Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/159

 of the big estates of improvident magnates. By handling all the commerce of the country he grew to be the most powerful influence in the Magyar state with which he identified himself. In Budapest the Jew and the Magyar aristocrat determined the policy of the government, in the territories inhabited by the subject races the Jew served as the outpost of the policy of Magyarization.

The Magyar government was founded on injustice, oppression and terrorism. Eight million Magyars tried to assimilate or rather swallow up twelve million people of other races. To Magyarize every man and woman in Hungary, to make a Magyar out of every new-born child was the principal aim of all governmental activities. Everything was permissible that tended to further this aim. Upon this preposterous and immoral idea was built the entire political structure of the Magyaroszag (Magyar State). It did not work, and under the stress of the great war the Magyar state tumbled down like a house of cards, crushing under its debris its builders and up holders—the landholding aristocrats and the Jewish bourgeois. But while the system lasted, it caused untold misery, suffering and social and moral degradation. And it left behind it unquenchable racial hatred and animosity which may trouble the inhabitants of the liberated territories for years to come.

The Jew in Slovakia, as in all civilized countries, was engaged almost exclusively in trading. He came from Russia or Poland, driven out by cruel persecution, penniless; he settled in a village on the southern slope of the Carpathians, opened a rum shop, and in a few years became the wealthiest man in the village. He gave credit to the peasant in his store, but he drove a hard bargain; he would lend the men small sums of money at exorbitant interest and get them into his power. But worst of all he introduced into the village "palenka" (whiskey) which brought with it laziness, demoralization and poverty. Thus the immigrant Jew got rich on the weakness of the Slovak peasant. As a rule he had no competition; the Slovaks did not know how to run a store, and the Magyar nobility and gentry would not lower itself to the life of a tradesman. The Jew made the most of his opportunity and one can hardly blame him for that, but the fact remains that he did not make himself popular by such methods.

In more recent years priests and more enlightened Slovaks began to organize temperance societies and co-operative stores with some success. That hurt the business of the Jewish publicans and they appealed to the government for protection. As whiskey was a great source revenue to the state, the Magyar government disbanded temperance societies in Slovakia on the pretext that they were part of the nationalistic movement and therefore directed against the integrity of Hungary.

Jews that became rich in the petty trade in the villages moved into the cities and engaged in grain business and banking. The second generation entered the learned professions; they became lawyers, doctors, professors or built distilleries. And they also got into politics. Now in Hungary before the recent revolution a subject had either to declare himself a good Magyar or else be condemned to persecution and oppression. The Jews in Slovakia almost without exception took the first course. Although they had suffered severe persecution in Poland and Russia, they showed no interest in the poor, oppressed Slovak outside of the sphere of trading with him. Why identify himself with the hopeless cause of the Slovaks, when it was to his advantage to side with the government. I do not wish to condemn the Jews in Slovakia for choosing this course; when the advantages were all on one side, most of us would have probably acted the same. Human nature is the same the world over. But the fact remains that the Jew who made his living out of the Slovak peasants had the chance to be come either Magyar Jew or Slovak Jew, and he chose the former. Naturally this placed him in an awkward position, when contrary to all human expectations the Magyar kingdom broke up in the fall of 1918.

The Jew was easily “denationalized” and willingly embraced the Magyar Kultur. He had nothing to lose. What did it matter to him, whether he was a Polish Jew or German Jew or Hungarian Jew. In any case he retained his racial characteristics and his religion; at home he could speak Yiddish, if he cared to do so. By professing to be a Magyar he had everything to gain, and so he yielded readily to the policy of Magyarization, where all