Tag #140809 - Interview #102520 (Laszlo Galla )

In Szentes there lived about 500-600 Jews, and they were all middle-of-the-road religious. Mako was 80 kilometers away, where a much more intense Jewish life went on than in Szentes. There was an Orthodox [4] synagogue and a Neolog one, and a few thousand Jews lived there. Szentes was nothing compared to that. The town was about as big as Mako and the region was also the same, but the Jewry in Szentes was fairly assimilated. There was a synagogue, it was very beautiful, today it is the town library. There was a Jewish community, my father was its vice-president, then its chairman. There was a Chevra Kaddisha too, of course, which dealt with burials – the cemetery was very beautiful. There was a Malbish Arumim Society which dealt with charitable works for the poor, and there was a Jewish Women’s Association, my mother was its chairwoman for a while. Even though everyone got along in the Jewish community, there was a fairly big battle when it came to community elections, since that’s when they decided who should be the chairman, and his people then made up the tax committee, who took less tax from its own people, its supporters. The community tax at that time was collected like ordinary taxes, you had to pay them. So there was a battle mainly because of this, and the community was divided in two over it.