Esztergom is a town on the Danube in northern Hungary. In the 1930s and 1940s, its population fluctuated between 17,000 and 22,000. According to a 1932 survey, approximately 250 ‘Gypsies’ lived in and around the town. In the 1920s and 1930s, the local Roma population was resettled several times by the local council. In all cases, the resettlement involved violent measures against these families. In 1939, the Roma were relocated near the flood protection embankment. In the resettlement process, the aim was not only to isolate the members of the Roma community as much as possible from the other inhabitants of the town, but also to keep them away from the places frequented by tourists.
Segregation
On 22 July 1942, the local town council adopted a regulation on the inhabitants of the ‘Gypsy colony’ of Esztergom. Preparation of the decree began in 1939, and its final version was modelled on a similar decree issued in Salonta (now in Romania, but part of Hungary under the name Nagyszalonta until 1920 and from 1940 to 1944) in 1941. The regulation—officially issued as a so-called local regulatory decree [szabályrendelet]—designated the settlement as the exclusive place of residence for all ’Gypsies’ living in Esztergom.1Members of the community are often referred to in archival sources of the era as ‚tent-dwelling Gypsies‘ [‚sátoros cigányok‚], which refers to the mobility of certain Romani groups rather than their actual housing conditions. They were allowed to leave the settlement ‘only for the purpose of labour service’. Among other things, the regulation even prohibited them from sitting down on benches in the town. The document defined who was to be considered a ’Gypsy’ in the following way: ‘All persons of Gypsy origin and all persons living with Gypsies, irrespective of their origin, shall be considered Gypsies.’2MNL OL, KECA V. 1. a. 203/1942. This definition shows that the authorities of the time stigmatised Roma in two ways: they regarded them both as a ‘race’—according to the era’s race-based ideology—and as a closed social group into which one descend but from which one could not ascend.3Although the regulation stated that ‘a Gypsy who has a livelihood and is able to rent a decent apartment or buy a house can move out of the Gypsy settlement at any time with the permission of the mayor’, this was not possible due to the almost total segregation of the local Roma community. Cf. ibid.
The researcher János Bársony (born 1951) drew attention to the Esztergom regulation by characterising the closed settlement as a ghetto.4Bársony et al., Pharrajimos, 24 f. The publication of a book by László Karsai (born 1950) has led historians to question whether the ghettoisation of Roma was actually implemented in Esztergom, since the Ministry of the Interior did not conform the proposed regulation.5Purcsi, A cigánykérdés „gyökeres és végleges megoldása”, 75; Karsai, A cigánykérdés Magyarországon, 61, 97 f. However, the town council only had to request confirmation from the Ministry because the regulation also provided for criminal penalties. In general, town and county councils in Hungary were free to make regulations in their own jurisdictions, and in exceptional, urgent cases, these could be enacted before ratification.
In fact, the regulation appears to have been considered locally valid. It was reported even in the contemporary press that the Legislative Committee of Esztergom County had confirmed the regulation in September 1942, and that the county had decided to appeal to the government for corresponding nationwide measures on the issue. The County’s Council of Representatives then dealt with the decree again at its regular meeting on 29 October 1942, and as a result on 30 November, the town council amended the regulation, for example by adding a note stating that the settlement was a threat not only to public health but also to ‘veterinary’ [!] health. On 28 July 1944, the council ordered that those parts of the regulation that did not contain criminal penalties should be put into effect from 16 August.
Archival sources and new historical studies on the Roma in Esztergom show that racial exclusion and persecution were a common social experience. Events after 1939 and the regulation of 1942 only intensified the exclusion. Although the term ‘ghetto’ was not used in the document, the isolated ‘Gypsy settlement’ of Esztergom effectively functioned as a ghetto and was perceived as such by contemporaries. The text of the regulation is more similar to municipal regulations against Roma communities than to decrees establishing ghettos for Jews, but its origins were of course not unrelated to the political conditions and racist ideologies of the time.
Ghettoisation and Deportation of the Jewish Population
After the German occupation of Hungary on 19 March 1944, the deputy governor of Esztergom County ordered the creation of a ghetto, in accordance with decrees issued by the Minister of Interior Affairs. The transfer to the ghetto was supposed to begin on 2 May 1944 and end on 12 May. Dr Jenő Etter (1897–1973), mayor of Esztergom since 1941, amended the order so that Jewish families were not to be housed in a single segregated part of the town. Ultimately, certain houses were designated for the Jews to live in, and they were resettled there from other houses and from the district (in Hungarian: járás), i.e. from the surrounding settlements. However, this was not an enclosed area in the town; rather, the Jewish residents of the town and the Esztergom district were moved into apartments in houses where Jewish families had previously lived.
Shortly afterwards, on 5 June, the Jewish families from Esztergom were deported to Komárom and from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp on 13 and 16 June 1944.6Miklós, Mindennapi élet a háborús hátországban, 137 f.
Forced Labour and Deportations
Little is known about the history of the deportation of the Roma of Esztergom. Even later oral accounts provide only a fragmentary picture of their persecution. Several members of the families living in Esztergom at the time were deported to forced labour or concentration camps. Referring to a contemporary diary, local historian Tamás Miklós (born 1987) writes that the deportation of the Roma must have taken place on the evening of 1 March 1945.7Miklós, „A cigánykérdés a cigányok elhelyezésével megoldva nincsen.”, 82. According to surviving testimonies, most of the inhabitants of the settlement were taken to the camp ‘Csillagerőd’ in Komárom.
A Roma survivor from Esztergom recalled years later the trauma of the mass executions on the banks of the Danube at Komárom (whose victims, according to sources, were mainly their Jewish fellow inmates]: ‘I was there with the whole family, ten children and the wife […] Many of the gypsies who managed to get there were picked up early, shot on the edge of the water and thrown in there.’8OSA 369-1-1:7/3. Several Roma from Esztergom were deported to concentration camps, while others were forcibly marched to Galanta (today southern Slovakia) as the front approached.
Aftermath
After the war, the socialist system guarenteed its citizens equality in principle. However, sources from the 1950s show that not only did the segregated settlement located in the flood-prone area of Esztergom persisted, but a second one was established in another suburban area, Esztergom-Kertváros (Esztergom-Tábor). After 20 June 1961, when a Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party resolution announced the forced assimilation of Roma, settlement liquidation programmes were launched. This time, too, the first aim was to eradicate settlements on major roads and near tourist destinations.
The Esztergom settlement (later known as Töltés Street) remained after the change of regime in 1989. It was repeatedly destroyed by floods and rebuilt by its inhabitants. Not because of its historical background, but primarily because of its social isolation, it was also referred to as a ghetto by locals and the press even in the 2000s.
In 2019, a small memorial to the Roma victims of World War II was erected in the courtyard of St Stephen’s Church in Esztergom. It has become the site for the commemorative events on the occasion of the European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day on 2 August for the local Roma community.
