issue 26 / n. 2 (2024)
Tag: Great Depression
ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the Great Depression on Jews in Hungary, with a specific focus on university students and lawyers—two fields in which the presence of Jews was highly contested. Instead of focusing on the Jewish economic elite, we discuss two groups that were targets of the most vehement attacks of the antisemitic middle class. Our aim is to present the direct and indirect consequences of the Great Depression on Jews, as well as its impact on the rise of political antisemitism. We also explore how far it can be understood as a catalyst of radicalization, as the Hungarian economy’s deterioration led to the swift rise of the radical right-wing into power.
issue 26 / n. 2 (2024)
ABSTRACT The article explores how the Great Depression was reflected in Jewish newspapers, particularly the Czech-language Zionist periodical Židovské Zprávy (Jewish News). It highlights the key issues that Zionists considered crucial during the economic crisis. Additionally, the article provides an overview of the status and economic situation of the Jewish minority in the former Czech lands, including their integration into the Czechoslovak economy. The crisis exacerbated disparities between the Czech lands, Slovakia, and Subcarpathian Rus, as well as between internal and border regions. Alongside topics related to the impact of the crisis and the differing conditions of the Jewish minority in various regions of Czechoslovakia, Zionists also addressed the effects of the crisis on Palestine.
issue 26 / n. 2 (2024)
ABSTRACT The article examines how the Great Depression affected the Lithuanian Jews, their relationship with ethnic Lithuanians, and their relationship with the Lithuanian state. It places particular emphasis on how the depression shaped the state’s core project—the “Lithuanianisation” of the national economy. Through case studies ranging from Jewish agricultural credit across labor migration to Klaipėda to the Lithuanian Businessmen’s Union’s (LVS) efforts to strengthen ethnic Lithuanians economically, the article argues that both the government’s and the LVS’s responses to the depression dramatically reshaped the lives of Lithuanian Jews. The “Lithuanianisation” of the national economy transformed formerly predominantly Jewish towns economically, socially, and culturally. However, as Jewish migration to Klaipėda shows, Lithuanian economic nationalism also provided opportunities for Jews seeking a livelihood outside of the shtetls. At the same time, the rise of the Nazis in Germany made Lithuanian Jews more dependent than ever on the existence of an independent Lithuania.
issue 26 / n. 2 (2024)
