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Jews settled in this small region variously called Ruthenia, Carpathian Ruthenia, Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia or simply Transcarpathia as early as the 15th century. Local rulers allowed Jewish citizens to own land and practice many trades that were precluded to them in other locations. Jews settled in the region over time and established communities that built great synagogues, schools, printing houses, businesses, and vineyards. By the end of the 19th century there were as many as 150,000 Jews living in the region. [1]
Interwar Subcarpathian Ruthenia was an important centre of Haredi ("Ultra-Orthodox") Judaism, including Hasidic groups. Many outstanding rabbis lived here or found refuge from neighbouring countries, leading yeshivot (religious schools) and keeping a hatzer (court), specifically in Munkacs. These groups were often fiercely competing with each other, and with secular or liberal Jewish groups. [2]
The last antebellum census in Hungary was in 1910. The four counties of Kingdom of Hungary that covered the territory (now known as Carpathian Ruthenia) were Ung, Bereg, Ugocsa and Máramaros.
Counties of Kingdom of Hungary, Ugocsa and Máramaros were split between Czechoslovakia and Romania in 1920 by Treaty of Trianon after the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which lost the World War I. In 1939, Hungary annexed back the northern parts of its former counties from the short lived Ruthenian state of Carpatho-Ukraine after the breakup of the Second Czechoslovak Republic. And in 1940, their southern parts of the former counties returned from Romania by the Second Vienna Award. After the World War II, the Soviet Union annexed the northern parts and today it belongs to Ukraine as a successor state to the Soviet Union. The southern parts were reverted to Romania after the World War II.
Counties of Kingdom of Hungary, Ung and Bereg became part of Czechoslovakia in 1920 by Treaty of Trianon, except a small part of Bereg that stayed in Hungary. The southern parts its former counties returned to Hungary from Czechoslovakia in 1938 by the First Vienna Award, and their northern parts from the short lived Ruthenian state in 1939. [3]
County | Dec 1910 | Jan 1941 total | part annexed in 1938 | part annexed in 1939 | part annexed in 1940 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ung | 17,587 (10.9%) | 20,903 (9.8%) | 13,000 (lower) | 8,000 (upper) | - |
Bereg | 33,660 (14.2%) | 46,156 (12.9%) | 25,000 (lower) | 21,000 (upper) | - |
Ugocsa | 11,850 (12.9%) | 10,932 (11.9%) | - | 7,000 (northern) | 4,000 (southern) |
Máramaros | 65,694 (18.4%) | 79,048 (16.2%) | - | 48,000 (northern) | 31,000 (southern) |
Total | 128,791 (15.2%) | 157,766 (13.7%) | 38,000 | 84,000 | 35,000 |
In 1921, about 27% of the Jews of Subcarpathian Rus lived from agriculture, making it the highest percentage of Jewish peasantry in all of Europe. In the 1921 and 1930 censuses, 87 and 93 percent respectively of all Subcarpathian Jews considered themselves to be Jews by nationality. It was, therefore, the least assimilated, Yiddish-speaking group in Czechoslovakia. [4]
Memoirs and historical studies provide much evidence that in the 19th and early 20th centuries Rusyn-Jewish relations were generally peaceful and harmonious. In 1939, census records showed that 80,000 Jews lived in the autonomous province of Ruthenia. [5]
The attitude of some Ruthenians to their Jewish neighbors is vividly represented in the play by Alexander Dukhnovych (1803–1865), Virtue is More Important than Riches briefed here as well as in short-story triptych Golet v údolí by Ivan Olbracht. In contrast to other areas of Ukraine, Ruthenia never experienced chaotic riots and pogroms.
During World War II, once the legal government of Hungary was overthrown by the Germans, the "Final Solution" of the Holocaust was also extended to Carpathian Ruthenia. To be sure, the legal government of Hungary and its fascist elements had already played a prominent role in killing Jews even before this.
Beginning in 1939, draconian laws had been passed banning Jews from going to school or from operating their previous businesses. Then in the summer of 1941, Hungarian authorities deported about 18,000 Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia to the Galician region of Poland-Ukraine. This was done under the guise of expelling alien refugees, but in practice most of those expelled were from families that had lived in the region for the previous 50–100 years. Many who might have been able to prove their long-term residency were taken without being given the chance. Most of the deportees were immediately handed over to Nazi German Einsatzgruppen units at Kaminets Podolsk and machine-gunned over a three-day period in late 1941. A few thousand others were simply left to their own devices after being pushed across the border into Galicia, in the area near Kaminets Podolsk. The vast majority of this group subsequently perished over the next two years in ghettos and death camps with other Jewish residents of the region. [6] [1]
Those Jews fortunate enough to avoid the 1941 deportations faced further privations under Hungarian rule. Men of working age were conscripted into slave labor gangs in which a high proportion perished. [7] The remnant were ultimately returned to their homes in time to suffer deportation to concentration camps under Nazi rule after 1944.
