Back to the Origins: The Tragic History of the Szekler Sabbatarians

Religious Context of Transylvania in the Sixteenth Century

Until the beginning of the sixteenth century, Transylvania was part of the Hungarian Kingdom. It became a separate political entity only after the victory of Suleiman I over the Hungarian army at Mohács, in 1526. Ottoman forces occupied Buda in 1541 and the kingdom was divided into three parts. This left Transylvania under Ottoman suzerainty, yet it existed as a separate country and an independent principality until 1687, when it was incorporated into the Habsburg Empire. Transylvania was populated by three nationalities: Hungarians (including Szeklers—living in the Eastern parts), Germans (Saxons), and Romanians. ¹

This period also saw the initial phases of the Reformation in Transylvania, a process enhanced by the support of various ruling Princes. Sixteenth-century Transylvania thus witnessed the development of a swift and progressive-minded religious regeneration, ranging from various stages of Catholic reform to extreme forms of Unitarianism. Reformation arrived relatively early in the region: Johannes Honterus, a native of Brassó (Braşov/Kronstadt), returned to Transylvania from his studies in Vienna, Krakow, and Basel in 1532 with extensive knowledge of the teachings professed by Luther’s Swiss followers. However, Protestant forms of worship received an institutional framework only later, between 1540 and 1550. “The Lutheran teachings found their optimal entry point in Transylvania among the urban Saxon population, a trend that was promoted by the fact that most of the early path-breakers of the Reformation were Germans.” ²

By the 1550s, the overwhelming majority of the Hungarian and German population in Transylvania had converted to Protestantism, including the Prince, John Sigismund Szapolyai. Only a few noble families and certain parts of the country in the East (the Szeklerland, mostly Csík/Ciuc County) remained Catholic. Soon after, most of the Hungarians and the Prince himself adhered to the Calvinist line (the Germans remaining loyal to the Lutheran faith), and the 1564 Diet of Torda (Turda/Thorenburg) declared Calvinism (referred to simply as the “Reformed faith”) as one of the “accepted” religions. The decree stated clearly: “All royal cities, market towns, and villages shall have the right to follow any religion, to keep a preacher according to their faith, and to dismiss the ones of contrary beliefs.” This meant that local communities could decide which church to belong to, and those inhabitants who were opposed to the decision could move to a different location. ³

In 1544, Kaspar Helth (Gáspár Heltai), an enthusiastic follower of Luther, became one of the city pastors in Kolozsvár (Cluj/Klausenburg) and through his writings and activity managed to lead most of the inhabitants of the city to accept Protestantism. The Lutheran Church in Transylvania was formed in 1554, with one of its first bishops being Franz Hertel (famous under the name of Ferenc Dávid, founder of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania). ⁴ In 1559 he converted to Calvinism, and preached the new dogmas with the same conviction as he had done with the Lutheran faith. Later, while serving as Prince John Sigismund’s court preacher, he met Giorgio Biandrata (György Blandrata). Biandrata had just arrived in Transylvania from Poland, where he elaborated Anti-Trinitarianist views against the dogmas of Calvinism and, together with other Italian preachers, created Polish Unitarianism. Nonetheless, because he was persecuted by both Polish Lutherans and Calvinists, Biandrata accepted the invitation of John Sigismund and was appointed the Prince’s personal physician and counselor in 1563. Within a few years, Ferenc Dávid became a follower of Biandrata’s religious views, and went on to establish in 1566 the Unitarian Church in Transylvania and to convince the Prince to convert to Unitarianism as well. ⁵ The Unitarian doctrine established by Dávid proceeded on the way opened by Reformation, while its anti-Trinitarianism (rejecting the Christian doctrine of Trinity, emphasizing the unity of God, and considering Jesus to be a human prophet) was the first step toward a new interpretation of the Bible, restoring the authority of the Old Testament.

The development of religious tolerance in Transylvania was determined by a complex historical trajectory. Its main function in the sixteenth century was to help stabilize the socio-political and religious status quo, and to shape the independent political identity of the Principality against the influences of the Islamic world and the Counter-Reformation. More specifically, religious tolerance emerged gradually to manage the peaceful coexistence of Catholicism and the various Protestant faiths in the country. ⁶ As early as 1557 the Lutheran religion was declared equal in status with Catholicism, and in 1564 Lutheranism and Calvinism were officially recognized as accepted denominations. The consensus among historians of religion holds that the first legal document to guarantee freedom of worship was the 1689 Toleration Act, adopted by the Parliament of England. Yet this referred only to Christian religions and excluded Unitarians. On the other hand, in 1568 the Diet of Transylvania declared for the first time in Europe that all four religions—the Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Unitarian faiths—were equal in status and could be practiced freely. ⁷ Nonetheless, the Unitarian Church attracted suspicion from all other established religions, Roman Catholic and Protestant, with both camps deeming it heretical. ⁸

During the 1560s the Reformation reached the staunchly Catholic Szeklerland and started to spread amid the population. Although some areas remained loyal to the old faith, the rest converted to Calvinism, and then to Unitarianism. ⁹ In the last third of the sixteenth century, however, a more radical reformist Christian sect gained ground in the region, namely, the Sabbatarian religion, which—following the lead of András Eőssy and Simon Péchi—was based on rejecting the idea that the New Testament was divinely inspired. ¹⁰

