Apákról az utódokra szállott elhivatottság
A Munk-Munkácsi család története
„Zsidó múzeumunk nem műkincsek után áhítozó, luxust kedvelő lelkek alkotása, hanem egyenes függvénye a zsidóság egyik fenntartó életelemének: a történelmi világszemléletnek, kifejezője az apákról az utódokra szállott elhivatottság és kiválasztottság gondolatának” – írta 1932-ben a múzeum akkori igazgatója, Munkácsi Ernő.
A múltra való emlékezés és emlékeztetés parancsa a zsidó hagyomány egyik tartópillére. A hagyomány átadás-átvételének láncolata Mózes idejétől, a Szináj-hegyi kinyilatkoztatástól megszakítatlan, nemzedékről nemzedékre, mesterről tanítványra öröklődik. Áldások és csapások, üldöztetések és csodás szabadulások emlékét, Izrael népének történetét személyes múltként is megélni a zsidó identitás formáló eleme.
A Munk-Munkácsi család háromszáz évnyi története jellegzetes magyarországi zsidó családtörténet, már-már tankönyvi példatár. Ami mégis különlegessé teszi, az az öt nemzedék óta az apákról az utódokra szálló elhivatottság a család emlékeinek – tárgyaknak, iratoknak, fényképeknek és személyes relikviáknak – gyűjtésére és megőrzésére. Az emlékezés és emlékeztetés parancsának megértése és megélése ma is összekapcsolja a szétszórt családtagokat és közösségeket. Zsidó múzeumunk ma ennek a kapcsolattartásnak eszköze, formálója, helyszíne.
A múltra való emlékezés és emlékeztetés parancsa a zsidó hagyomány egyik tartópillére. A hagyomány átadás-átvételének láncolata Mózes idejétől, a Szináj-hegyi kinyilatkoztatástól megszakítatlan, nemzedékről nemzedékre, mesterről tanítványra öröklődik. Áldások és csapások, üldöztetések és csodás szabadulások emlékét, Izrael népének történetét személyes múltként is megélni a zsidó identitás formáló eleme.
A Munk-Munkácsi család háromszáz évnyi története jellegzetes magyarországi zsidó családtörténet, már-már tankönyvi példatár. Ami mégis különlegessé teszi, az az öt nemzedék óta az apákról az utódokra szálló elhivatottság a család emlékeinek – tárgyaknak, iratoknak, fényképeknek és személyes relikviáknak – gyűjtésére és megőrzésére. Az emlékezés és emlékeztetés parancsának megértése és megélése ma is összekapcsolja a szétszórt családtagokat és közösségeket. Zsidó múzeumunk ma ennek a kapcsolattartásnak eszköze, formálója, helyszíne.
A nemzedékek és könyveik
A Calling Heard by Generations
The History of the Munk-Munkácsi Family
“Our Jewish Museum is not the creation of luxury-seeking lust for artefacts, but it is a direct lineage of our historic worldview, one of the main life elements of Judaism; it is an echo of the calling heard by generations, and a reflection of the thought of being chosen” – wrote Ernő Munkácsi, then-director of the Hungarian Jewish Museum, in 1932.
The command of remembering the past and reminding others about it is one of the cornerstones of Jewish tradition. The chain of passing on the tradition from generation to generation, from teachers to disciples, has been unbroken from the revelation on Mount Sinai in Moses’s time. It is a formative element of Jewish identity to look at the history of the people of Israel as one’s personal story: blessing and tribulations, persecution and miraculous liberations. The three centuries of the Munk-Munkácsi family is an illustrative Hungarian Jewish story, a textbook case. What makes it unique, however, is the dedication to collect and preserve the memories of the family – objects, documents, and photographs. Comprehending and implementing the command of remembering and reminding form an overarching link connecting dispersed family members and communities.
The command of remembering the past and reminding others about it is one of the cornerstones of Jewish tradition. The chain of passing on the tradition from generation to generation, from teachers to disciples, has been unbroken from the revelation on Mount Sinai in Moses’s time. It is a formative element of Jewish identity to look at the history of the people of Israel as one’s personal story: blessing and tribulations, persecution and miraculous liberations. The three centuries of the Munk-Munkácsi family is an illustrative Hungarian Jewish story, a textbook case. What makes it unique, however, is the dedication to collect and preserve the memories of the family – objects, documents, and photographs. Comprehending and implementing the command of remembering and reminding form an overarching link connecting dispersed family members and communities.
