Hungarian Anti-Semitic legal documents

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: 6070

Staff Only

Scope and Content

4 documents produced in Hungary in support of the enforcement of the Anti-Jewish Laws:

1) Bill on the limitation of Jewish expansion in public and economic spheres. Passed by the House of Representatives (Budapest, 1939). This is an official copy of the first "Jewish Law" that was enacted on May 5, 1939 that defined Jews as a race.

2) The implementation of the land policy provisions of the second Jewish law. Detailed explanation of Regulation 8360/1929 ME... (Budapest, 1939). This document contains the detailed explanation of this regulation featured in the Second Jewish Law enacted on May 5, 1939, which expropriated land belonging to Hungarian Jews.

3) Act IV, 1939. Official text of the Second Jewish Law, which defined the term "Jewish" on racial grounds and restricted employment. The First and Second Jewish Laws laid the groundwork for the eventual extermination of two-thirds of Hungarian Jewry.

4) The Jewish Law (1939. IV TC) and its implementing regulations. Edited, Annotated and Collated by the Practice of the Administrative Court of the Royal Kingdom of Hungary (Budapest, 1942). This is the last revised and updated edition of the Second Jewish Law (Act IV 1939).

Dates

Creation: 1939, 1942

Conditions Governing Access

Advance notice required for access.

Conditions Governing Use

All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Manuscripts Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.

Historical note

Hungary had an official policy of anti-Semitism and during the 1930s, anti-Jewish policies grew increasingly repressive as Hungarian leaders chose to align with the fascist governments of Germany and Italy. After 1938, Hungry passed a series of anti-Jewish legislations that were based on Germany's Nuremberg Laws. In 1941, Hungary entered the war on the side of Nazi Germany. Before the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, approximately 100,000 Jewish men were mobilized for forced labor; around 40,000 of them did not survive. The ghettoization and deportation of Jews did not start until the German occupation; but in just eight weeks in 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported with the full cooperation of the Hungarian government.