The former executive director of the Association of Hungarian Jewish Religious Communities and the Budapest Jewish Community passed away this morning - Mazsihisz published the sad news.
“His parents, mother and father, were killed at the age of 41, he was not even ten years old when he became an orphan of the world. Everything that helps to be at home in the world was taken away from him, love, security, attachment. In addition to the murdered children, this war destroyed and killed children's souls, many of the non-Jewish Hungarians also grew up fatherless, the Jewish children, like him, were often completely orphaned...
...He reappeared in Jewish public life in the 1980s, and his activities spanning over 50 years and a quarter of a century will undoubtedly become an independent and long chapter in the history of Hungarian Jewish institutions. If we want to understand who we were and still are to some extent even today, who we can and should be, we must definitely understand him, in person and as the namesake of his era, him as the leader of Jewish institutionalism, the explanation of his strength, power and lasting popularity within the organization.
Even those who were his critics within the organization did not deny his skill, the special charismatic charm of his personality and the fact that he had personal kindness, a capacity for compassion, a personal willingness to help, that he had some kind of emotional solidarity with the vulnerable. His co-workers love to tell stories about this and his crude, raucous humor that replaces mistrust of the world with assertiveness.
Gusztáv Zoltai's life and activities are our heritage that we have to face. In his person, he is now a citizen of the World to Come, may his soul be woven into the bonds of life.
Gusztáv Zoltai, an orphan of the Holocaust, was our companion and co-destiny as a Hungarian Jew, whose memory we will preserve with grace, just like his murdered mother and father. We will take a responsible, fair and critical look at the era of Gusztáv Zoltai in the history of Hungarian Jewry, so that we can learn from it about ourselves and for the benefit of others.
He was a member of a generation that suffered a lot, may his soul find comfort in the presence of the Eternal. May he be with his parents again, now forever in the World to Come.
Gusztáv Zoltai's final farewell will take place on Monday, September 20, 2021, at 12:00 p.m. at the Kozma Street Jewish Cemetery. Rabbi Baruch Oberlander delivers the farewell speech at the funeral service
