COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY: JEWS, RUSYNS, AND THE HOLOCAUST

The following article authored by Henry Abramson, first appeared in Carpatho-Rusyn American Fall 1994, Vol. XVII, No.3 and is copyright as such. No unauthorized duplication/distribution of the below article is permitted.

Photo from a traditional Jewish shop in a village in Subcarpathian Rus' prior to World War-II

In the following article, Dr. Henry Abramson of the University of Toronto explores topics presented in several books on Carpathian Jewry listed below that were published in Israel and the United States during the past three decades. -Editor

Herman Dicker. Piety and Perseverance: Jewsfrom the Carpathian Mountains. New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1981.

Joseph Eden (Einczig). The Jews of Kaszony, Subcarpathia. New York: n.p., 1988.

Karpatorus. Edited by Yehudah Erez. Entsiklopedyah shel galuyot (Encyclopaedia of the Diaspora), Vol. VII. Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Hevrat Entsiklopedyah shel galuyot, 1959.

Sefer Marmarosh: Meah u-shishim kehilot kedoshot be-yishuvan u-vehurbanan (The Maramaros Book: In Memory of a Hundred and Sixty Jewish Communities). Edited by S.Y. Gross and Y. Yosef Cohen. Tel Aviv: Beit Marmaros, 1983.

Shlomo Rozman, Sefer Shafar harerei kedem: golat Karpatorus-Maramarosh be-tifertah u-vehurbanah (The Book of the Beauty of the Ancient Mountains: The Exile of Carpathian Rus'-Maramaros in Its Glory and in Its Destruction), Vol. I. New York: Zikhron Kedoshim ve-roshei Golat Ariel, 1991.

Shlomo Rozman. Sefer zikhron kedoshim: le-yehudei Karpatorus-Marmoresh (The Book of Memory of the Holy Ones: For the Jews of Carpathian Rus'- Maramaros). Rehovot, Israel: n.p., 1968.

A moving Hebrew prayer with the title, "The Holy Ones of Kaszony and Surroundings,'' is included by Joseph Eden in The Jews of Kaszony, Subcarpathia immediately preceding the alphabetical list of those murdered by the Nazis:

This prayer is evocative of many of the themes prominent in the genre of the Yizker-bukh, or "memorial book," a popular medium for expressing grief over the tremendous loss and dislocation brought about by the Holocaust. Written by survivors and descendants of survivors, these memorial books have an important function for Holocaust survivors and their descendants in that they attempt to deal with the psychological impact of the physical annihilation of past generations through an often-idealized depiction of their existence in Eastern Europe. The memorial books also serve as a method by which the regional identities of the remnants of these Jewish communities, transplanted for the most part in North America and Israel, may be preserved before the threat of assimilation to the host culture.

Several Yizker-bikher have been written on Subcarpathian Rus' and its localities, most recently the first volume of Rabbi Shlomo Rozman's projected series, The Book ofthe Beauty ofthe Ancient Mountains. Written for popular consumption, the Yizker-bikher vary considerably in their adherence to the stringencies of modern scholarship. Some, like Yehuda Erez's contribution to the Encyclopaedia of the Diaspora series, are highly scholarly and supported with ample documentation in several languages. Others are more liturgical in quality, and although in many ways they come much closer to describing the abject horror of the Holocaust, their concern for modern, critical, historical analysis is less pronounced. To date, Dov Dinur's brief study, Shoat yehudei Rusyah ha-Karpatit-Uzhhorod (The Holocaust of the Jews of Carpathian Rus'-Uzhhorod), remains the most important scholarly monograph on the topic. Several graduate students in Israel, however, are currently working on related dissertations.

Like the prayer cited above, an essential element in the Yizker-bikher is the maintenance of what seems to be an unusual but fundamental self-contradiction. On the one hand, the Yizker-bikher implore the Master of Mercy to grant the victims of the Holocaust a peaceful rest in the afterlife, while on the other hand they demand that "the land not cover up their blood, let there be no place where their cries are not heard." How can both be maintained simultaneously?

A peaceful rest requires the satiation of either vengeance or forgiveness-perhaps even both--but it is clear that eternal rest is inconsistent with eternal lamentation. The synthesis of these two polarities is rooted in the statement: ''preserve for us their suffering [literally: remind us of their bondage] and elevate us and all Jews in their merit." For their horrible deaths to have meaning, they must act as a rallying cry for Jewish self-consciousness, alarmingly threatened by the demographic upheaval of the Holocaust and the subsequent dispersion of survivors from their homeland in new, more secular climes. While wishing on the innocents a peaceful rest, the survivors plead that the memory of their murder not be removed from subsequent generations, to act as a glue to bind together the dispersed fragments of the Jewry of Subcarpathian Rus'.

