WW2: Hungary and the Jews

[AlliJer288]

HUNGARY AND THE NAZIS-- Hungarian leadership became interested in an
alliance with Nazi Germany because Germany offered Hungary a market for its
agricultural goods; it offered a strong ally in the struggle for revision of
the treaty of Trianon, which had deprived Hungary of more than 2/3 of its
territory and a significant portion of its population after the First World
War; and it offered an element of political and ideological kinship. After the
Munich Agreement, a section of former territory was received from
Czechoslovakia-- convincing some Hungarian politicians that the Axis would play
a leading role in Europe for the next 25 years. Others, however, harbored the
traditional Hungarian fear of a strong Germany. Count Pal Teleki, who became
Hungary's prime minister in March 1939, sought to strike a balance between
Hungary's desire for territory and its desire for a degree of political
independence. In June 1940, Hitler arranged the Second Vienna Award, which
allowed the Hungarians to take possession of Northern Transylvania and its 2.5
million inhabitants, a major goal of Hungarian revanchists. In return Germany
made it clear that Hungary was to integrate more fully into the new German
order. On 10 October 1940 an accord was reached, through which Hungary joined
the Tripartite Pact. In April 1941, Hitler invaded Yugoslavia, an ally of
Hungary. He offered Horthy territorial rewards if he would join the fray, the
Hungarians accepted, and Teleki committed suicide. On June 26, 1941, Hungary
also committed troops to the invasion of the Soviet Union and in December 1941,
declared war on the United States.
Elements of the Hungarian ruling elite began to feel that the prime
minister Laszlo Bardossy was being too subservient to Germany, and in March
1942 a new prime minister, Miklos Kallay, was appointed by Horthy. With the
Axis defeat at Stalingrad and with the debacle at Voronezh, in Russia, on 13
January 1943, when the Red Army broke through the Hungarian lines and caused
the loss of 150,000 of the 200,000 Hungarian soldiers, Kallay began to work
towards extricating Hungary from it alliance with Nazi Germany. No more troops
were sent to the Russian front in 1943, at the end of the year Horthy
personally asked that those there be withdrawn, and preparations were made to
allow more political freedom at home. Peace feelers were put out to the West.
With the Red Army approaching the Carpathian Mountains, Hitler occupied Hungary
on March 19, 1944. A government considered reliable by the Nazis was set up
under Dome Sztojay. Sztojay's government began carrying out the directives of
the Nazis, and mobilized 300,000 soldiers to face the Red Army. Measures were
taken against the Jews, and transports began to leave Hungary in mid-May, with
the active cooperation of the Hungarian Gendarmerie. In early July, owing to
western pressure, Horthy stopped the deportations, but only after nearly
440,000 Jews had been deported.

HUNGARY AND THE JEWS-- By 1900, there were Jews in all walks of Hungarian
life: assimilation of Jewish financial aristocracy into society life. Jewish
population: 910,000 in 1910-- Hungary had a Jewish presence from 2nd half of
11th century; significant anti-Semitism began after WWI. Early 20th century--
200,000 Jews in Budapest-before WWI, Jews were well-represented among
industrial managers, bankers, finance, doctors, merchants, lawyers, media-
Hapsburg monarchs named nearly 400 Jewish families to the nobility. Pre-WWII-
125 synagogues in Hungary. 1919: Bela Kuhn, a Jew, led Communist coup;
overthrown by Adm. Horthy, who later enacted anti-Jewish legislation; Horthy
collaborates in Nazi invasion, rounds up Jews.
Between the two world wars, Hungarian antisemitism escalated. An early
quota for the number of Jews allowed to study in universities, gave way to the
First Anti-Jewish Law (May 1938) and the Second Anti-Jewish Law (May 1939),
which set increasingly strict quotas for Jewish participation in the economy.
