Dobos Károly & Ilona (Ágoston)

Dobos, Károly Dobos, Mrs. Károly (Ilona) Dr. Károly Dobos was a Protestant minister who was not afraid to speak out in defense of the Jews. One day in 1941, from his pulpit in a church on Budapest’s Városligeti fasor, in the presence of government officials, Dobos gave a sermon that focused on Miriam, the sister of Moses, who was punished with leprosy because she spoke ill of Moses’s wife, who was black. “How many of our Hungarian people will be punished because of the racial laws that have been legislated against the Jews now?” he cried out to his congregation, which included the Minister of Justice, one of the formulators of Hungary’s racial laws. Dobos was the director of an organization called “The Good Shepherd,” whose official mission was to help Jews who had converted to Christianity. Following the German occupation, it worked to save Jewish children from persecution, deportation and death. During the period of Arrow Cross rule, Dobos and his wife Ilona (née Ágoston) hid many Jews in their home. Among others, they saved Andor Fenyves, his parents and his sister-in-law, who were all hidden in their apartment. Another Jew they saved was Zoltán Rákosi, a Jewish teacher who was wounded in his arm when he escaped from the Arrow Cross men. He arrived at the minister’s doorstep, and the Dobos family hid him and took care of him until the liberation. Dobos and his wife Ilona were deeply humble people; their decision to help Jews grew solely out of their religious convictions. On January 26, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Károly and Ilona Dobos as Righteous Among the Nations.