Idealizing the memory of the martyred Jews is, however, only one part of the inarticulate strategy of the Yizker-bukh. Exploring the malice and cruelty of the tormentors also has a tremendous potential for demanding allegiance to regional identities among the survivors and, more importantly, their descendants in North America and Israel. In fact, this aspect may prove to be even more effective among later generations than the appeal to the innocence of the victims. The essence of their righteousness, after all, was rooted in a high degree of observance of traditional Jewish ritual and strict adherence to the ethical principles of that faith. For their immigrant descendants, many of whom were raised in incomparably more secular environments, concentration on this central aspect of the victims' lives may have the undesired effect ofincreasing ''survivors' guilt,'' as they increasingly reject this level of religious observance, preferring the more American or Israeli lifestyle over their Subcarpathian heritage. In this sense, they are repudiating the core values and belief system of the ancestors in whose name they demand satisfaction. Relying on the mobilizing power inherent in righteous indignation, concentration on the depravity of the Nazis and their collaborators may supplant long panegyrics on the religious identification of the murdered ones. Thus, the Holocaust becomes a surrogate religion of sorts for American and Israeli Jewry-powerful enough to demand adherence to the in-group, yet negative enough to require few physical demands on its practitioners.

It is in this sense that the phrase, "may the land not cover up their blood, let there be no place where their cries are not heard,'' gains its full meaning. The Hebrew reader will recognize the allusion to Genesis 4:10, when Cain is questioned about his brother's murder: ''What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.'' Cain is subsequently punished with eternal wandering, yet his safety is assured with a special mark which prevents others from murdering him. Thus the villain must remain, alive and ubiquitous, to remind others perpetually of his crime against Abel. Similarly, the perpetrators of the Holocaust must remain in memory, particularly when the gentleness of the shepherd Abel is a concern no longer relevant to his descendants.

The Jews of Subcarpathian Rus' were the last medieval Jews of the western world. Unlike the more cosmopolitan parts of the continent, the Jews of this region lived in an island of traditional mores and lifestyles that was much more isolated from secularizing influences than any other area of Jewish settlement in East Central Europe, as amply detailed in Rabbi Rosman's work. This is not to say that this community of 100,000 Jews, about one-fourth of the total population of the region, representing roughly one-third of the Jews in Czechoslovakia, was completely cut off from the flow of history. Zionism, for example, did make significant inroads among the youth of Subcarpathian Rus'. Nevertheless, these Jews were far more reluctant to dive into the irreligious twentieth century than Jews in other areas. In the rest of Czechoslovakia, for example, intermarriage rates among Jews were higher: thirty percent in Bohemia, nineteen percent in Moravia, and even five percent in the strict Jewish community in Slovakia. By way of contrast, the rate in the Subcarpathian region was a paltry 0.9 percent. The Jews of Subcarpathian Rus', moreover, overwhelmingly identified themselves as Jews by nationality. The 1921 census reveals that only 53.6 percent of Czechoslovakian Jewry declared their nationality as Jewish, the bulk of the remainder identifying themselves as Czechs (21.8%), Germans(14.3 %), or Hungarians (8.5 %). In Bohemia, only 14.6 percent of Jews declared themselves Jewish by nationality, whereas Jews in other regions were somewhat more inclined to consider their nationality identicaI with their religious affiliation (Moravia 47.8%; Slovakia 54.2%). In Subcarpathian Rus', however, as high as 86.8 percent of Jews considered themselves Jews by nationality, a figure well above the national average.

Their extreme adherence to tradition and strong Jewish self-consciousness were not the only distinguishing features of Subcarpathian Jewry. Unlike the general Eastern European pattern of Jewish settlement, Subcarpathian Jewry was far more rural than urban. Statistics from 1921, for example, indicate that sixty-five percent of Subcarpathian Jewry lived in villages with a population of less than 5,000. Almost half of the Jews in Bohemia, by way of contrast, lived in the city of Prague. Corresponding with this pattern of settlement, the Jews of Subcarpathian Rus' were much more heavily involved in farming and related agricultural occupations, such as beekeeping, than commerce or artisanry. The poverty of these rural Jews was considerable: an American Joint Distribution Committee study of the area conducted in 1921 determined that fully forty percent of Subcarpathian Jewry was reliant on communal charities for income. Even the distribution by age group was further differentiated between Jews in Subcarpathian Rus' and elsewhere in Czechoslovakia. In western regions of the country, the Jewish population was aging faster than the non-Jewish population, whereas the Jewish population in the far east was virtually identical by age group to the indigenous Rusyns, indicating similar socio-economic contours as well as lifestyle choices.