In 1941 laws similar to the Nuremberg Laws were introduced. Some 42,000 men
perished in the labor service before the German occupation in March 1944; over
14,000 Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen at Kamenets Podolski, in the
summer of 1941; and Hungarian forces killed over 1,000 Jews in the
Hungarian-occupied areas of Yugoslavia, early in 1942. By mid-1941, the
Hungarian had government passed anti-Jewish racial laws and removed Jews from
economic life. The Hungarian GENDARMERIE: Employed to keep law and order in the
Hungarian countryside-- During World War II, they carried out anti-Jewish
policies-- known for their brutality toward Jews.
GERMANY OCCUPIES HUNGARY-- Nevertheless the lot of most Hungarian Jews
was relatively good until the German occupation. Many Jewish leaders believed
that Hungary would always retain its sovereignty and protect its Jews. These
illusions were shattered by the Nazi occupation in 1944. The regime, set up
under Dome Sztojay, enforced anti-Jewish measures which culminated in the
concentration of the provincial Jews in mid-April and start of deportations in
mid-May. Adolf Eichmann led a Sonderkommando which worked with the Hungarians
to implement the deportations-- the police were put at Eichmann's disposal--
the Gendarmerie.
Miklos Horthy, bowing to pressure from the west, had announced that
deportations would be halted-- the provinces now contained no Jews-- Only about
200,000 in Budapest and some labor service men remained. 1944--Germany had
already lost the war--instead of husbanding every resource and man for defense
of Third Reich, Hitler instead redoubled the Final Solution-- zeroes in on last
intact Jewish community in occupied Europe. Hungary was Axis ally but had
largely managed to protect its 825,000 Jews. But, as Soviet forces advance,
Eichmann and his associates, upon March 19, 1944 German march into Budapest,
spend next three months deporting 444,000 Jews to Auschwitz, where almost all
died. 565,000 Hungarian Jews did not survive the Holocaust. Jewish area of
Pest was made a ghetto in 1944; dead buried in common graves.
Toward the end of the War they were losing, the Germans thus actually
diverted resources from the battlefront to kill Jews, notably the Jews of
Hungary in 1944. 3/19/44-- Germans invade Hungary-- local Hungarians overnight
eagerly turned into Nazi enforcers-- Hungarian Jews are made to wear yellow
stars, endure increasing restrictions. German soldiers and Hungarian locals--
former friends and neighbors-- told Jews to quickly grab 25 kilos of belongings
and vacate their homes-- very rapid concentration of Jews into ghetto areas,
from where they (438,000 in a matter of weeks) were quickly shipped away via
cattle cars to Poland-- many to Auschwitz, where both genders received
horrific, rude treatment. The Germans could have tried to earn favor with the
advancing Allies, but were instead bent this frenzy of exterminating Jews.
In the rural areas, the Jews were normally first ordered into the local
synagogues or community centers, and a few days later concentrated in ghettos
in the county seats. In some cities, the ghettos were established in the Jewish
sections; in others in brickyards or idle factories; and in still others, the
Jews were compelled to gather under the open sky. The ghettos were hermetically
sealed-- they lasted only for from two to six weeks, but the conditions in them
were terrible, and the police and gendarms, searching for hidden wealth,
treated the Jews barbarously.
Most of the nearly 440,000 Jews, who were deported between May 15 and
July 9, 1944, ended up in Auschwitz. [10/99-- plaque is dedicated to memory of
Hungarian royal police who died during the two world wars--but it was mainly
this police force that efficiently carried out orders to round up all Jews in
the countryside after the German occupation began 3/44. In seven weeks, the
police herded 437,000 Jews into ghettoes and then deported them to death camps.
There remains no monument to murdered Jews.]