The generations and their books
1795: Joseph Lerner
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Joseph Lerner (Triesch, Moravia, 1761 – Pest, 1836) served for forty years as the rabbi of Lichtenstadt and its surrounding communities in Bohemia. Towards the end of his life, he moved to Pest, where he lived with his son, Ignác, a grain merchant. In the tradition of rabbinic literature, he published his father-in-law Rabbi Benjamin Wolf Reicheles’ commentary on the Torah, along with his own commentary. The resulting book, written in Hebrew and printed in Prague in 1795, stands as a legacy to Lerner’s intellectual heritage. Part one, by his father-in-law, is titled Divreh ha taanugim (The Words of Delight). Part two, by Lerner, is Oneg nefesh (Pleasure of the Soul). The volume was donated to Lerner’s great-great-grandson Bernát Munkácsi in 1904 by Vilmos Krausz, Rabbi of Debrecen.
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The fate of Joseph Lerner’s library and his flirtatious daughter-in-law
As the elderly Rabbi Lerner moved in with his son in Budapest, his rich library was left also to his son after his passing, who kept the library in a closed-off room in the attic, complying with his father’s request. After losing their only son, the wife of Ignac Lerner ”got into bad ways”; she started to see other men. Once his suitor threatened to kill himself due to financial difficulties, hence the woman decided to pawn her jewellery. To be able to go on with her plan, she hid her jewellery in the library, and put the blame of theft on the maids. The maids were questioned and harassed by the police, and may even have been punished. As it later turned out, the jewellery could not be sold or pledged due to the police inquiry. The woman therefore decided to go to a bath and she slashed her wrists. The jewellery was later discovered in the library.
(Source: Bernát Munkácsi’s notes on family history. Sefer yihotenu II.; information provided by Mrs, Jónásné Pollák, née. Hadassah Munk – September 4, 1909)
(Source: Bernát Munkácsi’s notes on family history. Sefer yihotenu II.; information provided by Mrs, Jónásné Pollák, née. Hadassah Munk – September 4, 1909)
1826: Miriam Lerner
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This Machzor, a prayerbook for the Jewish High Holidays, was printed in Hebrew and in German translation with Hebrew letters in Vienna in 1826 by Anton Schmid. Originally owned by Rabbi Joseph Lerner’s educated and, according to Munk family lore,“strikingly beautiful” daughter Miriam Felsenburg (née Lerner), the Machzor was passed down through four matrilineal generations of the family. A note in the book, written by Miriam in Yiddish, records the death of her eldest daughter, Chaile Felsenburg, in 1842. Inscribed on the leather binding is the married name of Miriam’s granddaughter Hadassah Munk (Mrs. Jonás Pollák) and, inside the book, a note by Miriam’s great-granddaughter Gizella Pollák. According to Hadassah, Miriam read the weekly Torah portion in German with her granddaughters every Saturday.
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Story of a walk taken by Mrs. Mózesné Miriam Felsenburg in her maiden days, as conveyed by her granddaughter, Hadassah Munk
Hadassah recalled that Grandmother Miriam would entertain her grandchildren (Debora, Hanele, and Hadassah) with stories from her youth while they were sitting around the dinner table on Saturday afternoons. Miriam was the daughter of the respected rabbi of Lichtenstadt, Joseph Lerner. The family was so eager to protect her reputation that when she took a walk in the park, she was flanked by two women, with another woman walking in front of her. Once two yeshiva students saw her on her customary walk and one of them vowed to kiss her. No sooner said than done! The man approached her from the back, quickly kissed her and ran away. Both students were kicked out of the yeshiva by Miriam’s father, and from then on, the third chaperon walked behind her.
(Source: Bernát Munkácsi’s notes on family history. Sefer yihotenu II.; information provided by Mrs, Jónásné Pollák, née. Hadassah Munk)
(Source: Bernát Munkácsi’s notes on family history. Sefer yihotenu II.; information provided by Mrs, Jónásné Pollák, née. Hadassah Munk)
1899: Meir Avraham Munk
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Meir Avraham (Adolf) Munk (Nitra, 1830 –Oradea, 1907), a talented student, escaped the poverty of his childhood by working first as teacher then as a grain merchant in Oradea. However, he is best known as the author of My Life’s Histories, his autobiography written in classical Hebrew in 1899. The original Hebrew has been lost; this is the Hungarian translation of 1942. Munk’s memoir portrays with exceptional clarity the life of Jews in Western and Northwestern Hungary in the 19th century. Adolf Munk belonged to the moderate orthodox branch of Judaism identifying with both the concept of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and more conservative religious ideas. His memoir reveals the Haskalah spirit by emphasizing subjects such as education and choice of spouse.
