Page - 315 - in Wien und die jüdische Erfahrung 1900-1938 - Akkulturation - Antisemitismus - Zionismus

From White Terror to Red Vienna 1 Hungarian-Jewish Identity in Vienna The reference to Hungarian-speaking Jews from Hungary, Yugoslavia and Czecho- slovakia bespeaks a kind of double exile that many Hungarian Jews faced in Vienna. While all Hungarian-speaking Jews, were denied their “Hungarianness” by the nume- rus clausus, the Hungarian-speaking Jews from Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were also denied their homeland by the Treaty of Trianon. In a twist of irony, Hungarian Jewry had been dismembered alongside Hungary, but in Vienna — and in other uni- versity towns across Central and Western Europe — Hungarian Jewry had, in some respects, been reconstituted. When Dr. Simon Hevesi, rabbi of Pest, visited Vienna in 1923, he made a point of meeting with Hungarian Jewish students from “rump Hungary” as well as those from the formerly Hungarian territories that had been lost at Trianon. The Hungarian-Jewish press regularly featured the plight of Hungarian Jewish students abroad, treating them collectively as “numerus clausus exiles” (a nume- rus clausus száműzöttjei). Hungarian Jewish students received assistance from the Young Men’s Christian Association (Ymca), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Inter- collegiate Menorah Association, European Student Relief and other philanthropic organizations, but they also depended on the largesse of Hungarian Jewish émigrés, who sought to aid their co-national co-religionists in Vienna. Prof. Neumann, a Hun- garian-born ophthalmologist in Vienna, provided aid for Hungarian Jews, as did a certain Mihály Uprimny, whose activities were regularly praised by Egyenlőség. Mihály Kertész, the Hungarian-born film director — better known as Michael Curtiz (direc- tor of Casablanca) — hired many Hungarian Jewish students in Vienna during the filming of his 1922 biblical epic, soDom anD gomorrah. In 1923, the Pest Jewish Community came to the aid of the “numerus clausus exiles” by establishing the Central Student Aid Committee (Központi Diáksegítő Bi- zottság), which, in its first four years alone, supported 2,440 students in 68 towns in 8 different countries. In Austria, it supported 134 students in 1923/24, 139 students in 1924/25, 170 students in 1925/26, and 176 students in 1926/27. Many of these Simon Hevesi, “A zsidó vallásos eszme ünnepe Bécsben,” Egyenlőség, June 2, 1923, p. 10. “Érintkezésbe léptem a magyar zsidó főiskolai ifjak különböző csoportjaival, a csonkamagyarországiakkal és az elsza- kított területekről valókkal is.” Simon Hevesi was in Vienna for the meeting of the World Congress of Jewish Women. “A numerus clausus száműzöttjei,” Egyenlőség, July 29, 1922, p. 6. Hungarian Jewish students frequently acted as extras in movies filmed in Berlin, too ; see Michael L. Miller, “A numerus clausus száműzöttjei a berlini felsőoktatási intézetekben 1920 és 1933 között,” Múlt és Jövő 2006/4, p. 86. Gyula Gábor, “Küzdelmeink a numerus clausus ellen,” Zsidó Évkönyv (1927/28), pp. 150–159.