Hani Lowinger < Sander Feinberg

Subscribe to my newsletter to get more posts like this and be the first to learn about my upcoming book Hungarian-American Heroes.

I am editing the chapters in my book about the rise of fascism in Hungary, my grandfather and his friends’ work to fight it and the attempts at resistance in Hungary. The parallels to our world today are frightening. A short time ago I found the ship manifest for a cousin of mine as she escaped Hungary in 1936. Here is her story.

Hani Lowinger (Klein)

On August 5, 1936, at age 66, my 1st cousin 3x removed, Hani Klein (1870-1964), born Lowinger, arrived in New York City. She traveled on the S.S. President Harding, after taking the train from her home Nyíracsád in northern Hungary to Hamburg, Germany. Based on her ship manifest, she was one of the very few, and very fortunate, Hungarian Jews who were included in the tiny quota of 869 for all Hungarian immigrants to the U.S. for the year 1936. The Immigration Act of 1924 established quotas which limited immigration from Southern and East Europe. After World War I, Hungary’s immigration was drastically reduced from its earlier totals of 150,000 per year. Barely any Jews were included in the new quotas.

Based on family stories it is very likely that Hani’s cousin Adolph Zukor (also my 1st cousin 3x removed) paid for her passage. Adolph (1873-1976) was the founder and president of Paramount Pictures. They were both born in Ricse Hungary and likely knew each as children.

Adolph offered to pay for any family member who wanted to immigrate. He had been in the film business for 25 years by 1936 and may have pulled some strings with influential friends in Washington to get Hani onto the quota list.

Hani got out just in time. Hungary was an ally of Germany and although the Holocaust was delayed until Germany’s occupation of Hungary in March 1944, as you can see from the stories below, antisemitism and violence were already prevalent in 1936.

Many of Hani’s cousins perished. Her cousin Vilma survived Aushwitz. My dear cousins in the Foldi family survived the horrific conditions of the Budapest ghetto. 565,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Germans and Hungarian collaborators. The tragic story is told in my graphic history collaboration with artist Summer McClinton called The Hungarian Resistance.

Hani lived her remaining years with her daughter Mary Keimowitz and her daughter’s husband Imre in New York. Mary was a U.S. citizen who had immigrated from Hungary in 1922.

Here are three stories from the Jewish Telegraph Agency about increasingly dangerous conditions for Hungarian Jews at the time Hani emigrated.

Nazis Beat Jews in Hungarian Town
August 3, 1936

Many Jews were beaten yesterday in the town of Steinamanger when the Nazi Arrow-and-Cross organization marched into the orthodox Jewish Theokel Street, shouting anti-Jewish threats. The disturbance followed weeks of anti-Semitic pamphleteering.

Hungary Bars Jews from Reich and East Europe
December 23, 1936

Minister of the Interior Nicholas Kozma, who recently returned from a brief visit to Germany, announced today that he will not tolerate Jewish immigration from Germany or eastern countries. imultaneously, police were ordered not to extend the residential permits of foreign Jews. Anonymous posters appeared throughout the city today, urging the public not to patronize Jewish stores for Christmas shopping.

Five hundred Jews were seized in police raids in Budapest; thirty will be deported.
November 9, 1937

Thirty of more than five hundred Jews seized in police raids here will be deported to their countries of origin, it was stated today. They were detained for deportation when they could not produce proper identification papers. The raids, the largest in Budapest’s history, were carried out during the night in the city’s Jewish quarter, with police dragging men, women, and children from their beds and rushing them by automobile to headquarters, where they were held for questioning the entire day. All but the thirty held for deportation were released. The official Hungarian news agency announced this morning that the Aliens Department alone was responsible for the raids. In the future, it declared, identification papers of foreigners will be examined strictly before they are permitted to enter the country. Smaller raids were carried out in the suburbs of Althofen, where fifteen persons were arrested, and in Bonyhád, site of a famous yeshiva.

Photos

Adolph Zukor-1936, Auschwitz-1944, Budapest-1960

Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, Jews waiting in a grove near gas chamber #4 prior to their murder, May 1944. Courtesy: Yadvashem

July 1960 burial of Fani (Grun) Lowinger in the Obuda Jewish Cemetry.
People include: Wilma Lowinger, Ervin Foldi, Berta Foldi, Julia Schwartz, Arpad Foldi, Tamas Foldi