Nationality Hungarian | Name Margit Slachta | |
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Known for Political action, Social work Died January 6, 1974, New York, United States | ||
Margit Slachta (or Schlachta, September 18, 1884 – January 6, 1974) was a Hungarian social activist. In 1920 she was the first woman to be elected to the Hungarian diet, and in 1923 she founded the Sisters of Social Service, a Roman Catholic religious institute of women.
Biography
Born in Kassa, Hungary in 1884. At a young age Margit and her parents left to live in the United States for a brief period. upon their return to Hungary, Margit trained at a Catholic school in Budapest as a French and German language teacher.
A champion of human rights, she formed the Union of Catholic Women, an organization to promote the female franchise in Hungary, and in 1920 became the first woman to be elected to the Hungarian diet. In 1908 Slachta joined a religious community, the Society of the Social Mission. In 1923 she founded the Sisters of Social Service. The Social Sisters were well known throughout Hungary for nursing, midwifery, and orphanage services. The community opened professional schools for social work in Budapest and Cluj. Some students joined ther religious community, others joined an affiliated lay association.
The first anti-Jewish laws were passed in Hungary in 1938, and from that time on, Slachta published articles opposing anti-Jewish measures in her newspaper, Voice of the Spirit. In 1943 the government suppressed her newspaper, but Slachta continued to publish it "underground".
Hungary joined the Axis Powers in 1940. In the autumn of 1940, Jewish families of Csikszereda, were deported eventually arriving in Korosmezo in Carpathia-Ruthenia. Slachta responded immediately to reports in 1940 of early displacement of Jews. She wrote to the parish priest at Korosmezo requesting him to inquire into their welfare. The removal process stopped on the evening of 9 December when a telegram from the Ministry of Defense ordered the release of the detainees. It was the same day as the dateline on her letter to the parish priest. The report reveals that the captain in charge had received a telegram at 7:00 p.m.that ordered him to immediately release the Jews in his custody and to send them back to Csikszereda.
She coupled zeal for social justice religious convictions in rescue and relief efforts. In the years immediately following the World War II, she raised awareness of the considerable contribution of Protestant churches in rescue efforts.
Slachta sheltered the persecuted, protested forced labour and anti-semitic laws and went to Rome in 1943 to encourage papal action against the Jewish persecutions.
Slachta told her sisters that the precepts of their faith demanded that they protect the Jews, even if it led to their own deaths. When in 1941, 20,000 were deported, Slachta protested to the wife of Admiral Horthy. The Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944, and commenced widescale deportations of Jews. Slachta's sisters arranged baptisms in the hope it would spare people from deportation, sent food and supplies to the Jewish ghettos, and sheltered people in their convents. One of Slachta's sisters, Sara Salkahazi was executed by the Arrow Cross, and Slachta herself was beaten and only narrowly avoided execution. The sisters rescued probably more than 2000 Hungarian Jews. In 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Margit Slachta as Righteous Among the Nations.
She returned to Parliament following the 1945 elections, in which she was elected on the Civic Democratic Party list. However, she resigned from the party in January 1946 to sit as an independent. Subsequently the Christian Women's League ran as a standalone party in the 1947 elections, winning four seats. Prior to the 1949 elections, several parties were forced to join the Communist-led Hungarian Independent People's Front, with the Front running a single list chosen by the Hungarian Working People's Party. Slachta applied to run in the elections, but was turned down.