Summer 1944--Regent Horthy proposes that several categories of Jews in
Hungary be allowed to emigrate, primarily to Palestine. The public offer was
made a week after Horthy's stoppage of the deportations, partly because of
Allied pressure. The Germans refused to allow substantial emigration from
Hungary. In August Horthy replaced Sztojay with General Geza Lakatos. Lakatos'
government continued the earlier policy of finding a way for Hungary to pull
out of the war. A secret Hungarian armistice delegation arrived in Moscow on 1
October, and a preliminary agreement was reached, which said that Hungary would
give up territories gained through its alliance with Germany and would turn
against the Nazis. On 15 October 1944, Horthy decided to carry out his planned
change of course. In response, the Germans replaced Horthy with the Arrow Cross
Party leader Ferenc Szalasi.
The Arrow Cross began a reign of terror. Eichmann, with Hungarian
collaborators, worked out his Judenrein program; brutal Hungarian police packed
450,000 Jews into trains for Mauthausen, Auschwitz, Buchenwald. The Szalasi
Arrow Cross regime was brutal. Szalasi promised to send 1,500,000 soldiers to
the Russian front and to do this, he planned to draft all males and females
between the ages of 12 and 70 into the army or labor brigades-- the deportation
of Jews began again. To stop desertions, Szalasi decreed summary trials and
executions. Signs of active opposition also increased by November, when the
Soviets had taken two-thirds of the country. On October 23, 1944--the Germans
declared they would allow Jews to leave Hungary, and on November 15, they set
the number of emigrants at 8,000. Once again, none of these Jews were allowed
to leave. Until October 15, 1944, when the Arrow Cross came to power, the
remaining Jews of Budapest were relatively safe. Under the new regime, they
were subjected to violence, which culminated in deportations by foot to
Austria, the establishment of a ghetto, and murder in the city itself. As the
Allies drew near, there was a death march from Auschwitz in the dead of
winter-- Germans shot stragglers on the spot-- 10-day march to Dachau. During
the Soviet siege of the city, in December, when some 70,000 Jews resided in the
ghetto, thousands were also killed by the banks of the Danube by Arrow
Crossmen. Thousands more died of starvation, disease and the cold before Pest
was liberated on January 17-18, 1945. All told Hungarian Jewry lost at least
564,500 people.
Thus, after German occupation in 1944 over 440,000 Jews were ghettoized,
deported to death camps, and thousands more were shot by the Hungarian Nazis.
Rescue activists, especially Raoul Wallenberg, saved tens of thousands of
Hungarian Jews. The main Budapest synagogue was used as a jail, pending
deportation, during Nazi occupation- courtyard plaques today mark mass graves
of thousands of victims of wartime ghetto-also a memorial to thousands of
Jewish soldiers who died in WWI. The Holocaust in Hungary is characterized by
the swiftness in which it was carried out and the late date of it occurrence.
By the time the deportations had begun, a great deal of information was
available in the free world about the Holocaust.
HEROES SAVE SOME JEWS; WAR'S AFTERMATH-- The plight of the Hungarian Jews
during this period was eased by the heroism of many-- some food and documents
smuggling. Chief among the rescuers were Raoul Wallenberg of the Swedish
legation and Charles Lutz of the Swiss legation. Many Jews, especially
children, owed their lives to the activities of those associated with various
Christian orders and the International Red Cross, headed by Friedrich Born.
Wallenberg in 1944 saved thousands of Budapest Jews; Swiss consul Lutz helped
save 30,000. Hungarian Nazis were combing Budapest-- Wallenberg issued visas,
bullied Nazis. Wallenberg and Lutz saved 50,000 of the 120,000 Hungarian Jews
who survived the war.
Jews embraced the Communist invaders in February 1945--leading to huge
popular resentment. When Communism fell, anti-Semitic groups grew; Communists
persecuted Jews, expropriated their property, relocated Jews to the
countryside. Stalinist camp of Recsk worked countless inmates to death,
including many Jews; camp closed 1953, memorial park dedicated 1996; camp built
shortly after Communist 1949 takeover: for those disliked by the regime.
November 1996: Parliament overwhelmingly approves government plan to partly
compensate Hungarian Jews for property confiscated during WWII: compensate
Holocaust survivors, living relatives, Jewish community.