In April 1944, 17 main ghettos were set up in cities in Ruthenia. 144,000 Jews were rounded up and held there. Starting on May 15, 1944: 14,000 Jews were taken out of these sites to Auschwitz every day until the last deportation on June 7, 1944.
The following table shows the death trains originating from these four counties that went through Kassa (Košice). (Some Jewish males were on forced labor (munkaszolgálat); some trains did not pass through Kassa; and some Jews from the area were forced to board trains departing from neighboring counties):
Origin of death train | # of trains | Total # of people | Date of handover from Hungarians to Germans in Kassa |
---|---|---|---|
Ungvár (Uzhhorod) | 5 | 16,188 | May 17, 22, 25, 27, 31 |
Beregszász (Berehove) | 4 | 10,849 | May 16, 18, 24, 29, |
Munkács (Mukachevo) | 9 | 28,587 | May 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24 |
Nagyszőlős (Vynohradiv) | 3 | 9,840 | May 20, 27, June 3 |
Ökörmező (Mizhhir'ya) | 1 | 3,052 | May 17 |
Huszt (Khust) | 4 | 10,825 | May 24, 26, June 2, 6 |
Técső (Tiachiv) | 1 | 2,208 | May 28, |
Aknaszlatina (Solotvyno) | 1 | 3,317 | May 25 |
Máramarossziget (Sighetu Marmaţiei) | 4 | 12,849 | May 16, 18, 20, 22 |
Felsővisó (Vişeu de Sus) | 4 | 12,074 | May 19, 21, 23, 25 |
Total | 36 | 109,789 |
By June 1944, nearly all the Jews from ghettos of Carpathian Ruthenia had been exterminated, together with other Hungarian Jews. Of more than 100,000 Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia, around 90,000 were murdered. Except for those who managed to flee, only a small number of Jews were saved by Rusyns who hid them.
Since the fall of Communism, archives have been opened to allow study of the facts about the implementation of the Final Solution in the province. The most discussed issue is whether, and to what extent, local collaborators helped the Nazis in performing the tasks and to what extent such collaboration was forced upon those collaborators by the threat—or actuality—of brutal violence against themselves. [8]
The estimated number of surviving Jews from the area was 15,000–20,000 people. Most of them left Carpatho-Ruthenia before the new Soviet borders were sealed in the fall of 1945, so there were only 4,000 Jews left in 1948. At the time of the first post-World War II census in the Soviet Union, in 1959, the number of Jews in the Zakarpattia Oblast was 12,569 - most of which were immigrants from other parts of the Soviet Union. [9]
Most Jews who remained in the region emigrated to the United States and Israel during the 1970s in the wake of the Jackson–Vanik amendment, while a few went to Hungary. The last Soviet census in 1989 found only 2,700 Jews living in the area.
Today some synagogues have survived. The following cities have synagogues that existed prior to World War II:
Ruthenia is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin, as one of several terms for Kievan Rus'. It is used to refer to Rus' region, a triangular area which mainly corresponds to the tribe of Polans in Dnieper Ukraine. It is also used to refer to the East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Austria-Hungary, mainly to Ukrainians and sometimes Belarusians, corresponding to the territories of modern Belarus, Ukraine, Eastern Poland and some of western Russia.
Ruthenian and Ruthene are exonyms of Latin origin, formerly used in Eastern and Central Europe as common ethnonyms for Ukrainians and partially Belarusians, particularly during the late medieval and early modern periods. The Latin term Rutheni was used in medieval sources to describe Eastern Slavs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as an exonym for people of the former Kievan Rus', thus including ancestors of the modern Belarusians, Rusyns and Ukrainians. The use of Ruthenian and related exonyms continued through the early modern period, developing several distinctive meanings, both in terms of their regional scopes and additional religious connotations.
Transcarpathia is a historical region on the border between Central and Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast, with smaller parts in eastern Slovakia and the Lemko Region in Poland.
Carpatho-Ukraine or Carpathian Ukraine was an autonomous region, within the Second Czechoslovak Republic, created in December 1938 and renamed from Subcarpathian Rus', whose full administrative and political autonomy had been confirmed by constitutional law of 22 November 1938.