The Birth of Sabbatarianism

During the Reformation, Europe saw the establishment of several smaller religious sects that shared a common desire to reinstate into Christian life the Jewish laws and rituals prohibited by the Church. As early as 1530, there were Sabbatarian communities in the Czech lands that celebrated the Sabbath, and that later appeared also in Silesia, Poland, and Russia. There were similar communities around 1545 in England among the Quakers. ¹¹

Although initially there was an attempt to link Transylvanian Sabbatarianism to the Czech, Polish, and Russian versions of the religion, research in the nineteenth century (by József Lugossy) proved that it was formed as an inner development of religious life in Transylvania, without any correspondence with other similar movements in Europe. ¹² This autochthonous development can be explained in the context of the events that followed Ferenc Dávid’s death in 1579. His Unitarian followers did not stop where their mentor had left off, but arrived at the conclusion that several tenets that were originally part of the Christian faith were missing from the Bible. They primarily referred to numerous commandments in the Book of Moses that were either replaced or deleted by the Church. As such, Transylvanian Sabbatarianism was essentially born as the logical continuation of the teachings of Ferenc Dávid. ¹³

The Sabbatarian religious community was founded by András Eőssy around 1588. András Eőssy of Szent-Erzsébet was a wealthy Szekler nobleman who was among the first to convert to Unitarianism in 1567, following the example of the Prince, John Sigismund. His in-depth study of religious writings led him to develop the principles of Sabbatarianism. In his own reflections, he adhered to the teachings of Ferenc Dávid, and found that they represented the right direction but were not yet complete. ¹⁴ According to Sámuel Kohn’s 1889 book describing Sabbatarianism, it was Eőssy who established the basic principles and dogmas of the faith, but the elaboration of a religious framework was carried out by his later followers. Besides arranging the re-edition and copying of old documents that supported his claims, Eőssy also wrote various religious-themed dissertations, prayers, sermons, and hymns. Around 1600, they were compiled into “the old hymn-book of the Sabbatarians,” probably by Eőssy himself. This book is the most important source for our knowledge of the doctrines of the sect. ¹⁵

Nonetheless, later sources have shown that the origins of Sabbatarianism can be traced back to the works of the German thinker Matthias Vehe-Glirius, who sought protection from religious persecution in the 1570s in Transylvania, and whose writings Eőssy translated into Hungarian. ¹⁶ Glirius developed a consistently anti-Trinitarianist theological theory that was different from all other Protestant views. It claimed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, but his mission on Earth was a failure and thus no New Covenant was established between the Lord and Man. Consequently, the laws of Moses still apply and the fate of humanity depends on respecting them until the second coming of the Messiah. ¹⁷

Antonio Possevino, a diplomat of the Vatican, reported on the impact of Glirius’s work and the appearance of the Sabbatarian sect in Kolozsvár (Cluj/Klausenburg) by 1584. However, Sabbatarianism spread mostly in the Central and Eastern parts of Transylvania, namely in the Szeklerland, in the region of the Küküllő Rivers (Târnava/Kokel), reaching the towns of Székelykeresztúr (Cristuru Secuiesc/Szeklerkreuz) and Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureş/Neumarkt). ¹⁸ Another proof of the existence of the cult can be found in the decree of the Diet of Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia/Karlsburg) in 1595, which outlawed the Sabbatarians; however, this decree was never seriously enforced. ¹⁹ One of the adherents of the religion was Simon Péchi, who was also one of the very early students of Hebraism in Europe. Péchi went to the Unitarian school in Kolozsvár and then became a schoolmaster in Székelyszenterzsébet (Eliseni). Here he met Eőssy, who took him to the Prince’s court and then sent him on an extended study tour around Europe. As the later history of Sabbatarianism showed, the discovery, the financial support, and the subsequent adoption of Péchi in 1598 turned out to be one of the most significant and final contributions by Eőssy to the religion. ²⁰ Staying true to the vision that guided the establishment of the faith, Eőssy directed this talented young man—who mastered the Hebrew language at Western universities—to learn from Jewish communities in order to adopt their teachings and religious practices within the new religion of Sabbatarianism. ²¹

This particular religious system was a little bit of both Christian and Jewish religion, a kind of Jewish-Christian faith, an example of religious syncretism. Consequently, it received some attention in the West European centers of the Reformation, but it managed to grow into a larger movement only within Transylvania. This is because the Principality had to maneuver on a peculiarly constrained political path, in the shadow of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, and could provide a relatively free environment for many persecuted religious views. ²²

Simon Péchi and the Spread of Sabbatarianism

Péchi returned to Transylvania in 1599 and became the secretary of Prince Sigismund Báthory. In the next year, following Báthory’s abdication, he accompanied the Prince to Poland, but in 1604 he was already back in Transylvania and took part in the revolt of István Bocskai against the Habsburgs. As Prince, Bocskai spoke approvingly of the loyalty showed by Péchi. ²³ In the upcoming years, he played a significant role in Transylvanian political affairs, and was appointed chancellor in 1621 by Prince Gábor Bethlen. In this capacity, after the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, Péchi also conducted negotiations with the Emperor Ferdinand II. However, for reasons not clearly explained, his career was suddenly interrupted when shortly afterwards the Prince issued an order of arrest, saying that Péchi “did not represent him sufficiently well during the treaty talks with the Emperor’s diplomats.” The sentence was carried out without a trial and Péchi was imprisoned for nearly four years. ²⁴

