Draft:Arthur Geyer

• Comment: The draft should be written in a formal, neutral, encyclopedic tone. Please also explain how you have used AI for this draft. Kovcszaln6 (talk) 07:29, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

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For the Hungarian version, see: hu:Geyer Artúr

For the Hebrew version, see: he:ארתור גייר

Rabbi Dr. Arthur Ascher Geyer (Hungarian: Geyer Artúr dr.) (1894-1976) was a prominent Neolog rabbi in Budapest, Hungary and a well-known scholar of the Holocaust.  During his career, Geyer worked as educator, librarian, wine merchant as well as rabbi at various congregations.  He became famous for his pioneering research on the Holocaust in Hungary, which was published in 1958.  This work was a compilation of literary, historical and other source materials detailing the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust and has been used as a primary source by subsequent scholars.  Throughout his career, Geyer never wavered in his support for Zionism and encouraged young Jews to consider emigrating to Israel.  He was under constant surveillance by the Secret Police and served time in prison for his Zionist beliefs.  Towards the end of his career, he became Chief Rabbi of Buda leading the congregation at the Frankel Leó Street Synagogue. He passed away on September 6, 1976.  His grave can be found at the Farkasrét Jewish Cemetery in Budapest.

Early life and education

Arthur Geyer was born in Budapest, Hungary on February 13, 1894.  Both his parents immigrated to Hungary in the late 19^th century.  His father was Osias Geyer, born in Lemberg, Galicia (now Lviv, Ukraine) and his mother was Regina Gradenwitz, born in Wroclaw, Silesia (Poland).  His father earned a living as a bookseller in Budapest and was often consulted by rabbis for his extensive knowledge of the Jewish scriptures.

Arthur earned a doctorate in humanities from the University of Budapest (Eötvös Loránt University, ELTE) in 1916 and a rabbinical degree from the National Rabbinical Seminary (Országos Rabbiképző Intézet), now called the Budapest University of Jewish Studies, in 1918.  A student of Ignác Goldziher, his dissertation was on the impact of Islam on the literature of early medieval Jewish scholarship.

Career

Interwar years

The 1920s were extremely difficult times in Hungary, especially for Jews.  Soon after World War I ended, the Hungarian economy suffered a catastrophic collapse worsened by political upheaval, severe inflation, and the consequences of the Treaty of Trianon (1920), which stripped the country of two-thirds of its territory and natural resources.  In addition, the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian monetary union and heavy war debts led to massive budget deficits and severe currency devaluation. This was followed by the Great Depression in the 1930s when unemployment spread quickly and was hard to control.  Workers and farmers were left penniless and even those with university degrees competed for jobs as bellhops and street cleaners.  Many intellectuals, academics and talented artists decided to leave the country at this time as prospects were bleak.

To make matters worse, the Jewish population in Hungary was blamed for much of the misery.  Throughout this interwar period, Miklos Horthy led a government characterized as fascist and openly antisemitic.  Between 1920 and 1942, the Hungarian Parliament passed several severe anti-Jewish laws, which stripped Jewish people of their civil rights, destroyed their careers, ruined their businesses, and set the stage for The Holocaust in Hungary, where ultimately more than 500,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated.

In such a hostile and degrading environment, there were limited options available for a young Jew pursuing a career.  Being trained as a rabbi, Geyer was able to work briefly as a rabbi in Győr in 1920 and in Debrecen in 1921-22.  In Budapest, he worked part-time as a religion teacher at local secondary schools and eventually was able to organize a wine wholesaling business to better support his family.  Unfortunately, by the early 1940s, matters deteriorated to such an extent that the government revoked his license and confiscated his business assets leaving him at the mercy of the Jewish community.

The "Glass House"

See also: History of the Jews in Hungary

Soon after the German Army occupied Hungary in March 1944, the extermination of Jews in Hungary began in earnest under the supervision of Adolph Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of the deportation of all the Jews of Hungary. Between May and July 1944, over 440,000 Hungarian Jews were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. More than 330,000 were put to death immediately upon arrival.