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Meir Avraham Munk / Adolf Munk on a bumpy road to find his mate
Respected members of the kehila in the city [Großwardein] sent their matchmakers for me to get married. They spoke about dowry, one promised more, the other less, but I was unwilling. Because I had set my eyes on a girl who lived in my building. This girl knew how to manage a household … and she seemed to return my feelings. …She was still young, naïve and unexperienced, and she was as uneducated as the village girls. …She did not learn how to read or write, neither in German, nor in Hungarian, she could not read Hebrew, hence she could not even pray. She conversed only with the maids all day. What could she possibly expect from her relatives when in need? …I was very concerned about it, although the girl had a lot of advantages. She was as beautiful as the moon, beautiful and healthy, there was nobody like her in the whole town. (…)
These matchmakers schmoozed me; then came another one who was sent by the father of a girl who made a great impression on me because of his father’s good and trustworthy conditions. … He offered to give me accommodation and board for three years, and that he would introduce me into the business in which he is engaged – he was a wine wholesaler, and that he had a warehouse in his house where his customers walked in and out all day. He would give me five hundred silver florins in cash that I could use for my purposes in his shop. …
I could not choose between a love marriage and a marriage of convenience. Had Rabbenu Gershon not prohibited it, I would have chosen two wives.”
(Source: Meir Avraham Munk, Életem történetei (The story of my life) (Budapest, 2002), pp. 229-231)
These matchmakers schmoozed me; then came another one who was sent by the father of a girl who made a great impression on me because of his father’s good and trustworthy conditions. … He offered to give me accommodation and board for three years, and that he would introduce me into the business in which he is engaged – he was a wine wholesaler, and that he had a warehouse in his house where his customers walked in and out all day. He would give me five hundred silver florins in cash that I could use for my purposes in his shop. …
I could not choose between a love marriage and a marriage of convenience. Had Rabbenu Gershon not prohibited it, I would have chosen two wives.”
(Source: Meir Avraham Munk, Életem történetei (The story of my life) (Budapest, 2002), pp. 229-231)
The revolution and freedom fight of 1848, as seen by Meir Avraham Munk
The revolution started with violence, looting and transgression committed by the village people against the Jews in Vágújhely, Brezova, Miava and Szobotics, and also elsewhere. Gangs attacked them and looted everything that was Jewish property, and they claimed that they acted on the permit of the King who allowed them to loot and to scare off the Jews and send them to Jerusalem. Jews in this neck of the woods have had a very stressful life …. they forced my grandfather [Moses Felsenburg], who was a municipal clerk, and was 77 years of age, to write a petition on Saturday to the army corps command in Pressburg (Bratislava), requesting to send a troop for their defense. … I will never forget the day when he returned from the offices of the community on that Saturday with me walking beside him. How he was crying, bitterly, all the way, and complained why God made him live this long only to be lured into to temptation he could not resist.”
“I returned to yeshiva after Passover and I spent another half year there, through the end of summer of 1848 …my parents sent for me to return home and continue to study with Gaon Reb Yechezkel Baneth. The reason for this was the great revolution that spread across the country. My parents and grandparents felt uneasy about me. Soldiers were recruited enthusiastically in the country, with pipes and drums and dancing, and a lot of wine and handshake, to fight for the freedom of the country … And the masses rejoiced and put on armor and helmet, there were also yeshiva students among them, who were different inside and out. My parents and grandparents agreed that they’d better watch me through the end of these viral times. Once it’s over, I can go as I please.”
(Source: Méir Ávráhám Munk, Életem történetei (The story of my life) (Budapest, 2002), pp. 152-154)
“I returned to yeshiva after Passover and I spent another half year there, through the end of summer of 1848 …my parents sent for me to return home and continue to study with Gaon Reb Yechezkel Baneth. The reason for this was the great revolution that spread across the country. My parents and grandparents felt uneasy about me. Soldiers were recruited enthusiastically in the country, with pipes and drums and dancing, and a lot of wine and handshake, to fight for the freedom of the country … And the masses rejoiced and put on armor and helmet, there were also yeshiva students among them, who were different inside and out. My parents and grandparents agreed that they’d better watch me through the end of these viral times. Once it’s over, I can go as I please.”