During the years of his political career, Péchi could engage with matters related to Sabbatarianism only in secret because, as a key member of the country’s leadership, he was not able to openly declare his affiliation to a community that had been outlawed. Nonetheless, Sabbatarianism was becoming increasingly popular at the end of the sixteenth century, and so in 1595 Sigismund Báthory re-enacted a law for the suppression of Sabbatarians. ²⁵ The voyvode Michael, who usurped the princely dignity of Transylvania, ordered the confiscation of their possessions in 1600. The 1618 Diet of Gyulafehérvár adopted a similar decree against religious “innovations,” namely, “Judaism and similar blasphemies,” ²⁶ and the Diet of 1622 reiterated the previous ban on Sabbatarianism. Yet, as in the preceding periods, such decrees were not enforced in practice. ²⁷ The official schism between the Unitarians and the Sabbatarians occurred when the 1618 Unitarian Synod in Erdőszentgyörgy (Sângeorgiu de Pădure/Sankt Georgen auf der Heide) decided to exclude all “heretics” from their church. ²⁸

Péchi did not have the power to stop the adoption of anti-Sabbatarian laws; all he could attempt to do was to obstruct and to defer the implementation of such legislation. In his public activity and his official letters, he behaved as a good Christian should, yet simultaneously he also tackled questions of Sabbatarian theology to which he had been dedicated since his youth. This is demonstrated by the religious hymns he wrote during the years of his political functions. ²⁹ Moreover, he is credited with supporting the spread of Sabbatarianism (around 1620, there were twenty thousand Szekler converts) and the stronger emphasis on Jewish characteristics within the religion. ³⁰ The believers practiced their Jewish religion in secret for the next 230 years, pretending to be Catholic or Unitarian, until their conversion to Judaism was allowed from 1868 to 1874.

During Péchi’s years of imprisonment, Prince Gábor Bethlen brought a number of Sephardic Jews to settle in Kolozsvár, who then had a decisive influence on the further development of Sabbatarian religious life. The Prince granted the newly settled Jews freedom of worship and freedom of trade with the Ottoman lands. Besides adopting the Spanish rite, the Sabbatarians also borrowed extensively from the religious literature of the Sephardic Jews. ³¹

In the period between his release in 1624 and the Prince’s death in 1629, Péchi retreated to Székelyszenterzsébet and dedicated his efforts to inconspicuous activities on behalf of Sabbatarianism. He followed the path envisioned by Eőssy and gradually moved away from the conventional tenets of Christianity. He collected an extensive library, which contained the various translations of and commentaries to the Bible and the Talmud, and the most important works of Jewish exegesis and moral philosophy. It was a productive period for him: he wrote a book, A szent atyákból kiszedegetett tanulmányok (Studies Extracted from the Teachings of the Holy Fathers), in which he gave a presentation of Jewish writings on morality, he translated and annotated the Psalms, Jewish handbooks on prayers and rituals, and even saw to it that his writings were copied by scribes and distributed. ³²

After the death of Prince Gábor Bethlen, Péchi could engage in developing and popularizing the principles of Sabbatarianism more freely. Just a few months after the passing of the Prince, he went to Kolozsvár to study the books of the Sephardic Jews. Here, he was quickly denounced as the well-known leader of Sabbatarianism who was working towards the propagation of a “harmful sect” and the recruitment of “apostles” for their religion. The heads of the Protestant churches submitted an official complaint in 1631 to the new Prince, György Rákóczi I, condemning the new religion that “spreads like the plague.” They accused Péchi of being the propagator of this secret sect increasingly resembling the Jewish faith, so much so that the Sabbatarians were seen not only being similar to Jews, but as practicing Judaism outright. In a similar way, the population of Transylvania considered the Sabbatarians to be Jews.

The Sabbatarians perceived the Jews as “the People of God” and themselves as converted pagans. They accepted only the Pentateuch (The Five Books of Moses) out of the Jewish law, rejecting religious provisions or practices not mentioned in the Books of Moses. They held only the feasts ordered by Moses, rejecting other Jewish feasts or feast-days. At the same time, Christian practices and feasts were completely rejected. ³³

The celebration or observance of the Sabbath became the most important marker of their religious and communal identity, allowing them to practice a kind of Jewishness or non-Christian-ness without actually being Jewish. Their name in Hungarian, “szombatosok,” coming from the Hungarian word “szombat” meaning both “Saturday” and “Sabbath,” was of outmost importance for their self-identification. Péchi did indeed immerse himself in the further development and organization of the religious framework, and continued writing Sabbatarian songs and hymns, and books summing up Jewish religious laws or practices. According to Kohn, during this time, Székelyszenterzsébet became the “Jerusalem” of Sabbatarianism and Péchi’s estate the temple of a religion that was “completely tainted by the Jewish faith.” Sabbatarianism spread almost as strongly in the neighboring Maros County (especially in the town of Marosvásárhely), but Kolozsvár was also considered to be one of the strongholds of the religion. ³⁴

The Trial of Dés (1638)

After Péchi’s re-emergence and his public activities in favor of the religion, Sabbatarianism could expand and stabilize for a while without facing any serious obstacles. This golden age was not even perturbed by the Diet of 1635 that explicitly decreed that all those who refused to officially renounce the Sabbatarian faith before Christmas 1636 would be sentenced to death and have their property forfeited. The law, however, was not enforced even after the deadline had passed. ³⁵