Zakarpattia Oblast, also referred to as simply Zakarpattia or Transcarpathia in English, is an oblast located in the Carpathian Mountains in west Ukraine, mostly coterminous with the historical region of Carpathian Ruthenia. Its administrative centre is the city of Uzhhorod. Other major cities within the oblast include Mukachevo, Khust, Berehove, and Chop, the last of which is home to railroad transport infrastructure.
Mukachevo is a city in Zakarpattia Oblast, western Ukraine. It is situated in the valley of the Latorica River and serves as the administrative center of Mukachevo Raion. The city is a rail terminus and highway junction, and has beer, wine, tobacco, food, textile, timber, and furniture industries. During the Cold War, it was home to Mukachevo air base and a radar station.
Rusyns, also known as Carpatho-Rusyns, Ruthenians, or Rusnaks, are an East Slavic ethnic group from the Eastern Carpathians in Central Europe. They speak Rusyn, an East Slavic language variety, treated variously as either a distinct language or a dialect of the Ukrainian language. As traditional adherents of Eastern Christianity, the majority of Rusyns are Eastern Catholics, though a minority of Rusyns practice Eastern Orthodoxy. Rusyns primarily self-identify as a distinct Slavic people and they are recognized as such in Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia, where they have official minority status. Alternatively, some identify more closely with their country of residence, while others are a branch of the Ukrainian people.
The Rt Rev. Avgustyn Ivanovych Monsignor Voloshyn , also known as Augustin Voloshyn, was a Carpatho-Ukrainian politician, teacher, essayist, and Greek Catholic priest of the Mukacheve eparchy in Czechoslovakia.
Khust is a city located on the Khustets River in Zakarpattia Oblast, western Ukraine. It is near the сonfluence of the Tisa and Rika Rivers. It serves as the administrative center of Khust Raion. Population: 28,039.
Carpathian Ruthenia was a region in the easternmost part of Czechoslovakia that became an autonomous region within that country in September 1938. It declared its independence as the "Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine" in 15 March 1939; however, it was occupied and annexed by Hungary the same day. Starting with October 1944, the Soviet Red Army occupied the territory and short period the territory of the region was organised as Transcarpathian Ukraine (1944—1946), until it was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1946. In total, between 1939 and 1944, 80,000 Carpathian Ukrainians perished.
Northern Maramureș is a geographic-historical region comprising roughly the eastern half of the Zakarpattia Oblast in southwestern Ukraine, near the border with Romania. Until 1920, it was part of the Maramureș subregion of Transylvania, at which time the former Máramaros County was divided into a northern part, and a southern part.
The First Czechoslovak Republic, often colloquially referred to as the First Republic, was the first Czechoslovak state that existed from 1918 to 1938, a union of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. The country was commonly called Czechoslovakia, a compound of Czech and Slovak; which gradually became the most widely used name for its successor states. It was composed of former territories of Austria-Hungary, inheriting different systems of administration from the formerly Austrian and Hungarian territories.
The history of the Jews in the Czech lands, historically the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, including the modern Czech Republic, goes back many centuries. There is evidence that Jews have lived in Moravia and Bohemia since as early as the 10th century. Jewish communities flourished here specifically in the 16th and 17th centuries, and again in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Local Jews were mostly murdered in the Holocaust, or exiled at various points. As of 2021, there were only about 2,300 Jews estimated to be living in the Czech Republic.
Gregory Ignatius Zhatkovich was an American lawyer and political activist for Rusyns in the United States and Europe.
Paul Robert Magocsi is an American professor of history, political science, and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has been with the university since 1980 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1996. He currently acts as Honorary Chairman of the World Congress of Rusyns, and has authored many books on Rusyn history.
Livia Rothkirchen was a Czechoslovak-born Israeli historian and archivist. She was the author of several books about the Holocaust, including The Destruction of Slovak Jewry (1961), the first authoritative description of the deportation and murder of the Jews of Slovakia.
The coat of arms of Carpatho-Ukraine is the official heraldic coat of arms of Zakarpattia Oblast in Ukraine. The coat of arms was initially adopted on 30 March 1920 along with coat of arms of other lands of Czechoslovakia. The Ukrainian version of the arms was adopted on 18 December 1990 as a revived coat of arms by Hungarian graphic artist Janos Reiti.
Elections for deputies to the Czechoslovak parliament from the Užhorod electoral district were held on 16 March 1924. Nine members of the Chamber of Deputies and four senators were elected.
Carpatho-Ruthenians or Carpathian Ruthenians may refer to:
In 1944 and 1945, the Red Army pushed out the Royal Hungarian Army and took control of Carpathian Ruthenia, also called Transcarpathia. In 1945 and 1946, the region was annexed by the Soviet Union from the (Third) Czechoslovak Republic, which the Allies considered to be the legal owner of the territory beforehand.