Visiting Info

Opening Hours:

Sunday to Thursday: ‬09:00-17:00

Fridays and Holiday eves: ‬09:00-14:00

Yad Vashem is closed on Saturdays and all Jewish Holidays.

Entrance to the Holocaust History Museum is not permitted for children under the age of 10. Babies in strollers or carriers will not be permitted to enter.

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The Győr Jewish Community from the Outbreak of World War II until the Establishment of the Ghetto

In January 1941, the final census of the Hungarian population before the German occupation revealed that some 4,700 Jews lived in Győr – some 8% of the city's population. Most of them were merchants and industrialists. The city had two Jewish communities, Neolog and Orthodox, as well as diverse Jewish social organizations. Each community had its own grade school, and the Neologs also ran a vocational school.

Szuzsa Roth Glük and her son Peter, photographed by Jozsef Glük, Szuzsa's father-in-law.

Both the photographer and his subjects were murdered in Auschwitz.

Yad Vashem Photo Archives, 3_8306

Peter Glük, grandson of Jozsef Glük, who took this photograph. Győr, 1941

Peter and Jozsef were both murdered in Auschwitz.

Yad Vashem Photo Archives, 4_8306

Holocaust Survivor Recalls her Wedding in Győr, Hungary in 1940

Holocaust Survivor Describes Jewish Forced Labor Battalion in the Hungarian Army

Holocaust Survivor Describes Antisemitism in Hungary during the Early 1940s

Although Hungary was yet to be occupied by the Germans, the Jews suffered from Hungarian anti-Jewish laws. The Hungarians expelled the Jews from their places of business, stole their possessions and restricted the activities of the Jewish institutions. The Jewish community of Győr was not immune to the hardships of World War II. In 1942, most of the Jewish men of the city were recruited to forced labor in the Hungarian Army Labor Battalions. Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany, and its army fought alongside Germany. Most of the Jewish men from Győr recruited for the labor battalions were sent to the Eastern Front, in Ukraine, where many lost their lives.

On 19 March 1944, Nazi Germany occupied Hungary, including Győr. In April, the Nazi occupiers took a census, finding that most of the Jews of the city, some 4,000 of them, were associated with the Neolog community, and the rest – with the Orthodox community.

The Germans disassembled the Jewish defense efforts and ordered the Jews of Győr to establish an alternative Jewish council, which would represent a number of Jewish communities in the region. Wood merchant Janos Biringer, who was active in the Neolog community, was appointed president of the regional Jewish council. Dr. Gyula Unger, the last president of the Neolog community in Győr, was appointed president of the local Jewish council.

On 10 May 1944, less than two months after the German occupation began, the Mayor of Győr, Jeno Koller, ordered the Jews of the city to move to houses in two places designated as ghettos – in the heart of the city and on the nearby island of Győrsziget, which belonged to the city's municipality. The move was to occur between 15-17 May. The Hungarian Interior Minister Andor Jaross objected the establishment of a ghetto in the center of the city, so the Jews were all forced to move to the Győrsziget ghetto by 31 May 1944. The ghetto was so overcrowded that the Jews had to leave their possessions outside of their apartments in the ghetto.

Jews were deported to Győr from across the Győr-Moson region. By the beginning of June 1944, after the deportation was complete, thousands of people were living in the Győrsziget ghetto in such terrible overcrowding that there were 30 people on average in every room. The Bishop of Győr, Vilmos Apor, protested to the Interior Minister at the overcrowding in the ghetto as well as the fact that Jews who had converted to Christianity were also included amongst its internees, but his protests fell on deaf ears.