Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary: Tarcal

“Tarcal” - Encyclopedia of Jewish
Communities in Hungary

48°07' / 21°25'

Translation of the “Tarcal” chapter from
Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary

Edited by: Theodore Lavi

Published by Yad Vashem

Published in Jerusalem, 1975

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This is a translation from: Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Hungary,
Edited by Theodore Lavi, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.

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[Page 305]

Tarcal

A town in the area of Zemplen, a sub-district of Tokai.
The 1941 population was 4,004. The Jews called it Tertzal.

Jewish Population

Year	Number
1746	13
1771	12
1822	30
1851	231
1896	280
1930	321
1941	299
1946	30

Until the end of the First World War

The first time Jews were mentioned as inhabitants of Tertzal was in the census of 1746. They were wine sellers who came from Poland to buy wine, and then settled in the town with the encouragement of the local authority. It sought ways to export wine produced in Tertzal from the local vineyards. On the other hand, the royal council was against Jewish settlement in the city. When the Jewish wine merchants became established in the place, Jews from the district came there to work in the vineyards during the harvest, and in order to produce wine, including kosher wine.

The majority of Tertzal Jews were merchants, and the rest were farmers, artisans, and vineyard owners. There were 20 merchants in 1929, six artisans, two farmers and vineyard owners, a teacher, physician, miller, and a quarry owner, a lumberyard proprietor, and 30 whose professions were undefined.

The attitude of the non-Jewish population to the Jews was generally reasonable. It seems that the community organized in the second half of the eighteenth century, and in 1869 it defined itself as Orthodox. In 1888 the community was under the authority of Bodrogkeresztur. After the First World War the community became independent. The community had a Hevra Kadisha, an old people's hostel, a school, a hevrat shas, tiferet bachurim, and a cheder. The synagogue was built in 1860, and then remodeled in 1910. The religious services of the town also served the little hamlet of Kishomokos with its five Jews.

Among the famous rabbis of Terzel was Yehezkel Paneth (1813-1822), the author of Mare Yeheskel (Marmaros, 1875). From Tertzal he was called to be the rabbi of Transylvania. Another was Yakov Shapira (1876-1906), a very good and famous scholar, whose name is often mentioned in the halachic responsa of the famous rabbis of Hungary.

After the First World War, soldiers who returned from the front after the defeat of Germans incited the town against Jews. They said that the Jews had profited from the war, and thus spoiled relations between them and their neighbors. Attacks against the Jews of Tarcal also continued during the Communist Revolution and the “White Terror.” But afterwards relations became normal

In 1939 vineyards and farms of the Jews of Tarcal were confiscated because of the Laws of Discrimination. The wine trade, which was also in the hands of the Jews, was also taken away. This situation undermined the main source of income of the local Jews.

The Holocaust

In 1942 the men were taken for forced labor.

In March 1944 the Germans entered Tarcal and immediately declared a curfew on the Jews. Valuables were taken from them. On April 16, the Jews of Tarcal were concentrated in the synagogue, and the day after they were transported to the Satoraljaujhely ghetto. There about 15,000 Jews of the region were concentrated together. As soon as the Jews left Tarcal their houses were distributed among the local population.

On May 16 the Jews of Tarcal were transported to Auschwitz, a group of 3,500 people, except for a few young women, who were sent to Schleswig-Holstein, and from there, via Denmark, to Sweden.

After the war, 20 men returned from forced labor and ten women from Sweden. They restored the synagogue, purified the cemetery, and renewed community life.

In 1956, during the Revolution against the regime, rioters set fire to the synagogue, and if the Jews had not fled from Tarcal, they would certainly have been murdered. In 1962 there were still seven Jews in Tarcal in mixed marriages.

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