Pinchas Freudiger, also Fülöp Freudiger, Philip von Freudiger (born 1900 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, died 1976 in Israel) was a Hungarian-Israeli manufacturer and Jewish community leader.
Life
Pinchas Freudiger was the son of Abraham Freudiger (1868-1939). His grandfather, textile manufacturer Mózes Freudiger (1833-1911), helped found the Orthodox Jewish community in Budapest and was elevated to noble status. Pinchas Freudiger studied and entered the family business.
He was a member of the Orthodox Jewish council in Budapest, succeeding his father as council chairman upon his father’s death in 1939.
Holocaust
Starting in 1938, the authoritarian Horthy regime of Hungary tightened
antisemitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
laws enacted to isolate Jews.
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, thousands of Polish Jews fled to Hungary. Freudiger and others created support organizations to aid them. Meanwhile, many Hungarian Jews continued to believe in their own safety, despite deepening antisemitism in the country.
During Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Jewish men were not recruited for the Hungarian army, but used in forced labor battalions often stationed behind or at the front.
In 1942, after intense pressure by Rabbi
Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl
Michael Dov Weissmandl ( yi, מיכאל בער ווייסמאנדל) (25 October 190329 November 1957) was an Orthodox rabbi of the Oberlander Jews of present-day western Slovakia. Along with Gisi Fleischmann he was the leader of the Bratislav ...
of the
Bratislava Working Group
The Working Group ( sk, Pracovná Skupina) was an underground Jewish organization in the Axis-aligned Slovak State during World War II. Led by Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, the Working Group rescued Jews from the Holocaust ...
, Hungary’s orthodox Jewish community — under Freudiger’s leadership — financially aided persecuted
Jews in Slovakia
The history of the Jews in Slovakia goes back to the 11th century, when the first Jews settled in the area.
Early history
In the 14th century, about 800 Jews lived in Bratislava, the majority of them engaged in commerce and money lending. ...
, paying a ransom to the Nazis to stop transports of Slovakian Jews to
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
. Those transports stopped for two years.
After the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, Freudiger and
Samu Stern
Samu Stern ( hu, Stern Samu; 5 January 1874 – 8 June 1946) was a businessman, banker, advisor to the royal court, and head of Hungary's Neolog Jewish Community from 1929 to 1945.
After the March 1944 German occupation, Stern was a member o ...
were appointed by the Germans as representatives of the orthodox and Neologue Jewish communities on the Jewish Council ( Judenrat, Zsidó tanács) in Budapest. The Jewish Council was among recipients of the Vrba–Wetzler report, also known as the Auschwitz Protocols, the Auschwitz Report. It detailed the atrocities in Auschwitz. Much like
Rezső Kasztner
Rezső Kasztner (1906 – 15 March 1957), also known as Rudolf Israel Kastner, was a Hungarian-Israeli journalist and lawyer who became known for having helped Jews escape from occupied Europe during the Holocaust. He was assassinated in 1957 af ...
(aka Rudolf), members of the Jewish Council failed to publicize the atrocities or warn Hungarian Jews of their impending fate.
In Israel
Freudiger and his family escaped to Palestine via Romania in August 1944 in coordination with high-ranking SS officers
Dieter Wisliceny
Dieter Wisliceny (13 January 1911 – 4 May 1948) was a member of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) and one of the deputies of Adolf Eichmann, helping to organise and coordinate the wide scale deportations of the Jews across Europe during the Holocaust.
...