The first known Jewish community of Gyönk was established in 1730 at a time when the region was controlled by the Austrian monarchy. Five years later only two Jewish families were recorded in the village and another century passed before the first synagogue was built in 1836. The Jewish population increased to about 240 residents by 1880 and the community grew to include a Jewish school, a home for the rabbi and a mikveh (ritual bath).

Survivor Cornelia Serebrenik was born in Gyönk in 1915. During World War I (1914-1918) her father fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1918, Hungary became an independent country. The new state experienced a brief Communist upheaval and in the aftermath many Jews were falsely accused as being communists. Serebrenik recalled her father returning home “very beaten up.”

In the 1920s the approximately 115 Jewish residents of Gyönk made up less than four percent of the total population. Serebrenik remembered that “my father had a little farm” and served as president of the local Jewish community. Every year Serebrenik’s parents “supported three poor families” with free “milk, flour, corn and wheat.”

Gyönk had historically been home to both Hungarian and German populations, and Serebrenik grew up speaking the two languages. She also remembered having a number of non-Jewish friends, saying, “The priest’s daughter was my best friend.”

The years before the start of World War II in 1939 were marked by growing nationalist tensions. The fascist Arrow Cross party was founded in Hungary in 1935, and the national government began to align itself with Nazi Germany in the hopes of regaining some of the territory lost during World War I. In November 1940 Hungary formally joined the Axis alliance. Still, the Jews of the country remained relatively protected until Nazi forces occupied the country in April 1944.

Soon the farm owned by Serebrenik’s father was confiscated and Jewish-owned homes and shops that looted and destroyed. On June 4, 1944 any Jews living in Gyönk and the surrounding areas were rounded up and deported to the killing center of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Serebrenik survived, but her mother and two young sons were killed at the camp.

A small Orthodox Jewish community returned to Gyönk after the war but was dissolved in 1949. The 200-year-old community had been destroyed.