Aryanization of the Hungarian Press

The press provided an opportunity to make a living for young people with a secondary education or a university degree, who found it difficult to find work in other professions, or who found the bustling, glamorous, somewhat bohemian café life more interesting than normal work life, as in the cafés they could spend time with writers, actors and all kinds of exciting artists. By the 1920s and ‘30s, modern journalism, like some other professions – including lawyers, doctors, engineers, photographers, filmmakers, cabaret artists, innkeepers, etc. – was seen by many Hungarians as “occupied by the Jews”. What they meant by this was that, for their taste, there were too many journalists and newspaper editors of Jewish origin. Also, there was a large number of newspapers and magazines that were associated with Jewish denomination or Jewish organizations.

The press in Hungary never operated completely freely: economic and political interests always influenced what and how to write, even if the press relations during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy could be considered roughly free, especially when compared with the period of the First World War. However, the counter-revolutionary system of Miklós Horthy could be described more as a controlled democracy. Before the First World War, a large deposit was all that was required to start a newspaper, which showed the seriousness of the publisher’s intentions. Furthermore, it was also important to prove creditworthiness, since the amount originally allocated could be used to settle the debts of publications that often went bankrupt, or in the case of lost press lawsuits, if the owner had no other money available. After 1919, however, it was only possible to establish a press product with the approval of the Prime Minister’s Office, which, in addition to the financial requirements, was conditional on the “national orientation of the newspaper being sufficiently assured.” In addition, the Minister of the Interior was given the power to ban newspapers temporarily or permanently, whereas previously this was only possible by a court order. Act LXIII of 1912, initiated by István Tisza, gave the government exceptional powers, and in the 1920s, the freedom of the press was restricted on the basis of this law until as late as 1938.

In the interwar period, approximately a hundred newspapers were banned for political reasons, and many more were never given permission to be published. In order to avoid another leftist (or rightist) revolution, the media became much more centralized compared with the period of Austro-Hungarian dualism. More direct interference was experienced only in 1919-20, when editorial offices were ransacked and journalists were punished by being deprived of the right to publish for months, if not at times outright murdered. But despite all attempts at intimidation and repression, the Hungarian press between the two world wars remained extremely vibrant.

The number of newspapers conveying the government’s political ideas was always very high, their proportion eventually reached two-thirds, yet, among the nationwide newspapers and especially among the Budapest readers, press outlets with a more liberal attitude were much more popular. Their popularity was not necessarily due to their political worldviews, but rather to the interesting topics and well-written articles they published. In the mid-1920s, there were more than twenty dailies and more than 208 political newspapers published in Hungary. Many professional associations had also published their own periodicals, as did the concierges, meat industry workers, and the like. Attorneys communicated with each other through several different press outlets. For example, the newspaper that represented the radically nationalist lawyers gathered around the extreme MÜNE group published the Magyar Ügyvéd (Hungarian Attorney) periodical.

In the interwar era, the majority of journalists belonged to the liberal Hungarian Journalists’ Association, while the Christian-nationalist, racist journalists and editors joined the Pátria Klub, founded in 1923. Those journalists, usually of the younger generation, who saw the role of the press as primarily educational and propagandistic, became more vocal in the late thirties. In 1938, parallel to the strong shift of the country’s political makeup towards the political right, radical changes began in the press as well. Prime Minister Ignác Darányi’s unmistakable allusion to the elimination of economic “disproportionalities in Hungarian public life” prompted the anti-Semitic Pátria Klub to announce the formation of a chamber of journalists with its 150 members. It was not just a matter of representing new interests: during the months of preparation of the first anti-Jewish law, the journalists knew very well that an important change was expected in their field. On May 29, 1938, the parliament passed Act XV of 1938 on the “More Effective Ensuring of the Balance of Social and Economic Life”, on the basis of which the number of journalists belonging to the Jewish denomination was capped at 20%. The legislators stipulated that a press chamber should be formed within three months, whose task was going to be to “enforce and ensure the requirements of the national spirit and Christian morality in the field of journalism and newspaper publishing…”. On June 1, Act XVIII of 1938 rewrote press relations, which resulted in the termination of 411 press publications in the same year. Other papers, including the widely read Az Est tabloid, were nationalized. Tighter censorship was introduced for those journals which were published less than twelve times a year, in 1938 there were still 295 press products of this kind, in 1942 there were only 190. Periodicals critical of the regime such as Válasz (Response) or Szép Szó (Nice Word) also disappeared.

