utca, which is not far from where I live. The Initiative of the Artists, which included in its number Sandor Fischer, father of Adam and Ivan Fischer, was formed and it managed to provide work for about 700 artists of various kinds.. On Saturdays and Sundays, both in the afternoon and the evening, and to begin with on Tuesdays and then from 1942 also on Thursdays, drama performances, literary evenings and musical evenings took place. Opera performances included: Verdi's Nabucco in January 1939, Cezar Franck's Rebecca in February 1940, Beethoven's Fidelio on 9 November 1940, Gluck's Orfeo on 20 January, 1941, and Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio on 27 January, 1941. Also scheduled, but never performed, due to the imminent arrival of the Nazis in the city, was Verdi's Aida on 2 March 1944.
There were performances of plays by many different playwrights, including Molnar, plus a production of Hamlet in 1943. There were recitals by, among others, Jeno Deutsch, a pupil of Bartok and Kodaly. Late in 1944 Deutsch disappeared in a forced labour camp. On 8 December, 1941, the Hungarian premier of Bartok's Divertimento was held in Goldmark Hall and on 7 December, 1942 an evening celebrating Kodaly's 60th birthday was organised, which Kodaly attended. Performers included Dezso Ernster who left Hungary later and became a soloist for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Sadly, not all his colleagues were as lucky: David Ney who sang with Ernster in the Theatre of the Exiled was taken from the ghetto of Koszeg and died in a concentration camp at Horsching in Austria in 1945.
Zoli, a famous clown, (real name Zoltan Hirsch), was also among the Goldmark Hall regulars, but in 1945 he perished in Auschwitz.
Laszlo Zsigmond, who the book explains was a noted scholar of music history and poetics managed to set up a music academy at the Goldmark Hall as well.
"The last performance in the Goldmark Hall",
Jewish Budapest explains, "was on 18 March, 1944, one day before the German occupation of Hungary. Then it was impossible to continue. The building itself, including the stage was hit by a bomb during the siege of Budapest. It was rebuilt only in 1974. The Hall is in perfect condition and in regular use ever since, but the stage has not been rebuilt."
Naturally, I wanted to see this remarkable place, so this morning I walked down to 7 Wesselenyi utca, the address of Goldmark Hall. Here are some pictures of the building that was the setting for those defiant performances, in which - or through which - the participants expressed their refusal to be defeated by bullying and prejudice, to be cowed by attempts to crush the spirit of a particular community:
My book provides two long passages from a 1982 work called
Bells of Atlantis, by George Sandor Gal; the first is about Goldmark Hall and the performances there, the second about the Goldmark music academy that was formed within the building:
1. "The Goldmark Hall became a peculiar cultural ghetto. Jewish actors banished from the theatres performed dramas here, singers discharged from the Opera House staged whole operas and the musicians organised such an orchestra that their concerts attracted personalities like Sergio Failoni, Aladar Toth and Zoltan Kodaly, who came with his unforgettable wife, the grouchy, forthright and genial Mrs Kodaly, or Emma neni, (Aunt Emma). Their appearance at these concerts was, of course, not only a matter of artistic enjoyment but a political protest. These people - we may as well call them heroes - gave evidence that no prejudice could stop them."
2. "God Almighty, what a school it was! Where Bence Szabolcsi [a great historian of music, particularly Hungarian music] would just drop by, silently, as a guest! But in spite of his modest, reserved conduct the invisible flame of his glorious spirit was there with him, burning like a sanctuary lamp. The minute he entered the largest room, which was now turned into a concert hall, the air started blistering around him - it was the presence of Spirit and Knowledge, of the kind of curiosity which makes man human ... He spoke gently, in a faint voice, which kept his students quiet too. He spoke of the Goldmark school, of Hungarian music. In his spontaneous talk there was no hint of the prevailing brutal laws, no trace of resentment or accusations, as if this coarse, hostile world did not exist out there. He did not refer to it with a single word, yet it was clear: these few years of yellow armbands, Jewish Laws and forced labour seem like a short intermezzo, a tiny fragment of time compared to the millennia through which Hungarian melodies have been flowing from the Siberian desert to the Great Hungarian Plain, to the banks of the Danube and the Tisza, like a flag torn a thousand times, though ultimately glorious ... On the second occasion Szabolcsi came with a guest, Maria Basilides, and they gave an improvised concert ... Not only did they recall old tunes, but the landscape too where they were born, the people who created these tunes, the plains and hills, which carried the tunes further, and a whole people who had been struck and imprisoned by fate ever so often and who could dream and sing even amidst the greatest poverty."
There is so much to be admired and so much poignance in the collective efforts that went into maintaining artistic life in the face of concerted attempts to shut artists of a particular race out of creative life. I will not walk down that part of Wesselenyi utca again without thinking of those people and those dark days.