Prince Rákóczi did not act against the religion in a significant way until 1638 when he orchestrated a trial targeting the Sabbatarians—more out of political interests than religious considerations. The trial was set in the larger context of a political and military conflict that had started when in 1633 Mózes Székely, the magistrate of Udvarhely County and a Sabbatarian himself, fled to Ottoman territory. He was accompanied by several political companions and allied himself with the Turkish forces in order to defeat the ruling Prince. His fellow Sabbatarians harbored hopes that if the conflict went his way, they would receive a Prince belonging to their community. Additionally, given that Mózes Székely was Simon Péchi’s nephew, it is not entirely inconceivable that Péchi himself had a part in the conspiracy. ³⁶

The war against the Ottoman forces ended in 1637 when Rákóczi defeated the army of the Pasha of Buda. Not long after, the Prince started to prepare measures against the Sabbatarians. The 1638 Diet did not address the topic directly, but it summoned the representatives of the four major religions in Transylvania to convene on July 1, in the town of Dés (Dej/Desch), and to discuss the case of the Sabbatarians. The Prince also summoned all Sabbatarians to demonstrate that they had officially renounced their faith and converted to accepted religions, as requested by the 1635 Diet. The interrogation and collection of confessions from Sabbatarians was under way in Kolozsvár, Marosvásárhely, and smaller towns in the Szeklerland even before the trial. ³⁷ At the meeting in Dés all those who had been identified as belonging to the Sabbatarian sect during the interrogations were sentenced to death and loss of property. The death sentence, however, was carried out only in the case of one—incidentally, non-Sabbatarian—person accused of blasphemy, yet hundreds were imprisoned. ³⁸ If the defendants were willing to convert to any of the accepted religions, their prison sentence was annulled; however, the forfeiture of property was carried out in the case of all Sabbatarians. Péchi was interrogated on his estate in Szenterzsébet and was released only in May 1639, after he agreed to covert to Calvinism. ³⁹

History of Sabbatarianism after the Dés Trial

After the death of Prince Rákóczi, most of those who were forced to convert returned to Sabbatarianism and the cult started to spread once again, yet the trial had delivered a serious blow to the religion. The history of Sabbatarianism became a story of repression and continuous persecution. In 1652 Prince György Rákóczi II issued another harsh decree against the sect, and in 1670 Mihály Apafi sent a committee into the Sabbatarian villages to collect incriminating confessions from the members of the community. The consequence of these repeated actions against the religion was that in the following decades Sabbatarians were rarely mentioned in historical records. ⁴⁰

In 1717, in the aftermath of the peace treaty of Szatmár (Satu Mare/Sathmar), which ended the uprising of Ferenc Rákóczi II against the Habsburg Monarchy, the persecution of Sabbatarians took on a new form under Habsburg rule. The authority of the Catholic Church increased in Transylvania, and governing officials appointed by the Vienna court forcefully condemned the Sabbatarians. The respective decree was issued in 1722; therefore, the Sabbatarians were registered and lawsuits were brought against them. The verdict regarding confiscation of possessions was applied three years later, in 1725. Because of continuous persecution and waves of migrations, the number of believers dropped significantly. Many among those who lost their property in the forfeiture fled to the Ottoman Empire. According to registers kept by the parish of Bözödújfalu, others adopted the Catholic religion, though remaining Sabbatarians in faith. The parish priest of Bözödújfalu could not prevent them from practicing Jewish rituals, and therefore Jesuits were in 1729 sent to convert them. By the middle of the eighteenth century, larger Sabbatarian communities could be found only in two villages, Bözödújfalu and Ernye. ⁴¹

Even the Edict of Tolerance issued by Emperor Joseph II in 1781 brought no recognition of this religious movement, which was persecuted in the following centuries. For example, the local Catholic priest forced the Sabbatarians of Bözödújfalu in 1827 to work on Saturdays and attend the Catholic mass on Sundays. In 1829, thirty-nine Sabbatarians in Bözödújfalu and eight in Ernye were accused and put on trial. By the middle of the nineteenth century only the former village still had Sabbatarians: thirty-eight families, 150 persons, which meant one-quarter of the inhabitants. ⁴²

Until the official emancipation of Jews in Austria-Hungary in December 1867, the Sabbatarians were compelled to practice their faith in secret, which meant that they had to belong formally to one of the Christian Churches (Catholic, Reformed, or Unitarian). The passing of the bill in favor of emancipation by the Hungarian Parliament was interpreted by the Sabbatarian religious community as a government act that guaranteed freedom of worship for them as well. However, the Hungarian Justice Ministry announced that this was a mistaken interpretation of the law and that emancipation of Hungary’s Jews did not apply to them. It was this—unfortunately, mistaken—assumption that prompted the exit of 111 individuals from the three traditional churches in 1868 (44 Catholic, 43 Reformed, and 24 Unitarian). ⁴³

These attempts at conversion to the Jewish faith were not received well by the church officials and the leadership of Udvarhely County and, consequently, their legality was not recognized. In more than one case, Sabbatarians were repeatedly pressured to renounce their intentions of openly practicing their religion. Finally, based on the Emancipation Law of 1867, the Hungarian minister of religious affairs, József Eötvös, allowed the Sabbatarians to convert to Judaism. For the community, this act opened up the path toward the formation of an independent religious institution, and the Israelite–Proselyte Religious Congregation of Bözödújfalu was created (later to adhere to the Orthodox Jewish practice). It is noteworthy that this was the only proselyte religious community that had an official institutional form in nineteenth-century Europe. ⁴⁴ From then on, the fate of the community is closely intertwined with that of the Jews in Transylvania, including in the period of the Holocaust. ⁴⁵

