Budapest Székesfőváros Statisztikai Hivatalának iratai, 1870-1952

The capital city of Budapest has played a major role in the life of Hungarian Jewry in modern times. By the 1930s and 1940s, the Jews of Budapest constituted by far the largest community in the country and second largest urban Jewish community on the continent (right behind Warsaw). After the Trianon Treaty of 1920 but before the rounds of border revisions between 1938 and 1941, around half of the Jews of Hungary belonged to this community. This meant that Jewish Hungarians amounted to nearly one-quarter of the population of Budapest at the beginning of the 20th century though, due at first to their modern demographic profile, their percentage was to gradually decline thereafter. The history of Budapest Jewry also proved to be special in the year of the Holocaust in Hungary as the deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau were halted in early July 1944 right before its members would have been deported too. Budapest Jewry was to lose close to half of its members due to the institution of labor service, the Arrow Cross rule of terror in the city and associated hardships, and the forced marches westwards in the late stages of the war. The records of the Bureau of Statistics of the Capital City of Budapest include much that is of interest to researchers of this major community in the era of Nazism and the Holocaust. Perhaps most importantly, there is the detailed census of 1941 which already took place in the age of anti-Jewish legal discrimination and exclusion in Hungary. Researchers may find this part of the collection under IV.1419.j (in Hungarian it is titled Az 1941. évi népszámlálás budapesti felvételi és feldolgozási iratainak gyűjteménye). Other major parts of the collection are the general records of the Bureau of Statistics (under IV. 1419. a.) and its confidential records (under IV.1419. b.).