The Jews of Szombathely in History
The Book of the Exhibit

A plain, grey cover features only a gold Star of David as its visible graphic. The book’s title and author’s name are faint, almost like whispers in the background.

The book is heavy. Its 654 pages are thick, almost as if they were built to bear the burden of their contents.

The book is meant for libraries, for the survivors and the descendants of the Holocaust, for the many hands, fingers, and eyes that will, or should, become familiar with its stories.


“Historian Krisztina Kelbert, head of the History Department of the Savaria County Municipal Museum, the author of the book, highlighted the creation of the album: its primary goal was to uncover and define photographs related to the past of the local Jewish community in the institutional photo archives, and to collect them from survivors of Jewish families from Szombathely that were scattered around the world, photographs preserved by their descendants, and then to incorporate these fragments into a single collection and organize them into thematic units. "We succeeded in creating a unity of the textual and pictorial world, with which the complex and rich past of the Jewish community in Szombathely in the 19-20th centuries has become presentable in its reality.” concluded the author, who worked on the book for three years.

“The photographs in the volume span more than 80 years. The earliest dated photograph is from 1880, while the latest was taken in 1961. The basis of the photographs was provided by the so-called Knebel Photo Archive of the Historical Department of the Savaria County Museum in Szombathely, which has more than twenty thousand glass negatives. In addition, among the photographs of the photographer Géza Farkas (1890-1971), who gained recognition in many parts of Europe, there were also surviving images of the life of the Jews of Szombathely.”

This book is a labour of love, a monumental piece of work honouring the past. The individual photographs, photos of the exhibit, and composite photos reveal a lost world. The text, written in both Hungarian and English, provides for an audience beyond the limitations of the Hungarian language.

I am slowly working my way through the book, seeking more information and trying to understand the social systems within the community. I don’t think there are too many differences between Jewish Szombathely and Jewish Budapest, except that Budapest is much larger and more differentiated.

I found my cousin, Lily Bolgar (the same person who, many years later, became the primary contributor to my search), in a group photograph from an excursion in July 1927. The excursion was sponsored by a community of Jewish youth, ERTE, and attracted people from all over the country. My cousin Lily was from Budapest.

Follow-up

I believe that the contents of this book deserve to be made available and accessible to a much wider audience. I have a suggestion:

Use the English language text to create an book, e-book, and/or audiobook, with a separate photo book.

Depending on the format of the original English text, a downloadable e-book may be easy to create. For an audiobook, AI can be used to convert text into speech, effectively reading text aloud with an AI-generated voice. I have used this method and the result is most satisfactory. In both cases, a local, Hungary-based server could be used to download the appropriate file. There is also the possibility of working with Amazon Books for wide distribution.

Create a shareable photobook that could be automatically forwarded to purchasers of the e-book or audiobook. Or, the other way around.

My suggestion is based on several personal factors:

  1. The book, as is, weighs about 12.5 lbs (about 5.7 kg). Shipping (to Canada) was three times the price of the book.

  2. I am an older person. Due to its weight, I can only read the book when it is propped up on a reader on my desk. That is very limiting.

  3. I can read Hungarian, but the English language has become my primary language— I can read faster and understand better.

  4. In the book, the font for the English translation is a medium grey. I understand the need to differentiate between the languages, but the grey doesn’t read easily.

Finally, I want to make absolutely clear that if my suggestion is considered, I do not expect to be directly involved, financially or otherwise, in the development of another version of this book.

However, I sincerely hope that such a project will be implemented. I would be the first in line to purchase an easy-to-read, English version of the text.