The mass conversion had the effect of creating two communities in the village: one Jewish and other Sabbatarian. Nevertheless, in spite of the creation of an Israelite institution, the Sabbatarian cult did not disappear entirely from Bözödújfalu. At the end of the nineteenth century, there were still five families who followed the faith: the seventeen Sabbatarians included József Sallós, the mayor of the village. ⁴⁶

The history of Sabbatarians was unknown to the world Jewish community before the end of the nineteenth century. Moses Gaster, a Romanian-born Jewish-British scholar, was the first who publicized in Romania and worldwide the history of Transylvanian Sabbatarians, and wrote a study on this subject in the Jewish year-book of Bucharest. He also delivered a lecture in England in 1889 about the Sabbatarians of Bözödújfalu. ⁴⁷

Jews in Transylvania During the First Half of the Twentieth Century

In order to present the more recent history of Szekler Sabbatarians, it is important to describe the social and political circumstances of the Transylvanian Jews in the first half of the twentieth century. The settlement of Jews in the Szeklerland took place mostly in the second half of the nineteenth century. While the census of 1785 showed only one Jewish inhabitant for Csík County and ten for Udvarhely County, according to the census of 1850 the Jewish population of the two counties was around one hundred persons. ⁴⁸

The most significant phase of settlement happened after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (the Ausgleich), especially in the northern regions of the Szekler counties. Most of the settlers were economic migrants from Moldavia, Bukovina, and Galicia, drawn by the development of a successful lumber industry in the Eastern Carpathians. Consequently, most of them were craftsmen, but many were involved in trade as well. At the turn of the century, because of railroad construction and the growth of urbanization, the settlement process increased. Despite the willingness of the Jewish communities to assimilate (according to the census of 1910, the majority of the Israelite inhabitants of Csík County declared Hungarian as their mother tongue) the strongly traditional and closed Szekler society was unaccommodating, and in some cases even hostile, toward them.

After the First World War and the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, Transylvania became part of Romania and the Jewish population—which overwhelmingly identified with the Hungarian language and culture—suddenly found itself in a double-minority situation. The Romanian authorities called for their integration within the majority nation, but the majority of Transylvanian Jews opted to belong to the Hungarian minority. The shared experience of the new administration and of their minority position could not fully dissolve the reserved nature of Szekler society; nevertheless, it helped bring the two communities closer together. The anti-Semitic activities of the fascist Legionary Movement (founded in 1927) and the strongly discriminatory laws against the Jewish population (adopted in 1938, under King Carol II) did not alarm truly the Jews in the Szeklerland since the local Hungarian population was explicitly hostile towards the measures of the Romanian state. In this respect, their conduct mirrored that of the Christian Hungarian Community towards the Romanian authorities, because the linguistic and social assimilation of the Jews in Szeklerland (particularly those of the bourgeoisie) was already achieved by that point.

In the interwar period, the Jewish population of Transylvania lived in a paradoxical situation: While their historical and cultural heritage and their mother tongue tied them to Hungary, the social, political, and economic circumstances, which determined their existence, were rooted in Romania. As Randolph L. Braham writes: “The Jews of Transylvania were victims of the historical milieu in which they lived. Romanians resented them because of their proclivity to Hungarian culture and by implication Hungarian revisionism and irredentism. Hungarians, especially Right radicals, accused them of being ‘renegades’ in the service of the Left.” ⁴⁹

The contestation of the Versailles Peace Treaty was a central feature of Hungarian revisionist politics during the Horthy regime, repeatedly expressed through claims for the detached territories. Within the discourse of revisionist propaganda, the re-annexation of Transylvania was treated as the most significant symbolic goal. Because of the arbitration worked out by Ribbentrop and Ciano on 30 August 1940, known as the Second Vienna Award, the territory of Transylvania was cut in half and the northern part re-annexed to Hungary. The territory that came under Hungarian rule was 43,000 square kilometers in size, had a population of 2.5 million, included important cities such as Nagyvárad (Oradea/Großwardein), Kolozsvár, Marosvásárhely, Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc/Szeklerburg), and Székelyudvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc/Oderhellen). Nonetheless, half a million Hungarians remained in the southern territory, and the new borders cut regional transportation in half, seriously impeding commerce and travel.

The Hungarian population in Transylvania received the decision with enthusiasm, and flowers and triumphal decorations accompanied the entrance of the Hungarian army. At the same time, a spontaneous population exchange started: Hungarian inhabitants of the southern regions fled north, and the Romanian population from the north moved south. This was soon to be stopped by both the Hungarian and the Romanian governments as neither of them wanted to weaken their claim to the neighbouring territories. At first, the Jewish population of Szeklerland shared the euphoria of the Hungarians regarding the annexation. However, their celebrations were cut short by the new administration’s steps to introduce the various anti-Jewish laws that were already enforced in Hungary. In the counties of Csík, Maros-Torda, and Udvarhely forty-two citizens were placed under investigation, and as a result a number of Jewish families were deemed unwanted and then deported through Kőrösmező (Yashinia) to Galicia by the autumn of 1940.

In the following period the Jewish population of Szeklerland was subjected to the same policies as the Hungarian Jews (all men between the ages of eighteen and fifty were sent to labor service), and after the occupation of Hungary by Nazi Germany on 19 March 1944, they were similarly targeted by the “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question” (Endlösung). Persons identified as Jews by the authorities were excluded from trade unions and fired from state institutions, they were forced to wear the yellow Star of David and were forbidden to travel, while their food rations were reduced and their property (merchandise, machines, tools, radios) was confiscated by the Hungarian state.