Once the German occupation began, the Hungarian authorities approved a request by the Swiss Deputy Consul Carl Lutz to distribute 7,800 “certificates” to those seeking to emigrate to British-controlled Palestine.  Due to the large number of documents needed to be processed, Lutz requested permission to set up a new office, separate from the Swiss Consulate, the sole purpose of which was to process the paperwork for emigrees seeking to leave Hungary for Palestine.

Arthur's older brother, Dr. Albert Geyer, who was a prominent lawyer representing the Hungarian Zionist Association, was asked by the Director of the Palestine Office to select a site for such an office.  The site he selected turned out to be a former glass factory located at 26 Vadász Street, hence the name, ‘Glass House’ (Üvegház).  With the help of his brother, who also served on the Board of Directors, Arthur Geyer and his family found refuge at the ‘Glass House’.  Eventually, a couple of neighbouring buildings were also incorporated into a complex that was given diplomatic immunity by the Swiss Consulate.  By liberation day, January 18, 1945, the ‘Glass House’ was serving as a safe haven for about 4,000 Jews.  Today, the "Glass House" functions as a museum documenting the story of Carl Lutz and his heroic activities.

The Rákosi Trials

In the late 1940s, the State Security Police began arresting Zionist leaders who may have been involved in facilitating emigration to Israel.  His wife, Elsa, having recently passed away, Geyer helped his son Imre (Itzhak) emigrate to Israel to start a new life but he himself was arrested and imprisoned for about two years on political charges.  These charges were carried out in accordance with the government's attempt to stop illegal emigration to Israel.  They sought to establish that Zionist leaders were directing illegal border crossings and wished to prove that Hungarian Jews were disloyal to Hungary and working in the service of a foreign country.

Anti-Zionism became a major theme in the late 1940s and early 1950s during the Rákosi administration.  Modeled after the Stalinist purges, they were characterised by public trials used to accuse and expose political rivals and to consolidate power.  Jewish religious leaders such as Geyer were also caught up in this anti-Zionist political atmosphere.  As a result, Geyer was never able to see his grandchildren who lived in Israel and he could only meet in secret with his son, Imre, and his daughter-in-law, Leah, outside Hungary.

Holocaust research

After his release from prison in the early 1950s, Geyer was barred from public rabbinical service.  Fortunately, Dr. Sandor Scheiber, Director of the National Rabbinical Seminary (Országos Rabbiképző Intézet), invited Geyer to join the institute as librarian.  It was here that Geyer conducted his painstaking research detailing the history of the Holocaust in Hungary, which he eventually published as a book titled, “A Bibliography of the Persecution of Jews by Fascism in Hungary, 1945-1958”.  This book was one of the first major attempts to gather and organize everything written about the Hungarian Holocaust and serves as a critical resource for subsequent historians of the Holocaust. Highly controversial in nature, the book was banned immediately after it was published and its copies were destroyed except for two copies; one copy held on reserve at the National Széchenyi Library and the other at the Ervin Szabó Library.  An image of the text and its background is on display at the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives.

The significance of this work cannot be overestimated.  Besides providing an important resource for future scholars, it challenged the official narrative that rejected the idea of special Jewish suffering during the war.  An excerpt from Rafael Patai's The Jews in Hungary describes this environment well:

the Hungarian government effectively prevented the publication of books, studies, and articles on the Jewish question and the persecution of Jews in Hungary that culminated in the 1944 genocide.  Practically no explicit mention could be made even of historical anti-Semitism.  The official line was that what had happened prior to the Russian liberation of Hungary was that the Fascists persecuted the anti-Fascists.  The Communist leadership rejected the idea of the special Jewish suffering, saying that ‘in the old system the entire working people suffered’ . . . The fact that two-thirds or more of the Hungarian Jews were exterminated, and not because they were anti-Nazis or because of anything they did but merely because they were Jews . . . was considered unmentionable, was passed over in silence, and its historicity was in effect erased.”

