Tag #115884 - Interview #78642 (Ferenc Leicht)

On the 29th November the UNO voted that they would divide Palestine in two, and the Jewish state would be established there. All the Zionist movements and the Jewish communities, at that time still united, organized a meeting, a celebration at the Erkel Theatre (which was Municipal Theatre at that time), so that everyone would hear the news and rejoice. At that time we had already learnt to sing in Hebrew we had started to learn to speak Hebrew. The religious traditions were only kept by those movements which belonged to the religious party. My movement was strongly social democrat, so much so that there were pictures of Stalin and Lenin on the walls. There was an even more leftist movement than ours, it was completely red, it was called Hashomer Hatzair, 'The Young Watchman' [Editor’s note: The left-wing Zionist youth organization was created by unifying various Zionist groups of Eastern Europe in the beginning of the 1910s. It developed its own educational and kibbutz system. In Hungary, the organization appeared towards the end of the 1920s and soon recruited 1,000-2,000 members.] There was another social democrat movement, but it was of different orientation, they were called Makkabi Hatzair. [Editor’s note: Leftist Zionist youth association, which appeared in Hungary in the second half of the 1930s, mainly in Jewish higher education institutes.] Besides these there was the Hanoar Hatzioni [Zionist youth organization, part of the General Democratic Zionist Block. One third of organized young Zionists belonged to it in Hungary.] and there was the Bnei Akiba, the sons of [Rabbi] Akiba, who were religious. [Editor’s note: The youth ‘division’ of the religious-Zionist Mizrachi association. These young people were one third, one quarter of the Hungarian Zionists.