Ferenc Chorin Jr

Ferenc Chorin (March 3, 1879 – November 5, 1964), was a Jewish Hungarian-American lawyer and industrialist. He was expropriated and forced to flee by the Nazis.

Life and work

Ferenc Chorin (also known in as Francis Chorin) was born on 3 March 1879 in Budapest to a wealthy Jewish-Hungarian family. His father was Ferenc Chorin Sr. His great-grandfather Áron Chorin was the famous Chief Rabbi of Arad.

Chorin studied in Budapest and Berlin, graduating as a doctor of law in 1901 and as a lawyer in 1904. In 1918, he suspended his career as a lawyer and was appointed CEO of the Salgótarján Coal Mining Company, and after his father's death in 1925, he became president of the company.^[1]

Chorin was baptised in 1919. In 1921 he married Daisy Weiss, daughter of the industrialist Manfred Weiss. This marriage created an unprecedented concentration of industrial and banking capital.^[2] In 1925, they had a daughter, Daisy Chorin.^[3]

In 1925 he was elected vice-president of the National Federation of Industrialists, and from 1928 to 1942 he was president.^[4] In 1925, he founded the Employers' Centre, of which he was the first president. In 1927 he became a member of the House of Lords. His advice was often sought in the highest government circles. He used all his influence in favour of an Anglo-Saxon orientation and against the threat of Nazism. He was in close contact with István Bethlen, Jenő Horthy, the governor's brother, as well as with prominent Catholic ecclesiastical figures.

Nazi era

Chorin fought against the rise of the Nazis. He provided financial support to the Hungarian National newspaper Magyar Nemzet, founded in 1938, and through the GYOSZ he provided financial support to the daily newspaper Világ and, following his father's example, to Nyugat.^[5]

Adolf Eichmann studied the Weiss/Chorin industrial empire in Hungary intending to seize it for the Nazi war machine.^[6]

With the German invasion in March 1944, Chorin was forced to hand over his assets to the Germans, in exchange for permission to leave Hungary.^[2] As soon as the war ended, he wanted to return to Hungary, but the gradual Communist takeover prevented this. His assets in Hungary were confiscated. The Weiss Manfréd Works were taken over by the communists after the Nazis, and the nationalised factory complex was named after Mátyás Rákosi, the party's and the country's number one leader.

Postwar

After the Second World War, Chorin settled in New York in the United States, where he founded several businesses and served as co-chairman of the Hungarian National Committee. His home was a centre of emigration. He died in New York on November 5, 1964.^[4] In accordance with his will, his ashes were brought home to Hungary and buried in the family cemetery in Kerepesi.

Legacy

In 1998, a memorial plaque was erected to Ferenc Chorin Sr. and Ferenc Chorin Jr. on the wall of the Salgótarján Mining Museum (1 Zemlinszki Rezső Street). It reads. In memory of the chairmen of the board of directors of Salgótarján Kőszénbánya Rt. who played a significant role in the economic life of the company."

A short film on the life and work of Ferenc Chorin was also made in the Hungarian Historical Hall of Faces series (2001)

Restitution of looted art

In 2022 the Boston Museum of Fine Arts restituted View of Beverwijk by Ruysdael to the heirs of the Chorin family. The MFA had acquired it through the British art dealer Edward Speelman in 1982. It had been listed in a 1998 publication on Hungarian war losses with an incorrect image and description.^[7]^[8]^[9]

Notes

^ "YIVO | Chorin, Ferenc". yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 2024-03-08.
^ ^a ^b Obituaries, Telegraph (2022-11-22). "Daisy Chorin von Strasser, child of Hungarian industrialists who narrowly escaped deportation to the Nazi death camps – obituary". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2024-03-08.
^ Obituaries, Telegraph (2022-11-22). "Daisy Chorin von Strasser, child of Hungarian industrialists who narrowly escaped deportation to the Nazi death camps – obituary". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2024-03-09.
^ ^a ^b "FRANCIS CHORIN, 85, INVESTMENT BROKER". The New York Times. 1964-11-06. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-03-09.
^ "Flódni + - Dynasties". magyarzsido.hu. Retrieved 2024-03-09. Chorin invested all his material and political resources against the Nazi menace from the middle of the 1930s. With Móric Kornfeld he established the paper Magyar Nemzet, which became the most important medium of the anti-Nazi, Western affiliated readership. Together with Bethlen he was a member of a closed and influential group that continuously put pressure on Horthy and the successive Hungarian governments to stay as far away from Hitler's Germany as possible
^ Obituaries, Telegraph (2022-11-22). "Daisy Chorin von Strasser, child of Hungarian industrialists who narrowly escaped deportation to the Nazi death camps – obituary". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2024-03-09. Adolf Eichmann made an assiduous study of the value to the Reich of the Weiss/Chorin industrial empire in Hungary. To the flagging war effort, it was invaluable. Much of the metal fabrication side of their business had been converted to the production of armaments. Eichmann descended without warning on Budapest, and within two months of his arrival had transported nearly half a million Hungarian Jews to the death camps. The situation for the Chorins and their relatives became desperate. Ferenc Chorin was arrested and sent to a detention camp in Austria, where he was savagely beaten.
^ "Museum of Fine Arts Returns Ruysdael Work To Heirs of Jewish Owner". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2024-03-08. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has restituted a painting by Ruysdael to the heirs of its original owner. The painting in question is the View of Beverwijk (1646) by artist Salomon van Ruysdael. According to an investigation, the painting originally belonged to Ferenc Chorin, a wealthy Jewish collector in Hungary. Chorin, a wealthy industrialist and banker, was also an avid art collector and had works of artists like Alfred Sisley and François Millet.
^ "Ownership Resolutions". Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Retrieved 2024-03-08. Despite the family's efforts to locate the contents of the bank vault in the postwar years, they never recovered the Ruysdael. The painting was included in a 1998 publication on Hungarian war losses, but because it was published with an incorrect image and description, the MFA was not aware that the View of Beverwijk had belonged to Chorin or was considered missing.
^ "MFA returns painting stolen from Jewish collector during WWII". www.wbur.org. 2022-01-25. Retrieved 2024-03-09.

