Kisvárda

Kisvárda (; ) is a town in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. , the town has around 17,000 inhabitants.

History

Kisvárda was known in the Middle Ages as Warda or Warada. The prefix, kis meaning "little" in Hungarian, was later added to differentiate the town from Nagyvárad (now Oradea in Transylvania, Romania) with nagy meaning "great" in Hungarian.

Prior to World War II, Kisvárda had a large Jewish community that represented about 30 percent of the town's population. They were confined to a ghetto in 1944, and then deported to Auschwitz. The majority perished there. A small community was re-established after the war, but almost no Jews are left in Kisvárda today. The former synagogue, which remains one of the most imposing structures in Kisvárda, is now a local history museum known as the Retkozi Muzeum.

Economy

Historically, Kisvárda has been a market town for the surrounding agricultural district, and is also has some light industry such as distilling. It is on the main railway line from the Hungarian capital of Budapest to Ukraine. Kisvárda also attracts tourists to its thermal springs,...
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