The Tale of the Jew

The Codes of Post-WWII Antisemitism in Hungary

Abstract

This article focuses on the themes and topoi of the antisemitic imagination in the post-WWII period in Hungary. It argues that in the post-1945 period the notion of the “Jew” represented a malleable identity that encapsulated qualities and modes of behaviour which industrial and agricultural workers attached to the definitions of their alleged enemies. The article, first explores how debates of property restitution framed the struggle for material survival in the countryside as an essentially Christian-Jewish conflict and, hence, affirmed the idea of discernible “Jewish” interests and a “Jewish” social class. Second, it follows the perceptions of material conflicts and interprets the rumours against surviving Jewish communities who were accused of kidnapping Christian children for allegedly making sausage of them, which had become the most common form of antisemitic accusation during the postwar months. The article argues that these accusations framed by the notions of food and nutrition were tales that metaphorically encapsulated popular perceptions of the Jews. The Jews in these stories acted as shortcuts to the broader social category of privileged and better-off groups. The article, third, highlights that the belief that Jews were wealthier than others had been crafted in the interwar period and particularly during the war. As the article points out the politics of discrimination was stimulated by a desire to discover and acquire “Jewish wealth”, which was a central theme of contemporary antisemitic imagination. Nonetheless, as it argues, “Jewish wealth” was the product of ghettoization and of institutionalized robbery, which garnered petty property from deported Jewish citizens together and, thus, rendered the previously only imaginary “Jewish treasures” visible.