ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author talks about the difficulties in Hungary between 1948-56, which had nothing or little to do with Jewish. Hungarian Jews under the Communist system —about 100,000 had survived the Holocaust —were not persecuted on religious grounds. They were, however, overrepresented at both ends of the political spectrum: among those who occupied high positions in the government and the ruling Communist Party and also among those who came to be victimized by the system because of their socioeconomic background. Many Jews had, from the Communist regime's point of view, an undesirable socioeconomic background: they used to be capitalists, that is, as businessmen, property owners, industrialists. In 1948 a pro-Soviet, hard-line Communist government replaced the coalition government composed of several political parties, including the Communists, which came into power in 1945 as a result of free elections.