At the end of 1938, Mihály Kolosváry-Borcsa, head of the press department of the Prime Minister’s Office, was entrusted with the coordination of the National Press Chamber’s affairs. The adjudication of applications for Chamber membership was postponed to the following year. However, in the meantime the second anti-Jewish law had come into effect, which limited the number of Jewish employees in intellectual professions to just 6%, this time not on the basis of religious background but of “race”. In the end, 1,572 applicants were admitted to the Hungarian National Press Chamber, and 1,863 who were counted as “Jews” were rejected. In the past, journalism had always been influenced by political power, but from 1938 it became clear that the press was seen first and foremost as a disseminator and interpreter of government propaganda.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, a special state of emergency and a gradual censorship of the entire press were introduced. It is telling that newspapers were forbidden to call the Nazi German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, a war, so they used instead the headline “Border clashes over Warsaw”, as recalled by György Fazekas, a staff member of the Miskolc daily newspaper Felsőmagyarországi Reggeli Hírlap (Upper Hungary Morning Newspaper). The overwhelming pro-German sentiment of the press diminished noticeably after the Nazi defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad and the Don Disaster of the Hungarian Royal Army (many Jewish Hungarian journalists perished as forced laborers in Soviet territories). As the Hungarian government’s policy became increasingly less devoted to the Third Reich, this tactical change in governmental political preference also allowed for more diverse political opinions in Hungarian media. In spring 1944, following the Nazi German invasion of Hungary all newspapers critical of Germany were banned, and after the Arrow Cross coup of October 15 only Arrow Cross-affiliated publications were allowed to appear.

The German round-up lists in spring 1944 also included a number of publishing house owners and newspaper editors. In addition, between April 23 and 25, 1944, the Jewish Council informed more than a hundred journalists in Budapest to report for forced labor to the Auxiliary Camp set up at the Rabbinical School at 26 Rökk Szilárd Street. A few ignored the call, but dozens of journalists of all ages gathered, equipped with the supplies they needed – enough food for a few days, cutlery, etc. There were some freelance reporters, but also the (former) journalists of Pesti Hírlap, Újság, Népszava, Kis Újság, Friss Újság, Pester Lloyd, including Endre Sós, the future president of the post-war Jewish community organization (MIOK), and János Fóthy, who published a memoir about his experiences in the Horthy-liget labor camp as early as 1945.

Among the conscripted was also the painter István Farkas, who was the CEO of the publishing company Új Idők, because he was a member of the publishing subdivision of the Press Chamber. There were also the two doyens of Hungarian journalism, Béla Ágai and Emil Szomory, both of them already well into their seventies. Later some of the journalists were released on account of their Christian spouses, but most were sent to the Manfréd Weiss factory on Csepel Island for forced labor. Here, on April 2, 1944, the Messerschmitt aircraft factory in Horthy-liget, located in the internal part of the island, was hit so hard by Allied bombers that production became almost impossible, and workers were desperately needed there. In addition to journalists, people were picked up at random locations in raids, and prisoners of war were also sent here for forced work. From time to time, both from the Rökk Szilárd Street camp and from the Csepel Island camps, transports were sent to unknown destinations, as it later turned out – Auschwitz, Treblinka and Mauthausen.

It should be noted that it was not only journalists of Jewish origin who were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Among the prisoners held in Mauthausen was György Parragi, later a member of the Hungarian parliament for the Smallholders Party, who was associated with the bourgeois left. There was also the socialist Sándor Millok, who after 1945 served as state secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office and a government commissioner for repatriation. They were among the first to be arrested and sent to concentration camps.

