Chust, Czechoslovakia

Slave labour played a major role in ensuring their survival. It was not only the antisemitism that greeted them on their return home but the annexation of the region by the Soviet Union after World War II that turned them into refugees.

Until the end of World War I, the city was part of the Austro-Hungary. In 1920, the Carpathian region became the most easterly part of the newly created state of Czechoslovakia

A Jewish community developed in Chust in the 18th century. The city was a centre of religious learning and was an important Hasid centre. The Chust yeshiva opened in 1861.

Pre-war

The Carpathian Mountains in the 1930s.

In the mid-19th century, the Jewish community of Khust became one of the largest and most influential in Transcarpathia.

By 1941, the Jewish population, just under a third of the total, had increased to 6,023.

In the inter-war period, Jews were involved in all aspects of civic, cultural, and economic life. Most of the Jews of Chust were tradesmen or ran shops. Jews also owned cinemas, hotels, taverns, three banks, factories and flour mills. Many of them worked in liberal professions as doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, and clerks.

Various Jewish political parties were active in Chust. they included Agudas Israel, which represented newly formed political-religious Orthodoxy, as well as several Zionist parties.

Occupation

In October 1938, following the Munich Agreement, Chust became part of Hungary. Chust and the surrounding area was officially annexed to Hungary in 1939. Chust was now known by its Hungarian name of Huszt.

Chust’s Jewish families without Hungarian citizenship were expelled to the Nazi-occupied territory in present-day Ukraine. Many of them were executed in Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1941.

Many Jewish men were taken into labour battalions and sent to the Russian front.

In March 1944, Germany invaded Hungary.

In April 1944, three ghettos were set up in the area: one in Chust and two in the villages of Iza and Sokyrnytsia. Several dozen Jews managed to escape from Chust and join the Ukrainian partisan units.

Deportation

On 14 May 1944, Jews in the Huszt Ghetto were deported to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.

Liberation

On 24 October 1944, the Soviet Red Army liberated Chust and in February, the first Jewish survivors began to return to the city. By mid-1946, the Jewish population of Chust had grown to 400.

Most of the survivors found that their homes were occupied by strangers.

Transcarpathia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945. Most of Chust’s Jews were either very religious and, or, Zionists. It was not possible to practice religious observance under Stalinism and Zionist politics could lead to arrest. As a result most survivors left Transcarpathia.

The Soviet government deported the city’s German and Hungarian populations.

Present-day

Today, about 165 Jews live in Khust.