page_title: Mukachevo
section_title: Jewish community
hierarchical_section_title: Mukachevo / Jewish community
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die Latorica in Mukachevo, Ukraine English: Latorica River in Mukachevo, Ukraine Русский: Латорица в Мукачево
context_page_description: Mukachevo is a city located in the valley of the Latorica river in Zakarpattia Oblast, in Western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of Mukachevo Raion, the city itself does not belong to the raion and is designated as a city of oblast significance, with the status equal to that of a separate raion. The population is 86,339.
  The city is now a rail terminus and highway junction, and has beer, wine, tobacco, food, textile, timber, and furniture industries. During the Cold War, it was home to Mukachevo air base and a radar station.
  Mukachevo is a traditional stronghold of the Rusyn language, and the population of Mukachevo is officially reported as 77.1% ethnic Ukrainian. There are also significant minorities of: Russians; Hungarians; Germans; and Romanians.
  Up until World War II and the Holocaust, it was primarily a Jewish town, and half the population was Jewish, the rest of the population being Rusyn, Hungarian, Slovak, and other minorities. Formerly in Czechoslovakia, and before that in Hungary, it was incorporated into Soviet Ukraine after World War II.
context_section_description: There are documents in the Berehove State Archives which indicate that Sephardi Jews lived in Munkács and the surrounding villages as early as the second half of the seventeenth century. The Jewish community of Munkács was an amalgam of Galician and Hungarian Hasidic Jewry, Orthodox Jews, and Zionists. The town is most noted for its Chief Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira who led the community until his death in 1937.
  By 1851, Munkacs supported a large yeshiva, thereby demonstrating the community's commitment to Talmudic learning and piety.
  Materially impoverished, yet wealthy in ideological debate, the Jews of interwar Munkacs constituted almost half of the town's population. The Munkacs Jewish community was famous for its Hasidic activity as well as its innovations in Zionism and modern Jewish education.
  The Jewish population of Munkacs grew from 2,131 in 1825 to 5,049 in 1891 (almost 50 percent of the total population) to 7,675 in 1910 (about 44 percent). By 1921, the 10,000 Jews still made up about half the residents, though by 1930, the proportion had dropped to 43 percent, with a little over 11,000 Jews. The Jews of Munkacs constituted 11 percent of the Jewry of Subcarpathian Rus.
  Interwar Munkacs had a very large Jewish population, which was most visible on the Shabbat. On that day most stores were closed and, after services, the streets filled with Hasidic Jews in their traditional garb. The first movie house in the town was established by a Hasidic Jew, and it too closed on the Shabbat and Jewish holidays.
  The Chief Rabbi of Munkacs, Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira (who led the community from 1913 until his death in 1937) was the most outspoken voice of religious anti-Zionism. He had succeeded his father, Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Spira, who had earlier inherited the mantle of leadership from his father Rabbi Shlomo Spira. He was also a Hasidic rebbe with a significant number of followers. Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira was succeeded by his son-in-law, Rabbi Baruch Yehoshua Yerachmiel Rabinowicz.
  Along with the dominant Munkacser hasidic community there co-existed smaller yet vibrant Hasidic groups who were followers of the rebbes  Belz, of Spinka, Zidichov, and Vizhnitz. By the time of the Holocaust there were nearly 30 synagogues in town, many of which were Shtieblech ("[small] house" - small [Hasidic] synagogues).
  The Hebrew Gymnasium was founded in Munkacs five years after the first Hebrew speaking elementary school in Czechoslovakia was established there in 1920. It soon became the most prestigious Hebrew high school east of Warsaw. Zionist activism along with chasidic pietism contributed to a community percolating with excitement, intrigue and at times internecine conflict
  In 1935, Chaim Kugel, formerly director of the Munkacs gymnasium (Jewish high school) and then Jewish Party delegate to the Czechoslovak Parliament, gave a speech during a parliamentary debate: "…It is completely impossible to adequately describe the poverty in the area. The Jews… are affected equally along with the rest…. I strongly wish to protest any attempt to blame the poverty of the Subcarpathian Ruthenian peasantry on the Jews"  (Kugel later got to Mandatory Palestine and eventually became mayor of the Israeli city of Holon).
  Government policies were covertly directed against Jews, who bore a heavy share of taxes and had difficulty getting high civil service positions.
  In 1939, the Hungarians seized and annexed Subcarpathian Rus—including Munkacs—taking advantage of the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Though antisemitic legislation was introduced by the Hungarian authorities, Subcarpathian Rus, like the rest of Hungary, remained a relative haven for Jews until Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in 1944.
  In the spring of 1944 there were nearly 15,000 Jewish residents of the town. This ended on May 30, 1944 when the city was pronounced Judenrein (free of Jews after ghettoization and a series of deportations to Auschwitz).
  Today, Mukachevo is experiencing a Jewish renaissance of sorts with the establishment of a supervised kosher kitchen, a mikveh, Jewish summer camp i
caption: Latorica river
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