Decree No. 6163/1944, which ordered the ghettoization of the Jews, was signed by László Baky, the state secretary for Jewish affairs in the Sztójay government, on 7 April, and the implementation of the order was decided on April 26, in Szatmárnémeti. Northern Transylvania belonged to the so-called “II. Ghettoization and Deportation Zone,” and the territory of Szeklerland was under the command of the Xth Gendarmerie District. The details of the deportations were finalized during a secret meeting on 28 April, in Marosvásárhely. In less than a week, the Jewish population was transported into ghettos that soon became overcrowded, had insufficient water and food supplies, and where a lack of hygiene caused the spread of diseases. The deportations from the ghettos started on 15 May, and by 7 June a total of 131,639 deportees—among them a handful of Szekler Sabbatarians—were taken in forty-five trains from the territory of Northern Transylvania to the Nazi death camps.

These measures were applied to the small Sabbatarian community living in Transylvania as well. It is hard to define the exact number of Sabbatarians who suffered and perished alongside the Transylvanian Jews because over the centuries the two communities had intermixed. However, a letter sent by the Association of Hungarian Sabbatarian Families addressed to an unknown member of the Hungarian Parliament from 1939 asking for the exemption of Sabbatarians from the anti-Semitic laws mentions about 100–150 persons in Hungary and about 450–500 in Transylvania. ⁵⁰ László Harsányi estimates that “a few hundred Sabbatarians were murdered in Auschwitz.” ⁵¹

Those who managed to escape actively sympathized with the persecuted Jews. In his lengthy article in Haaretz, Shay Fogelman observes “many testimonies from Hungary and Romania mention them as offering food and shelter to Jews on the run.” ⁵² It also mentions “dozens of cases in which Sabbatarians refused to serve in the army or take part in anti-Jewish actions,” ⁵³ and therefore were sent to labor camps as punishment. As the war drew to a close, the few who had survived the brutal conditions there were force-marched to Dachau and Buchenwald.

Sabbatarians of Bözöd and Bözödújfalu after the Second Vienna Award

The villages of Bözöd and Bözödújfalu had a significant number of Jewish inhabitants, and there were several intermarriages with the local Sabbatarians who identified as Israelites. The mixed demographic situation of the two villages constituted a specific case for the newly arrived Hungarian authorities in 1940. Theoretically, the non-Jewish inhabitants—that is, the Szekler Sabbatarians—could not be subjected to the anti-Jewish laws that enforced racial discrimination in Hungary. However, who would fall within the excluded category according to the laws, and who would not, was still open to decision. In 1941, a state deputy arrived in Bözödújfalu and tried to convince the locals who identified as Israelites to convert to any of the Christian religions (primarily to Catholicism or Unitarianism). This event was reported by the renowned Hungarian writer, Zsigmond Móricz, in an article published by Kelet Népe, one of the major Hungarian journals. According to the article, the deputy threatened the Sabbatarians, saying that unless they converted as demanded they would lose their homes, their lands, and their pensions; or as Móricz reported, “the deputy announced to the villagers that those who do not convert have no place in the Hungarian homeland and will be banished from it.” ⁵⁴ As a result of these threats some Sabbatarian inhabitants agreed to convert.

The interest of Zsigmond Móricz in the everyday life of the Sabbatarian community was stimulated by a young Transylvanian writer, György Bözödi, who had also accompanied him on some of his Transylvanian visits and six years earlier had published a book about his home village (Bözöd/Bezid) and the Sabbatarian community. He considered that the resemblance between the tormented history of the Jews and that of the seventeenth-century inhabitants of Transylvania made the Sabbatarian community into “Spiritual Jews.”

Turks and Tatars raided, people suffered under German Rule, and fraternal feuds. They expected redemption and looked for it in the Bible. There they read about the fate of the Jewish nation, as if God had given them a mirror to see their own faces in it. They thought that their own fate was looking back at them in the books of the Prophets filled with suffering, slavery and decay. It wasn’t their face, but the face of a relative, a brother found in the time of great danger. Is it a wonder that they grew to love each other, that they never left each other, but kept on together in the middle of ordeals, and they preferred to give their life than to give up the peace of their souls? ⁵⁵

The official position of the Hungarian Ministry of Justice was worked out by Alajos Degré, the ministerial commissioner responsible for “matters concerned with the issuing of certificates for the descent of the so-called Sabbatarians and their offspring” between May 1941 and October 1944. ⁵⁶ Their case proved to be quite problematic from a bureaucratic point of view since the non-Jewish ancestry of the Sabbatarians was very difficult to prove within the procedure specified by the law. There were only a few helpful records from the registry office, further aggravated by the fact that in the past Sabbatarians often used pseudonyms because of continuous persecution and took on Jewish names when they converted to Judaism. As such, the creation of a certificate of ancestry for the Sabbatarians required access to special historical archives and “a comprehensive knowledge of laws and legal history, which could not be expected from the average civil servant.” ⁵⁷