Unperturbed by the hostile reception on the part of the Communist government to his research on the Holocaust in Hungary, Geyer proceeded to publish two additional papers detailing the role of Hungarian officials in the targeting of Jews for mass murder.  The first paper published in 1959, describes the collaboration between the German Army and the Hungarian Police in raiding Újvidék (Novi Sad) in northern Yugoslavia in January, 1942.  More that 800 Jews and 400 Serbs were killed in the raid and their bodies were dumped into the Danube.  The second paper published in 1960, describes how the National Central Authority for the Control of Foreigners (Külföldieket Ellenőrző Országos Központi Hatóság, KEOKH) in newly acquired Hungarian territory targeted stateless Jews who had fled Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia and forced them across the border into German occupied Ukraine where 23,600 were murdered in August 1941.  This atrocity effectively signaled the beginning of the Holocaust in Hungary.

District Rabbi, Óbuda Community

The Óbuda Synagogue is the oldest functioning synagogue in Budapest dating back to the 1730s.  The current structure, consecrated in 1821 and later adopted by a Neolog congregation, has recently been rededicated as an Orthodox synagogue.  Since most of the Jewish population in Óbuda had been either murdered or displaced during World War II, too few survivors remained to support the synagogue.  Consequently, in the early 1950s, the government took possession of the building using it at various times as a storage facility, textile museum, refugee home and, eventually, as a television studio.  Services were no longer held there for almost 60 years until 2010 when it was restored to its original function as a synagogue.

In 1957, after the Hungarian Revolution, the Óbuda Synagogue building was designated a protected state monument.  That same year, no longer barred from public rabbinical service, Geyer took on a role as District Rabbi to attend to the needs of the few remaining congregants in Óbuda.  Since the community was essentially devastated, Rabbi Geyer's responsibilities from 1957 to 1963 mainly comprised of community leadership and representation.

Lágymányos Synagogue protests

During the Kádár Communist era, numerous former synagogue buildings were confiscated, sold or converted into secular spaces such as TV studios, museums and sports centers.  Having lost significant membership due to deportation during the war, emigration after the revolution, conversion to Christianity or assimilation, these congregations faced severe financial hardship and pressure from the state to abandon these houses of worship.

A notable example was the closing of the Lágymányos Synagogue (Lágymányosi Zsinagóga), in South Buda which triggered a rare and dramatic internal rebellion that pitted the compliant leadership of the Budapest Jewish Community (Budapesti Izraelita Hitközség, BIH) against the Neolog religious leadership.  On October 12, 1959, Rabbi László Hochberger, the local rabbi, fiercely protested the sale and rallied his congregation against the state's decision.  Because of his resistance, the authorities forcibly transferred him to Kispest, on the outskirts of Budapest.  A few days later, Rabbi Geyer went to the Dohány Street Synagogue, the main Neolog synagogue in Budapest, and spoke from the pulpit in support of Hochberger and criticized the state's coercive attempts to liquidate this historic place of worship.  Geyer stressed the importance of recognizing the needs and wishes of the local community.  Both addresses drew intense scrutiny and subsequent backlash by the State Office of Church Affairs (Állami Egyházügyi Hivatal, ÁEH).

Chief Rabbi, Frankel Leó Street Synagogue

From 1963 until his death in 1976, Geyer served as rabbi at the Frankel Leó Street Synagogue (Újlaki Zsinagóga) located at 49 Frankel Leó Street in Újpest.  In 1965, Dr, Geyer was promoted to Chief Rabbi of Buda.  He was a much loved leader of this Neolog Jewish congregation of approximately 500 families and a highly respected rabbi throughout Hungary.  His sermons and speeches were characterised by great preparation and expertise, an engaging presentation style with a European perspective.

He organized Talmud-Torah classes mainly for high school and university students combining secular education with religious tradition.  In the late 1960s, the Talmud-Torah classes were shut down by the government for political reasons on charges of promoting Zionism and Rabbi Geyer was arrested along with several of his students (see below).  His former students speak fondly of his brilliant and engaging teaching style, which made Jewish religion and culture accessible and relevant.  Despite the ever-present surveillance by the authorities, “nothing was considered taboo” in these classes.  A plaque has been erected at the Frankel Leó Street Synagogue commemorating Geyer's leadership and contributions.

