Numerus Clausus Led to Hungarian Exodus in 1920s

Maria Ronay is mistaken when she asserts that “there was no anti-Semitism in Hungary” in 1926 (Physics Today, March 2002, page 11 ). She must be, fortunately, too young to remember those days.

After the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I, two opposite-colored terror regimes followed (the “red” communist and the “white” rightist), and anti-Semitism in Hungary in the 1920s reached a peak. Although no comprehensive, explicit laws against Hungarian Jews were yet enacted, Jews were barred from practically all government jobs, university positions, and various aspects of public life, and were often harassed. It is true, they still held a prominent role in intellectual life, business, commerce, journalism, the medical profession, and law; nevertheless, they were second-class citizens. Most telling was the Numerus Clausus Act of 1920, which severely restricted admittance of Jewish students to universities. Moreover, Jewish people already admitted to institutions of higher learning frequently were prevented by their right-extremist colleagues from attending classes, and sometimes were even physically assaulted.

Ronay’s “proof” that there was no anti-Semitism because the Budapest synagogue “is the largest and most beautiful” in Europe is pointless. As she herself says, that synagogue was built in the 19th century, during the moderate and civil empire.

Hans Bethe is correct in writing that Edward Teller “did not have to leave Hungary in 1926.” But Teller was an intelligent and thoughtful man; he must have seen the trouble ahead. Hungarian anti-Semitism eventually led, in 1944, to the extermination—under German Nazi orders but with the enthusiastic support of Hungarian fascists and a considerable portion of the population— of about half a million Hungarian Jews.

Although I lost many friends and relatives to Hungarian anti-Semitism, and although I have been a US citizen for many decades, I still proudly consider Hungary the country of my roots. But history must not be rewritten.