Dr. Zaslavskaya Olga
Overcoming Boundaries: Transnational Context of East European Jewish Communities
in the Middle East and Beyond
The current scholarship deals with the rapid socio-economic rise of East European Jewish
immigrants who entered the American economy at the turn of the 20th century, while the
history of the earlier flows of the Jewish migration to other countries is not yet fully
researched. In the early1840s, the Hungarian part of the Duel Monarchy represented the
ethnic conglomerate, where only 37 percents were ethnic Hungarians, or Magyars. The Jews
constitute a special case: they were counted neither Magyars nor other groups. However, the
majority of the Jews supported the emergence of Hungarian patriotism, and despite of
numerous manifestations of anti-Semitism, they actively participated in 1848 uprising,
constituting 11 percent of the Kossuth’s army. But only in 1867-68 Jews were finally made
equal in the eyes of the law.
The paper focuses on the history of the Jewish family from the Hungarian part of the Duel
Monarhy as one of the possible strategies of the East European Jews in their quest for equal
rights. The family members have managed to overcome both national and geographic
boundaries and changed patterns of socio-economic inequality by becoming members of the
Middle East business elite and the Austria-Hungarian and French nobility in the early XX
century.
The transnational voyage of the Orosdy-Back family was not just an individual adventure of
Adolf Schnabel, who converted to Catholicism in 1846 and changed his name into Orosdy.
After defeat of the upraising, he fled to Turkey as Lajos Kosuth assistant. When Kosuth left
for the United States in 1851, Orosdy decided to stay in Turkey. He changed his religious
identity to Islam and participated in the Crimean War that allowed him to secure some capital.
The company has started as a family business by opening a small shop in Istanbul in the mid1850s. In four decades the company opened department stores in the several countries of the
Middle East, in Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Austria, Hungary, France, Switzerland),
and even in Japan. In 1888, the company was registered in France as Etablissements OrosdiBack (EOB). This helped to continue the business even during the WWI; in Egypt the
company was in operation until the1920s (also known as Omar Effendi).
It was a history of collective action of an extended family. Following the pattern of chain
migration, the heads of the two families founded a business that allowed the family members
to pursue not only business but also political carriesliter. There is certain disagreement
between scholars if to consider EOB a part of the French or Austria-Hungarian capital in the
Middle East. However, I argue that their connections with the Eastern Europe and, in
particular, with Hungary, were of crucial importance for transcending social and national
boundaries. The noble titles - baron d’Orosd and baron de Surany - have been given not only
because of their business activities in the Middle East but also in connection with their
involvement in political and cultural life of Hungary. For many years Orosdy sponsored
Italian-Hungarian literary society „Mattia Corvino”; suppported development of aviation and
Ancient Egypt collections in Vienna, Krakow and Budapest museums include substantial
donations from the archeological escavations sponsored by Orosdy.