“Abandon Your Role as Exponents of the Magyars”: Contested Jewish Loyalty in Interwar (Czecho)Slovakia

Abstract

On the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, October 28, 1926, the Neolog Jewish Community of Bratislava (Pozsony, Pressburg) gathered for a commemorative service led by their chief rabbi, Dr. Samuel Funk. They were joined by representatives of the government administration and other religious confessions. Toward the end of his sermon, an increasingly agitated Rabbi Funk turned and pointed with an angry finger at the members of the assimilationist Union of Slovak Jews (Sväz slovenských židov) in attendance from his position behind the podium. He publicly accused them of destroying Jewish unity and making it impossible for the Jewish Party to win a parliamentary mandate. He concluded his sermon by recalling a meeting that he had recently enjoyed with the president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. President Masaryk, Funk related, regarded it as very embarrasing that in spite of the 100,000 votes that the Jewish Party had received in 1925, it was not able to obtain even one parliamentary mandate. Funk reported that Masaryk only respected those Jews who declared Jewish as their nationality.