they would cease to be Jews. The Hungarians came to the same conclusion with ‘their’ Jews – full citizenship would lead ultimately to conversion. To a limited extent this did happen over the following century, just as many ethnically Czechs, Croats, Slovenes and so on Germanized or Magyarized themselves. This bad faith at the heart of the reforms – that Jews were to be welcomed into some imagined mainstream only in the hope that they could eventually disappear – was to have a long and ultimately terrible history. Jews themselves, of course, knew what was going on and a great era of debate
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