Soltvadkert

Soltvadkert (German: Wadkert; Croatian: Vakier;[3] Yiddish: וואדקערט), formerly known as Vadkert, is a town in Bács-Kiskun County in Hungary with approximately 8,000 inhabitants.

The religious make-up of the town was as follows:[5] Soltvadkert was home to a thriving Orthodox Jewish community, numbering approximately 400 people before World War II.

When the yeshiva was closed in 1944, Rav Yehuda spent 6 months in the local work camps before being deported to Bergen-Belsen.

A year later, his sister, Miriam (1918-2019), who was also born in Soltvadkert, married the Rebbe, Rav Yosef Grünwald.

In 1952, Rav Yehuda was appointed as a Maggid Shiur in the newly established Pupa Yeshiva, first located in Queens, then in Ossining, Westchester County.

[14] In June 1944, the ghetto was liquidated, and Jews were forced to march 26 kilometers to a copper sulfide factory near Kecskemét, from where they were deported to Auschwitz.

Upon arrival, one Soltvadkert resident, Isabella Bernath, was separated from her mother and sister by the infamous Josef Mengele.

[15] After the war, Soltvadkert became home to the last active yeshiva in Hungary under Rabbi Simon Yechezkel Jakobovics's (1902–1983) leadership with about 50 students.

Among the students was Rav Yitzchak Schlesinger (died 2001), who became an advocate for the preservation of Jewish cemeteries in Hungary with a blessing from the Berach Moshe, the Satmarer Rebbe.

[17] Today, the Jewish cemetery remains the only sign that Jews ever lived in Soltvadkert, which is also the resting place of rabbis Yeshaya and Moshe Mordechai Pollak.

[18] The village of Selymes located south of the town towards Kiskunhalas is administratively part of Soltvadkert.

Freedom of religion was, however, forbidden, and the Roman Catholic archbishop and his servants of Kalocsa have many times destroyed the church.

After years of religious persecution, they were finally allowed to build a church, which was finished at noon on September 26, 1794.

The Pentecostal movement, which started in 1900 in the United States, reached Soltvadkert after World War I.

Soltvadkert also offers a variety of community programs every month and hosts a number of concerts and festivals in the summer.