many educated people. Kalocsa became a centre in Hungary again but it did not recover the stature it had before the Ottoman invasion and occupation.
The industrial development of the 19th and 20th century did not come to Kalocsa. The railway was built too late, in 1882. Furthermore in 1886 the town lost its rank of town, which was given back in 1921. Two great archbishops of the second part of the 19th century (József Kunszt 1851–1866 and Lajos Haynald 1867–1891) founded schools, so Kalocsa kept its importance.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the peasants were working for the archbishop or as navies. During the counter-revolution of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, 20 people were hanged in the main street of the town.
During World War II, the Germans required the deportation of all the Jewish people in the summer of 1944. Most of them were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps. Some survivors returned after the end of the war, but the Jewish community never thrived again. Most Jews left for good. Communist authorities converted the synagogue into a public library. Changes in government in the late 20th century made people more willing to acknowledge this tragic history. In June 2009 the city council organized two days of events to commemorate the Jews of Kalocsa and their deportation.
In the 1950s the communist regime deprived the town of being subsidized by the state because of the archbishopric. The industrial development of the town started at the end of the 1960s. It resulted in changes in the lives of its residents and people in surrounding villages. Today Kalocsa is considered a picturesque small town, most of whose residents work there or on nearby lands
