Keken András

Keken, András András Keken was a Lutheran minister, who served as the spiritual leader of a church in Budapest’s Deák Square. In the summer of 1944, the Hungarian government began to register the names of converted Jews. Because it was believed that the treatment of converts would be different than that of the rest of Hungary’s Jews – most of whom had already been deported to Auschwitz by this time – a wave of conversions washed over Budapest’s Jewish community. Thousands of men and women stood in line to be converted, hoping that this would save them from deportation. Keken was one of the priests actively involved in trying to save Jews, by granting swift religious conversion, and by distributing certificates of baptism even to those Jews he had not actually baptized. Keken’s activities were frowned upon by the heads of the Hungarian churches. They announced that they were against religious conversions that were not taken as an act of pure faith, and demanded that all potential converts comply with the normal requirements for conversion, which included months of study, followed by an examination. Some Jews who sought conversions were also faced with exaggerated monetary demands. Keken was targeted by the Arrow Cross party because of his activities. Although the party was not yet in power in early fall of 1944, Arrow Cross members informed on him, and denounced him in the newspapers, saying that he baptized too many Jews. They wrote that Keken’s conversions did not comply with normal religious standards, and took place without the Jews actually being present. Keken defended himself in an answering article, published in September 1944. In this article he claimed, falsely, that he had actually refused to baptize many Jews, and was a faithful adherent to church standards. In addition to granting conversions to Jews and distributing baptism certificates, Keken hid many Jews during the Arrow Cross period. Some of the Jews were hidden in his church, some in hisapartment and others in residences associated with the “Good Shepherd” charitable organization under the directorship of Gábor Sztehlo*. After the war, Keken was attacked in the media on the basis of the article he had published in 1944 in order to protect himself from the attacks of the Arrow Cross. At that time, Keken’s critics took his words at face value, and accused Keken of refusing to baptize Jews. In response to this public attack, 13 Jews who had been rescued by Keken’s activities testified to the priest’s selfless heroism. They cleared Keken’s name by describing how he saved their lives, at the risk of his own, without asking for, or receiving, any compensation. On June 9, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized András Keken as Righteous Among the Nations.