In the footsteps of the Jews of Sopron

Exclusion, discrimination

Read about how life changed for the local Jewish community from the 1920s onwards.

Starting with the 1920s, the Jewish community was subjected to an increasing number of restrictive measures and deprivation of their civil rights: the number of Jewish students in grammar schools was limited, Jews were not allowed to hold intellectual positions, and later the third anti-Jewish law banned marriage between Jews and non-Jews. Soon, however, the persecutions directly threatened the lives of the local Jewish population. On 19 March 1944, Germany invaded Hungary. It became compulsory for Jews to wear the yellow star as of April, and in May the ghettos were designated in Sopron: in Paprét, Új Street, Torna Street, and former Ezüst (now Ötvös) Street, where all Jews had to move. At that time Sopron had a population of 42,000, of which 1861 were Jews including 400 children.

Dr. Miksa Pollák lived upstairs in the building. He was the chief rabbi of the Jewish community in Sopron for 50 years. The writer Károly Pap was his son, he changed his name from Pollák to Pap. Both father and son were murdered in the Holocaust.


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