The Sabbatarian villagers of Bözödújfalu sent a collective petition to the Ministry of Justice in 1942 requesting the release of a certificate that would confirm their Sabbatarian and non-Jewish ancestry. They furthermore asked the Ministry to send one of its representatives to the village since they had no financial means to assemble and send the necessary documentation. ⁵⁸ Before submitting the petition, the villagers contacted Alajos Degré to ask for his assistance with the procedure. He in turn proposed to the Ministry that—instead of producing costly certificates—the collection of local testimonies would be more suitable. In May 1942, Degré traveled to Bözödújfalu where he examined the local registry records and took the testimonies of the petitioners regarding their family background and lineage. His activity in the village was witnessed firsthand by the fifteen-year-old András Kovács, who as a writer and journalist later wrote extensively about the history of the Sabbatarians:

We would dutifully supply him with our ancestors in the form of papers so that he could measure them up and, based on the results, give each of us our percentage: this is how much we’re worth, this is who we are. He then wrote all of this up in an official document which declared that we are not to be considered Jews. . . . However, we are forbidden to marry anyone who is fully or partially Jewish. At fifteen, I was not planning on marrying anyone, regardless of the percentage, but it was truly shocking to see how—in planning for my future marriage—the evil regime expressed a rather hopeful view regarding its own lifespan. ⁵⁹

Nonetheless, in May 1944, when the transportation of the Jews into the ghettos began in Northern Transylvania, the local authorities selected the deportees based on their original religion (i.e., the one they had before converting to one of the Christian religions) and ignored Degré’s official certificate on the Sabbatarians. Thus, the Szekler Sabbatarian villagers of Bözödújfalu were rounded up with the local Jews, and then taken in carriages to the Marosvásárhely ghetto at the brick factory of the city. Although the village was located just a few kilometers north of the Hungarian–Romanian border, none of the villagers attempted to escape to Romanian territory, which at the time was a safer zone. Even under such circumstances, the Jews of Szeklerland and the Sabbatarians who shared their fate were still more trustful toward the Hungarian authorities than the Romanian ones—which proves just how ill-informed they were at the time. On the one hand, they had no understanding of the situation beyond the border, and on the other, they had no idea of the eventual outcome of the ghettoization procedure. In the ghetto, the Jews from Marosvásárhely refused to acknowledge that the Sabbatarians could belong to the Jewish community, while the Sabbatarians did not see the Jews they encountered here as true Israelites since many of them did not keep a kosher kitchen, did not wear a hat, or celebrate the Sabbath. ⁶⁰

Intervention of István László Ráduly on Behalf of the Sabbatarians

The fate of the Sabbatarians from Bözödújfalu was altered by the intervention of the local Catholic priest. István László Ráduly began his service in the village in 1942 and was surprised to find that the Sabbatarian villagers were subjected to discriminatory anti-Jewish laws. When he reported this to his superiors as an administrative mistake in need of resolution, he was warned not to oppose the strict racial laws and not to draw the unwanted attention of the authorities upon himself.

As the local commander of the Levente cadet movement, in May 1944 István László Ráduly was in charge of taking stock of the property and estates left behind by the deported villagers from Bözödújfalu. During the inventory, he came across a scholarly work on the history of Sabbatarians, written by Sámuel Kohn, a rabbi from Budapest. With the historical information gathered from the book, he launched his attempt to bring out at least some of the villagers from the ghetto. Since in the case of many Sabbatarians it was impossible to prove a 75 percent Christian ancestry owing to mixed marriages, Ráduly produced several counterfeit birth certificates for them.

In Marosvásárhely, he addressed Major Schröder of the Gestapo, in charge of the ghettoization procedure, asking to be allowed to certify the members of his congregation who were wrongfully taken into the ghetto. Although the major rejected his request, the local colonel of the gendarmerie, Lóránd Bocskor (Botskor), granted him access to the ghetto. After several days of pleading, Ráduly managed to “certify” a sizeable group of villagers from his “congregation.” Thus, he was able to bring out approximately seventy Sabbatarians from the ghetto, not only villagers from Bözödújfalu but from Bözöd and Székelykeresztúr as well. Ten Sabbatarian villagers, however, wished to express their solidarity with their Jewish relatives and so remained in the ghetto—only to be killed later in Auschwitz. “Other sources show that there were ninety-four Sabbatarians in the Marosvásárhely ghetto, out of which thirty-four could not be certified because they were part of families with mixed marriages and some of their ancestors were born in Galicia.” ⁶¹

The successful action of Ráduly at Marosvásárhely established a precedent thanks to which even in other villages, like Erdőszentgyörgy, Sabbatarians who could prove their origins escaped deportation. In order to avoid ghettoization, each villager was asked to sign a document in which they declared that they were not Jewish—and all those who refused to do so, either for religious reasons or considerations of conscience, were taken to the Nazi death camps.

The effective intervention of István László Ráduly was unusual in the context of the general passivity or active collaboration demonstrated by the Hungarian population, but it was not unparalleled at the time. Although difficult to prove, it is likely that Ráduly had heard of the critical attitude of the Transylvanian Catholic Bishop Áron Márton regarding the policies of the Hungarian government. In a sermon at the consecration ceremony on 18 May 1944, just after the closing of the ghettos, but before the start of the deportations, Bishop Márton became the first among Hungarian Church leaders to openly criticize the actions of the government and to call for the revocation of the immoral discriminatory measures.