(Source: Méir Ávráhám Munk, Életem történetei (The story of my life) (Budapest, 2002), pp. 152-154)
1904: Munkácsi Bernát
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Bernát Munkácsi (Oradea, 1860 – Budapest, 1937) was an academic, linguist, and ethnologist who dedicated much of his career to researching the Finno-Ugric roots of the Hungarian language. The eldest of Sara Stein (Oradea, 1839 – Oradea, 1914) and Adolf Munk’s nine children, Bernát Munkácsi “Magyarized” his name in 1881 when he was a student at the University of Pest. In parallel with his scholarly career, Munkácsi served as school inspector for the Jewish Community of Pest, reforming religious education for Neolog Jews. His Universal Curriculum of 1906, , promoted the importance of learning Hebrew and reading texts in their original language. His commitment to source languages, passed down from his father, was reflected in all his scholarly work.
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Bernát Munkácsi’s employment issues
After his graduation from university (1883) Bernát Munkácsi struggled with finding a job for many long years. He could not get a teaching position at a university or even secondary school, despite his qualifications and scientific erudition. His application to the position of clerk of the Orthodox Community of Großwardein was turned down – he received merely two supporting votes. In a letter written to his university professor, Joseph Budenz prior to his return from a research tour in Russia, he wrote the following: “Yet again, I will be the same refused proletarian whose greatest concern is what to write in the «employment section» of the residence reporting form, delivered by the janitor … My troubles will renew, along with encouragement and support by my scholarly well-wishers to the post of teacher of religion, clerk, cantor, a shechita inspector or a shofar blower on Rosh haShana, the Jewish new year.”
In the spring of 1890, when the Hungarian Academy elected him a corresponding member, but he was still lacking regular livelihood, his colleague, Béla Vikár wrote a poem about this untenable situation in Borsszem Jankó, a satirical journal.”
(Source: MunkácsI, Noémi, Egy nagy magyar nyelvész. Munkácsi Bernát élete (A great Hungarian linguist. The Life of Bernát Munkácsi) (Budapest: IMIT, 1943), p. 157. and Borsszem Jankó May 18, 1890, p. 8)
In the spring of 1890, when the Hungarian Academy elected him a corresponding member, but he was still lacking regular livelihood, his colleague, Béla Vikár wrote a poem about this untenable situation in Borsszem Jankó, a satirical journal.”
(Source: MunkácsI, Noémi, Egy nagy magyar nyelvész. Munkácsi Bernát élete (A great Hungarian linguist. The Life of Bernát Munkácsi) (Budapest: IMIT, 1943), p. 157. and Borsszem Jankó May 18, 1890, p. 8)
1946: Munkácsi Ernő
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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.
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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)
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)
1947: Munkácsi Noémi
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Noémi Munkácsi (Budapest, 1903 - Jerusalem, 1966) was an accredited teacher, poet, writer, one of the the first university-educated women in the Munk family. In Nagykanizsa, where her husband, Dr. Ernő Winkler, served as rabbi, she became the driving force behind the local Jewish women’s association. Among other works, she published her poems in the volume Conversations with God (1942), and she wrote a biography of her father, A Great Hungarian Linguist: Bernát Munkácsi’s Life (1943). In April 1944, Noémi, Dr. Winkler, and their two teenage children were rounded up by the Hungarian Gendarmerie and deported to Auschwitz. Her husband and son, Gábor, were murdered by the Nazis. Noémi and her daughter, Szonja, immigrated to Israel in 1951.
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Noémi Munkács’s observations from the realm of cultural anthropology
Saturday rituals“There were times when we used a carved potato, filled with margarine and a makeshift wick made of rags stuck in the middle to provide the festive light.
At other times, when we worked as a laborer at an armory, we used for lighting on Saturdays the oil from the plant with which we cleaned the machinery. At other KZ facilities, inmates used horse tallow to substitute for gentle candles. …
The ingenuity of Jewish women also in this context was inexhaustible. Still, there were times when it was impossible to acquire candles. At such times, they lit up the Shabbat candles symbolically. I participated twice on such symbolic lighting ceremonies. On a dark, foggy Friday night in November 1944, our unit was off to start our long, twelve-hour shift at the armory. … A young woman from Upper Hungary, standing close to me, remarked:
- I’ve just lit the Shabbat candles!
I was astonished. How so?
-I looked at two bulbs, and I recited the blessings–she explained.