Sources

Magyar életrajzi lexikon:Chorin Ferenc
Chorin Ferenc., holokausztmagyarorszagon.hu
Karsai László: Horthy Miklós (1868–1957) Beszélő, 2007. március, 12. évfolyam, 3. szám
Dr. Czettler Antal: Kortársi szemmel egy vitáról, Magyar Nemzet, 2007. február 2.
A szürke eminenciás: ifj. Chorin Ferenc, magyarzsido.hu

More information

Az Andrássy úttól a Park Avenue-ig. Fejezetek Chorin Ferenc életéből, 1879–1964; sajtó alá rend., szerk., jegyz. Bán D. András, bev. Strasserné Chorin Daisy, előszó Habsburg Ottó; Osiris, Bp., 1999

[1] "YIVO | Chorin, Ferenc". yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 2024-03-08.

[:0-2] Obituaries, Telegraph (2022-11-22). "Daisy Chorin von Strasser, child of Hungarian industrialists who narrowly escaped deportation to the Nazi death camps – obituary". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2024-03-08.

[3] Obituaries, Telegraph (2022-11-22). "Daisy Chorin von Strasser, child of Hungarian industrialists who narrowly escaped deportation to the Nazi death camps – obituary". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2024-03-09.

[:1-4] "FRANCIS CHORIN, 85, INVESTMENT BROKER". The New York Times. 1964-11-06. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-03-09.

[5] "Flódni + - Dynasties". magyarzsido.hu. Retrieved 2024-03-09. Chorin invested all his material and political resources against the Nazi menace from the middle of the 1930s. With Móric Kornfeld he established the paper Magyar Nemzet, which became the most important medium of the anti-Nazi, Western affiliated readership. Together with Bethlen he was a member of a closed and influential group that continuously put pressure on Horthy and the successive Hungarian governments to stay as far away from Hitler's Germany as possible

[6] Obituaries, Telegraph (2022-11-22). "Daisy Chorin von Strasser, child of Hungarian industrialists who narrowly escaped deportation to the Nazi death camps – obituary". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2024-03-09. Adolf Eichmann made an assiduous study of the value to the Reich of the Weiss/Chorin industrial empire in Hungary. To the flagging war effort, it was invaluable. Much of the metal fabrication side of their business had been converted to the production of armaments. Eichmann descended without warning on Budapest, and within two months of his arrival had transported nearly half a million Hungarian Jews to the death camps. The situation for the Chorins and their relatives became desperate. Ferenc Chorin was arrested and sent to a detention camp in Austria, where he was savagely beaten.

[7] "Museum of Fine Arts Returns Ruysdael Work To Heirs of Jewish Owner". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2024-03-08. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has restituted a painting by Ruysdael to the heirs of its original owner. The painting in question is the View of Beverwijk (1646) by artist Salomon van Ruysdael. According to an investigation, the painting originally belonged to Ferenc Chorin, a wealthy Jewish collector in Hungary. Chorin, a wealthy industrialist and banker, was also an avid art collector and had works of artists like Alfred Sisley and François Millet.

[8] "Ownership Resolutions". Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Retrieved 2024-03-08. Despite the family's efforts to locate the contents of the bank vault in the postwar years, they never recovered the Ruysdael. The painting was included in a 1998 publication on Hungarian war losses, but because it was published with an incorrect image and description, the MFA was not aware that the View of Beverwijk had belonged to Chorin or was considered missing.

[9] "MFA returns painting stolen from Jewish collector during WWII". www.wbur.org. 2022-01-25. Retrieved 2024-03-09.

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