In the cities, however, Subcarpathian Jewry conformed to the more common pattern for urbanized Jewry in other parts of East Central Europe. Jews constituted roughly a third of the population of the major cities; Mukacevo was a major Jewish center where in 1910 Jews formed nearly half of the population. Although the urbanized Jews had been drifting steadily towards a Magyar orientation during the pre-World War I period-in Uzhhorod, for example, 41.3 percent of the inhabitants called Hungarian their mother tongue in 1890, and by 1910 that figure had jumped to 82 percent-the establishment of the new state of Czechoslovakia prompted the urbanized elements to rethink their cultural orientations. Subsequently, a certain drift towards Slovak and, to a Iesser degree, Hebrew and Czech, as a standard medium for communication is discernible in this period. While the vernaculars of rural Subcarpathian Jewry continued to be Yiddish and Rusyn, Jews were not enthusiastic supporters of the new Rusyn school system. Jews were looking to provide their children with the most advantageous education possible (and they did this with zeal, so that in 1920-21, Jews constituted seventy-two percent of the student population of the region), and Slovak and Czech provided greater opportunities for advancement. Moreover, the nationalistic atmosphere of the Rusyn schools put parents off, as one author illustrated with the example of a Jewish child reciting to his concerned Orthodox parents the lines from Duchnovyc that he had learned in his Rusyn class: "I was, am, and will be a Rusyn/I will not forget my honorable lineage/And will remain its son. My mother and father were Rusyn, as were my whole family.''

In a way, the conflict between Rusyns and Subcarpathian Jewry over the educational system is a reflection of the greater tensions between the communities during the inter- war period. Both groups welcomed Czechoslovakia's democracy with enthusiasm yet soon found themselves vying with each other for favor with the new, paternalistic government in Prague. Moreover, the separatist tendencies of the Magyars in the region and the demands for greater autonomy by the Rusyns alienated the Jewish population, which strove to maintain and develop ties with the central Czechoslovak authorities. The orientation of the Jews towards the center was traditional and may be observed in many other regions and periods of Jewish history. As a minority, the Jews have sought to support the powers that are most likely to maintain a Rechtsstaat, or society governed by law and order, and revolutionary change is ipso facto always inconsistent with the maintenance of order. The Magyar orientation, though fashionable for these reasons in the pre-war period, lost a considerable degree of Jewish support after the savage pogroms of the "White Terror" which in Hungary followed the toppling of the Kun regime in the summer of 1919.

The Rusyns were also dissatisfied with their treatment at the hands of the Czechoslovak government, and many moved towards the Ukrainophile orientation-though not necessarily irredentism-in the later 1930s. This turn to the Galician form of interwar Ukrainian nationalism was disturbing to Subcarpathian Jewry, as the influence of Nazi ideology was pronounced in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and other Ukrainian right-wing groups.While antisemitism was only a small part of the OUN's overall platform, it was certainly not inconsequential, and it added to the tensions deveioping between Jews and Rusyns in the interwar period. The Ukrainian and Ukrainophile nationalists understood the Czechoslovak orientation of Subcarpathian Jews in a decidedly negative manner. Jews were seen as perennial detractors of the Ukrainian cause, always seeming to defect to Ukraine's enemies, be they Russians, Poles, or Czechs.

Those Rusyns who were Ukrainophiles were to take the leading role in the immediate pre-war environment. Following the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia forced by the Nazis in October 1938, the Ukrainophiles set up (initially with the assistance of the Russophiles) the first autonomous government in Subcarpathian Rus', later calling it Carpatho- Ukraine. These developments from the new capital of Chust were alarming to the Jewish community. One memoir records that Jews were afraid to travel after hours, since "non-Jews [were] going about in the streets like drunkards, screaming dire threats against Jews and their businesses." The Nazis took advantage of their own popularity, in particular among the Ukrainians active in the region, and sponsored an antisemitic campaign directed at rousing the Rusyns against their Jewish neighbors. More ominously, Ukrainians in Chust are said to have openly prepared "blacklists" of wealthy Jews, an activity which was consistent with the Nazi pattern of "aryanization," or confiscation of Jewish property. Although aryanization was typically a first stage in what was to become the murder process, Carpatho-Ukraine was too short-lived to be further involved. Hungarian troops crossed the border and occupied the entire region in March 1939, after which it was renamed Carpathia (Hungarian: Karpatalja) .