The “Shalom” investigation

During the mid-1960s, The State Security Department of the Ministry of the Interior launched an undercover operation targeting rabbis and Jewish youths who were engaging in illegal Zionist activities.  In addition to alleged Zionist activities, this group was accused of organizing illegal emigration (Aliyah) to Israel and maintaining unauthorized contact with the Israeli Embassy.  Codenamed, “Shalom”, the case was opened in November 1966, after it was learned that 13 Jewish youths had emigrated to Israel via Yugoslavia that year.  Rabbi Artúr Geyer and Rabbi Tamás Raj of the Szeged Synagogue were also named as suspects in the case.

Informants from within both congregations reported to the State Security Department (Belügyminisztérium Állambiztonsági Szervek, BM ÁBSZ) and the State Office for Church Affairs (Állami Egyházügyi Hivatal, ÁEH) that these rabbis were organizing Zionist youth groups and encouraging and facilitating emigration to Israel.  The “Shalom” case ended in 1968 with suspended prison sentences for two of the defendants while Rabbis Artúr Geyer and Tamás Raj were issued police warnings.  In 1970, Rabbi Raj was fired from his rabbinical appointment at Szeged and subsequently banned from rabbinical activity for 15 years.

Publications

• Geyer, Artúr, A kalâm hatása a Sa’adia utáni gáoni korszak irodalmára (The Influence of Kalam on post-Sa’adia Gaonic Era), Doctoral Dissertation, Rákospalota, Vörösmarty Press, 1916, 52 pp.  Discusses the influential work of Sa’adia Gáon (882-942) who was the first major Jewish philosopher to integrate Kalâm into Jewish thought.

• Geyer, Artúr, Zsidó iskolaprogramm (Jewish School Program), Múlt és Jövő, Hungarian Jewish Cultural Journal, 1920.  Addresses the need to redefine Jewish education following World War I.  The program sought to balance traditional heritage with modern academic standards by restructuring curricula to preserve religious values, identity, and language instruction.

• Mészáros, Leó, and Artúr Geyer, Mendelssohn és II. Frigyes.  Mondák és legendák a zsidó történelemből (Mendelssohn and Frederick II.  Myths and Legends from Jewish History), Budapest: Remény, 1929, 31p. booklet.  Focuses on Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), the famous German-Jewish philosopher of the Enlightenment (Haskalah), whose wit and intellect allowed him to outsmart antisemitic courtiers and earn the respect of the King of Prussia.

• Geyer, Arthur, A magyarorszägi fasizmus zsidöüldözesenek bibliogrdfiaja, 1945–1958 (The Bibliography of the Jewish Persecutions by Fascism in Hungary, 1945–1958). forward by Sándor Scheiber, Budapest, Magyar Izraelitäk Orszägos Kepviselete (MIOK), 1958, 167 p. A compilation of literary, historical and other source materials detailing the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust and a primary source for subsequent scholars.

• Geyer Artúr, Az 1942. évi újvidéki „Razzia” (The 1942 Raid in Novi Sad), Új Elet Naptár 1959, 5719/5720. Budapest, Magyar Izraeliták Országos Képviselete, 1959, 39-51.  Explores the fate of the Hungarian officers responsible for the Novi Sad massacre in 1942.

• Geyer Arthur, Az első magyarországi deportálás (The First Hungarian Deportation), Új Élet Naptár 1960-1961, 5720/5721. Budapest: MIOK Kiadása, 1960, (Magyar Izraeliták Országos Képviselete, 1960), 75-82.  Describes the role of the National Central Authority for the Control of Foreigners (KEOKH) in the deportation of Jews from Hungary to Kamenets-Podolsky (German occupied Ukraine) in 1941, where they were massacred.

• Geyer, Artúr, Necrology of Rabbi Dr. Miklós Bernáth, published in Új Élet, 1963.  A testimonial to the long time leader of the Bosnian Jewish community in Budapest who managed to survive the Holocaust in Hungary.