Further Implications of Sabbatarian Ancestry

On 16 May 1944, Alajos Degré reported to the Ministry of Justice that the approximately two hundred certificates issued by the Ministry for the exceptional case of the Sabbatarians had not been recognized by the local authorities. Nevertheless, the resulting events were not caused by malevolent arbitrariness; they were simply the overzealous and well-meaning mistake of the local leadership. ⁶² In spite of the euphemistic tone of the report, the rather permissive and—given the political circumstances—relatively liberal certificates given by the Ministry were heavily criticized at the time, both by some of the locals and by the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie’s Central Detective Office, which sent a memorandum to the Minister of Internal Office, Miklós Bonczos, claiming that some of the acts presented by the Sabbatarians might be forged. The Ministry of Justice however did not change the policy of granting certificates. ⁶³

The attitude of some of the locals can be inferred, for example, from a denunciation submitted by seven villagers (led by the village schoolteacher) from Bözödújfalu. The authors wanted to provide the Ministry with a “truthful image” of the lives of their fellow villagers who had just recently returned from the ghetto and referred to the existing anti-Jewish laws and regulations as “highly important for our homeland since they aim to exclude the Jews from the midst of our patriotic Hungarian nation.” ⁶⁴ The denunciation expressed the villagers’ outrage over the fact that the majority of the deportees had returned from the ghettos and stated the accusation that—in spite of their certificates—they “were not Sabbatarians, but even bigger Jews than the Jews themselves.” ⁶⁵

This allegation was based on the argument that “if the persons in question were indeed Sabbatarians then why do they have Jewish prayer books written in Hebrew, why do they follow the Jewish Ten Commandments, why do they practice circumcision, why do they eat the matzah, and wear the prayer shawl. . . . If they were really Sabbatarians then they would only celebrate the Sabbath, and not every other Jewish holiday.” Furthermore, the authors stated that the conversion was done only to mislead the authorities, so that under the protection of a Sabbatarian certificate they could continue their “disruptive activities” against the Hungarian nation by preparing the ground for “black marketeering and communism.” ⁶⁶ Although the denunciation does not accuse him personally, István László Ráduly is attacked indirectly and described as a “person occupying a leading position in the village” whose function should be to act as a “vigilant guardian of the Hungarian nation,” yet instead of “commemorating the bleeding Hungarian heroes on the last Sunday in May, he was occupied with saving the Jews.” ⁶⁷

Most Recent History of the Sabbatarians in Bözödújfalu

After the Second World War, the trials of those who were charged as war criminals in Transylvania (once again part of Romania) were organized according to the armistice signed on 12 September 1944 in Moscow. The Romanian People’s Tribunals were set up following Ordinance no. 312 of the Ministry of Justice, issued on 12 April 1945. The sentences were decidedly severe; however, all of the trials leading to a death sentence were carried out in absentia; and none of those sentenced to imprisonment served their full sentence. According to an ordinance issued only four years later, in 1950, the war criminals who demonstrated good behavior could be released from prison.

In the early stages of the war trials, the villagers of Bözödújfalu who survived the ghetto had a chance to repay the gesture of Lóránd Bocskor (Botskor), the gendarmerie colonel who had allowed them to return to their village and was on trial in Hungary for his wartime role. On 30 August 1946, the magistrate of Bözödújfalu, together with the local Communist Party secretary and the representative of the Magyar Népi Szövetség (Hungarian People’s Alliance), compiled a written declaration that informed the Hungarian authorities about the actions of Colonel Bocskor. The survivors declared that they owed their lives to Bocskor, who “facilitated the release of sixty internees from the Marosvásárhely ghetto,” thereby effectively “saving their lives, their children’s lives, and their property from certain disaster.” Besides this declaration, initiated by József Kovács, the village priest, István László Ráduly, also wrote a deposition in which he described Colonel Bocskor’s role in the liberation of the “Jews.” ⁶⁸ Eventually, Colonel Bocskor was acquitted by the Hungarian People’s Tribunal.

Back in 1935, György Bözödi had proudly stated in his book that “Bözödújfalu is the Jerusalem of the Szekler Jews. The only difference is that an enemy never ruined this Jerusalem, and it is the only community where the ancient religion remained unchanged.” ⁶⁹ However, his metaphorical description proved to be wrong a few decades later, as not long after their escape from the ghetto and the end of the war the Sabbatarian community of Bözödújfalu gradually disintegrated. Some members immigrated to Israel between 1960 and 1968, while others found their livelihoods in other parts of the country. According to the 1947 census commissioned by the World Jewish Congress, there were no Jewish inhabitants left in Bözödújfalu, yet in 1975 there were still five Unitarian families who claimed to be the descendants of the Sabbatarians, and some of them even celebrated the Sabbath.

The fate of the village was determined in the end by the Romanian Communist state: as part of the attempt by the Ceauşescu regime to “systematize” (and also disrupt) rural Transylvania, the village was filled with water and transformed into a reservoir. Construction of a dam in neighboring Erdőszentgyörgy had already started in 1975, the villagers were then relocated in 1985, and the area was flooded in 1988. Both churches and several of the public buildings were submerged and the village practically disappeared—just like the Szekler Sabbatarian community that had once lived there.

It is customary to treat the victims of the Holocaust as martyrs, although in the circumstances in which they were rounded up, transported and murdered, they were deprived of any possibility of altering their fate. This essay has presented how all the members of the small Szekler-Sabbatarian community suffered persecution alongside the Transylvanian Jews, By now it is clear that those persecutions led to the final disappearance of this small community. Those few who, because of religious considerations, deliberately tied their fate to the Jewish people despite all the dangers of doing so, might be considered a true example of heroic martyrdom, one which for the most part passed unnoticed by the generations to come.