Gemzse is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the

Northern Great Plain The Northern Great Plain ( hu, Észak-Alföld) is a statistical (NUTS 2) region of Hungary. It is part of the Great Plain and North (NUTS 1) region. The Northern Great Plain includes the counties of Hajdú-Bihar, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok, and Sza ...

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and t ...

of eastern

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croa ...

. It is mentioned in archival sources as far back as 1347. For many centuries, until the liberation of the serfs, the land was mainly owned by the Karolyi counts. Gemzse is in an agricultural region, with a distinctive sandy yellow soil. This is ideal for crops such as potato and tobacco, which predominate. The town is noted for the free-standing belfry of the Protestant church. It dates from 1789, and was constructed with wooden spikes without any metal nails. The advantage of the free-standing belfry, found in many villages in the area, is that the bell can easily be rung from ground level. In the late 1800s, about 10% of Gemzse's population consisted of Jewish farmers, which is unusual for Europe, where Jews were mainly in trade. During the Holocaust, the Nazis murdered most of Hungary's Jews, including the village's Jews,Documentation of the village's Jews murdered in the Holocaust
/ref> today no Jews remain, but the Jewish cemetery has been preserved, and is located across the road from the Christian cemetery. Gemzse1

Geography

It covers an

area Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while ''surface area'' refers to the area of an open su ...

of and has a

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using ...

of 930 people (2015).

References

External links

The jewish community in Gemzse
On

JewishGen JewishGen is a non-profit organization founded in 1987 as an international electronic resource for Jewish genealogy. In 2003, JewishGen became an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York Ci ...

website. Gemzse Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust {{Szabolcs-geo-stub