1942
Ernő Munkácsi (Panticeu, 1896 – Balatonfüred, 1950) was a lawyer, jurist, and art historian who served as chief legal counsel of the Neolog Jewish Community of Pest and the director of our Museum from 1930. In 1944, Ernő Munkácsi was named secretary for the Central Jewish Council or Judenrat, an administrative body established by Nazis to help carry out the orders of the German and Hungarian persecutors. After the war, in response to accusations of having been complicit in the Nazis’ crimes, Munkácsi wrote How It Happened: Documenting the Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry(1947) based on his firsthand experience, inside information, and Jewish community records. Munkácsi’s seminal book is one of the earliest accounts of the Holocaust in Hungary.
Rural memories of an urban child about Ernő Munkácsi
“Although I was an urban child, I am still haunted by the fact that I was born in a village where my first conscious experiences come from tying me to Transylvania where I hail from (…)
I can see my grandfather’s tall figure as he walks up and down in the fields among the harvesters, giving out his instructions. He wore a big yellow straw hat, similar to what the Vlach field-hands would wear, although a bit more sophisticated. (…) Toward midday, they took a rest. My grandfather joined them. I was surrounded by those peasant girls in colorful garbs and they talked to me in an incomprehensible language, and invited me to try their yellow polenta, cheese cakes and their tasty Bergkäse. We sipped soothing, cold water from a clay mug.
How I envied the Jewish superintendent, the red-bearded Solomon Maier, who rode out to us on horseback every night and reported on the daily events.
After harvest came threshing. The grain was piled up in the huge barns in the back of our yard. It became a grain mountain. We, boys climbed to the top and slid down amidst raucous laughter.”
(Source: Munkácsi, Ernő, “Utazás a múltba” (Travel to the past) IMIT Yearbook, 1941, pp. 203–204)