Approximately 90,000 of the over 100,000 Jews of Subcarpathian Rus' were murdered at the hands of the Hungarians and the Nazis. The destruction of these Jews conformed to a pattern that was common for many countries in Eastern Europe. It began with a definition of the term Jew, proceeded to confiscation of property, then ghettoization, and finally deportation to death camps. The Hungarian government, like several other states in the region, drew distinctions between Jews who were citizens of Hungary, Jews from areas recently acquired by Hungary, and Jews who were refugees from other countries, the latter being the first to be murdered. In the summer of 1941, some 20,000 Jews who had found refuge in Subcarpathian Rus' were deported to neighboring Galicia, which was part of the Nazi territory of the Generalgouvernement in former Poland and the destination of thousands of Jewish deportees. The military governor of Galicia, however, refused to accept these Jews. This was rather typical of the confusion and disagreement characteristic of the Nazi Jewish policies at the time. The result was that some 12,500 of these deportees were simply shot by SS units at Kamjanec'-Podil's' kyj. This approach seemed to have some popularity among elements in both the German and Hungarian regimes, and several more requests for such deportations were entertained in following years. Adolf Eichmann, Hitler's expert on the ''Jewish question," demurred, waiting until a more comprehensive plan could be put into place. Meanwhile, ghettos were established for Jews in Mukacevo (Munkacs), Kosice (Kassa), Uzhhorod (Ungva'r), Chust (Huszt), Sevljus (Nagyszollos), Berehovo (Beregszasz), and other locales, and Jews were occasionally rounded up for forced labor in Ukraine.

It was not until May 1944 that the mass deportations began. Subcarpathian Rus' was designated Deportation Zone I. Within three weeks, the majority of Subcarpathian Jewry had been gassed and burned in the infamous death camp called Auschwitz.

What was the role of the Rusyns in this terrible history? While Carpatho-Ukraine existed (October 1938-March 1939), no Jews were murdered. Nonetheless, the fledgling state did adopt Jewish policies that were ominously threatening to the future of Subcarpathian Jewry. To repeat, however, Carpatho-Ukraine came to an end before anything more concrete might have occurred, indeed before a single Jew was murdered. It is also worth mentioning that the Rusyns were not in the least a trusted ally of the Hungarians, as their claims for autonomy conflicted with Magyar demands. Thus, a Magyar-Rusyn collaboration to murder the Jews was highly unlikely, at least in a formal, administrative sense.

On an informal level, however, how did the Rusyns behave towards their Jewish neighbors? One source cited by Gross and Cohen in the Sefer Marmarosh describes Rusyn cooperation in the roundup of Jews (referring to them as "the searchdogs of the Hungarian gendarmes'') with the bitterness of betrayal:

This is a great source of pain. This nation, the Ruthenian-Ukrainian of Maramaros, which was raised alongside and together with Jews during the previous seven or eight generations, betrayed its neighbor in times of trouble in a low, cruel and ugly manner . . . How was it that did they not pass the test on the day of trial? How did they hand over hunted Jews, entire families with their wives and children, to the Hungarian foe, which was the enemy of the Ruthenian people, as well, in exchange for a quart of liquor? Oh, Ruthenian nation, how low you stooped, down to the very depths. You betrayed your neighbor for a pittance! ! ! (pp. 39-40)

Little research has been done on Subcarpathian Rus' as a whole and still less on the behavior of Rusyns during the Holocaust, and these charges have yet to receive the attention of the scholarly community. The Yizker-bikher provide considerable anecdotal evidence, however, of Rusyns exposing Jews in hiding to the Hungarian murder machine, often in exchange for some sort of bribe. This is not to say that individuai cases of protecting Jews are not also recorded, including a rare example of an entire community of Rusyns in Kosel'ovo acting to protect the Jews, even supporting them with food in the ghetto. Nevertheless, these examples remain the distinct minority. On the other hand, the memoirs are unanimous in describing the idyllic relationship between Jews and Rusyns in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. For example, Joachim Schoenfeld in his Shtetl Memoirs (1985) writes fondly of his youthful trips into the Carpathians:

The Hutzuls (Ruthenian mountaineers) who were in the mountains for the entire summer tending their sheep in the poloninas ([upland] pastures) were very hospitable people, and anyone who came up to them was always welcome to find shelter in their coliba [hut], to sleep on fresh hay alongside the watra (watchfire). Whoever came to their hut was also invited to share in their meal, which consisted of mamaliga (corn bread cooked in salted water to a hard consistency) with bryndza (sheep cheese) and milk. They didn't ask for payment but were more than happy if they were rewarded with pipe tobacco, which they couldn't afford to buy. . . . The evenings were spent with the Hutzuls, listening to their tales about Dobosh (a kind of Robin Hood), and the miracles performed by the svaty Srulko, the Saint Israel, i.e. the Bal Shem Tov, whom even Dobosh revered and admired. (pp. 130-131)

This passage, typical of descriptions of pre-World War I Jewish-Rusyn relations, is indicative of a high degree of cultural cross-fertilization (linguistic and even religious) and generally paints a portrait two peoples in harmonious symbiosis. Even the work of Gross and Cohen, which is particularly strident in its accusations against the Rusyns, refers to Jewish and Rusyn children playing together as well as the use by Rusyns of Jewish Rabbinical courts and Jewish midwives.

How can this paradox of Jewish-Rusyn relations be understood? How can two peoples who apparently coexisted so placidly for generations suddenly be reduced to such depths in a matter of a generation? In the absence of more sophisticated scholarship, a comprehensive answer which takes into account the regional peculiarities of Subcarpathian Rus' is unavailable. A more general understanding of the problem, however, based on the paradigm of the Belarusans, Ukrainians, and the Baltic peoples, seems to be useful at least to some degree. Simply put, like these peoples the Rusyns increasingly viewed themselves as dominated by foreign powers during the interwar period and looked with admiration to the rapid reconstruction of Germany under Hitler, perceiving him as a saviour from Communist hegemony. The influence of Ukrainian political emigres from Galicia was certainly instrumental in fostering this attitude, particularly during the brief existence of Carpatho-Ukraine.

On the other hand, this simpfistic understanding of the problem is deeply unsatisfactory. It fails to explain the deeper human dimension of the problem, which is more concerned with what is described as the mass betrayal of Jews by their longstanding neighbors, a topic which has been treated to some degree in the historiography of western nations although to to a lesser degree of the east. Furthermore, the charges of betrayal have to be adequately quantified, as they were put forward by the anguished survivors whose experience of extreme persecution must be taken into account. To cite Gross and Cohen, for example: ''It is not our intention to say that the Rusyn people, down to the very last individual, were all guitty, yet 'the majority may be considered as the entirety'.'' The basis for this statement must have been the absence of rescue, which is fundamentaily a representation of compliance, apathy, or at least a feeling of helplessness on the part of the Rusyns. Active collaboration in the form of revealing hidden Jews to the Hungarians is another matter altogether, and while it is widely asserted that this took place. it is difficult at this stage in our historical knowledge to determine accurately the extent of this phenomenon. While some scholars have studied Subcarpathian Rus' during the Holocaust years, few have considered Rusyn-Jewish relations. They instead focus on Hungarian-Jewish relations, since the Hungarians were in charge of directing the murder process. A true and complete picture of how Rusyns reacted to the murder of their longstanding Jewish neighbors awaits its description by historical scholarship.

The Yizker-bikher reviewed here, however, are not dedicated soleIy to the accurate representation of the Holocaust in all its details and complexities. Their purpose is to act as both a memorial to the martyred innocent ones as well as a bond to bring their descendants closer to the Jewish community. As the American-Israeli definition of Jewishness becomes less and less religious, the emphasis on the innocence and piety of the murdered Jewry of Subcarpathian Rus' may become less prevalent, its place taken by concentration on the cruelty of the Rusyns. Unfortunately, this development does not bode well for future research in this troubling and tragic period in Jewish-Rusyn relations. While renewed study of primary sources (interviews with survivors, German and Hungarian military documents, etc.) promise to advance significantly the current state of historical knowledge surrounding this tragic period of Jewish-Rusyn relations, it may have little impact on the portrait of the era painted in the Yizker-bikher, which often have an internal dynamic of their own, independent of the scholarly world.

Henry Abramson Toronto, Ontario

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