The production of the 25th anniversary issue of Az Est newspaper by the Athenaeum Printing Company in 1935
© Fortepan / Salusinszky Imre

The Pesti Újság stand with anti-Semitic content at the Budapest International Fair in 1940
© Fortepan / Fortepan/Album002

Portrait of the writer Béla Zsolt
© Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Közgyűjteményi Központ

Béla Zsolt (Komárom, 1895 – Budapest, 1949)

Born as Béla Steiner, he was a Hungarian socialist journalist and politician. He wrote one of the finest Holocaust memoirs, entitled Nine Suitcases. His death in 1949 was a consequence of an illness sustained in the course of his forced labor service in the occupied Soviet territories. His left-wing, liberal writings appeared first in Nagyvárad’s local newspapers, then in Pesti Napló and Magyar Hírlap. He started his career as a poet, and his first four poetry books were praised by the greatest Hungarian authors, however, in 1929 he switched to prose genres. In his writings, the most important and recurring themes are the long and often hopeless struggle for a liberal, constitutional democracy, lobbying for the rights of the Hungarian Jewry, and the question of the social rise of the peasantry. After the war, he became editor-in-chief of the Hungarian Radical Party’s weekly newspaper Haladás (1945-1949). His world-famous Holocaust memoire was first published in episodes by the same newspaper.

István Lukács’s last postcard to his family from a labour camp in the western border region, dated December 3, 1944.
© Holokauszt Emlékközpont

Portrait of the journalist János Fóthy, mid-1930s
© FSZEK Budapest Gyűjtemény

János Fóthy (Kaposvár, 1893 – Budapest, 1979)
He was born in a small town in southwest Hungary, his father Mór Fleiner was an attorney, his mother was Vilma Rozenthal. Fóthy moved to Budapest at a young age, and he became a journalist after completing his studies: he became a theatre critic for Pesti Hírlap. His writings have appeared in Magyar Hírlap, Pesti Hírlap and A Hét, but he has also published regularly in various periodicals. His poems appeared in Nyugat and Múlt és Jövő, while his comedy entitled True Pearl was staged by the Chamber Theatre of the National Theatre, in 1921. Fóthy took part in the First World War as a young volunteer, later as a reserve officer, nevertheless, in 1944 he was interned by the Hungarian authorities and were ordered to work as a forced laborer. Fóthy’s most famous work recalled his experience in the Rökk Szilárd Street internment camp and in the working camp at Horthy-liget on Csepel Island in the summer of 1944.

György Bálint in 1934
Photo: Erzsébet Zinner
© MNM KK Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum gyűjteményéből

György Bálint (Budapest, 1906 – Staronikol’skoe, 1943)
György Bálint (originally Brauner) was born in Budapest. He applied for the arts faculty of the University of Budapest, but was rejected because of the Numerus Clausus Law, which aimed to limit the number of Jewish students admitted to higher education in 6 % of all students. In the meantime, his father, who was working as a bank clerk was forced to retire. This is why György Bálint completed a one-year course at the Commercial Academy, which made him able to financially support his family. At the same time, his poems were published by the literary journal Nyugat, which fact combined with his language skills and good manners helped him to get a job as an assistant police reporter at the Est newspapers in 1926. He quickly made his way up the ranks, working for the more conservative Magyarország newspaper, and the more sophisticated and certainly more comprehensive Pesti Napló, in addition to the tabloid Est. Besides journalism, he had been writing poetry, and later published also novels and prose works. His wife, typographer Vera Csillag designed the cover of his book entitled Strófák. In 1939, the Est newspapers were closed and Bálint was left without a job. He was occasionally publishing articles in Az Újság, Népszava and Magyar Csillag. In 1939, he tried to organize the family’s emigration to England, but as he failed to find a source of livelihood, he returned to Budapest. Between 1938 and 1940, he was called up several times for military service, and from 1941 he was called up for auxiliary labor service. In April 1942, he was arrested on made-up charges and spent six months in custody. He was then assigned to a special penal labor service company. They were sent to Ukraine at the end of November 1942, and Bálint died near Voronezh, Russia, on January 21, 1943.