On another occasion when we were working at the plant well into Saturday dawn, I observed a woman from Sighet, who was tasked with polishing tiny iron rings. She organized them into tile-like candle sticks and candles, and leaned over them and recited the Shabbat blessing.”
Amulets, magical signs“At the concentration camp in Thor they made a bread bag from a Shabbat challah cover, found with a Russian woman. It had magical qualities: it never ran out of bread.
In the summer of 1944, mysterious news spread at the Auschwitz concentration camp: according to the prophesy of a buried note, if women wore yellow rings and girl wore red rings, liberation would come by tisha b’av. Needless to say, everybody has worn red and yellow rings made of rags since then.”
(Source: W. MunkácsI, Noémi, „Zsidó szertartások és népszokások a német női haláltáborokban” (Jewish rituals and folk customs in the death camps) In: Löw Immánuel emlékkötet (Immanuel Löw Festschrift) (Budapest, 1947), pp. 319, 322-323)
At other times, when we worked as a laborer at an armory, we used for lighting on Saturdays the oil from the plant with which we cleaned the machinery. At other KZ facilities, inmates used horse tallow to substitute for gentle candles. …
The ingenuity of Jewish women also in this context was inexhaustible. Still, there were times when it was impossible to acquire candles. At such times, they lit up the Shabbat candles symbolically. I participated twice on such symbolic lighting ceremonies. On a dark, foggy Friday night in November 1944, our unit was off to start our long, twelve-hour shift at the armory. … A young woman from Upper Hungary, standing close to me, remarked:
- I’ve just lit the Shabbat candles!
I was astonished. How so?
-I looked at two bulbs, and I recited the blessings–she explained.
On another occasion when we were working at the plant well into Saturday dawn, I observed a woman from Sighet, who was tasked with polishing tiny iron rings. She organized them into tile-like candle sticks and candles, and leaned over them and recited the Shabbat blessing.”
Amulets, magical signs“At the concentration camp in Thor they made a bread bag from a Shabbat challah cover, found with a Russian woman. It had magical qualities: it never ran out of bread.
In the summer of 1944, mysterious news spread at the Auschwitz concentration camp: according to the prophesy of a buried note, if women wore yellow rings and girl wore red rings, liberation would come by tisha b’av. Needless to say, everybody has worn red and yellow rings made of rags since then.”
(Source: W. MunkácsI, Noémi, „Zsidó szertartások és népszokások a német női haláltáborokban” (Jewish rituals and folk customs in the death camps) In: Löw Immánuel emlékkötet (Immanuel Löw Festschrift) (Budapest, 1947), pp. 319, 322-323)
2008: Nina Munk
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eter Munk (Budapest, 1927 - Toronto, 2018) was an entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. In June 1944, he was one of fifteen members of the Munk family to escape from Budapest to Switzerland on the Kasztner Train. In 1948, he immigrated to Canada, where he started his first company, Clairtone Sound Corp., a celebrated manufacturer of high-fidelity stereos, as documented by his daughter Nina Munk in The Art of Clairtone (2008). A founder of many companies, he is best known for Barrick, the world’s largest gold mining company, and for his philanthropy. Late in his life, as the Munk paterfamilias, he donated to the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives a trove of documents and photographs passed down from his forefathers.
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Peter Munk’s student years in Canada
Peter Munk arrived to Toronto in 1948 on a student visa where he had an uncle, Nicholas Munk who had lived there with his wife, Hedy. Nicholas Munk was an engineer, who had studied at the Technical University in Charlottenburg (Berlin). Peter attended Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute before heading off to University of Toronto. He was dazzled by the wealth of his newly adopted country: “We were taken to a gym. And in the gym were trestles, wooden tables set with all kinds of milk, chocolate milk, regular milk, ice cream, hot dogs, hamburgers, doughnuts. … [Back home] hunger was tangible. … The whole thing became a totally unreal, surreal experience.”
In the summer, to earn money to pay for university tuition, Peter picked tobacco in Delhi, in southwest Ontario: “living in a haystack but earning $13 [a day], hard work.”
He often spoke about his love for Canada: “I arrived in this place not speaking the language, not knowing a dog... This is a country that does not ask about your origins, it only concerns itself with your destiny.”
In the summer, to earn money to pay for university tuition, Peter picked tobacco in Delhi, in southwest Ontario: “living in a haystack but earning $13 [a day], hard work.”
He often spoke about his love for Canada: “I arrived in this place not speaking the language, not knowing a dog... This is a country that does not ask about your origins, it only concerns itself with your destiny.”
History of Generations
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