The Nazis' Last Victims: The Holocaust in Hungary 0814330959, 9780814330951

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THE

NAZIS' LAST VICTIMS THE HOLOCAUST IN

HUNGARY

Edited by Randolph L. Braham with Scott Miller

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Wayne State University Press Detroit

Copyright © 1998 Wayne State University Press Detroit, Michigan 48201. Paperback edition published 2002. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America. ISBN 978-0-8143-3095-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8143-3095-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) Library of Congress The Nazis' last victims : the Holocaust in Hungary / edited by Cataloging-in-Publication Data Randolph L. Braham with Scott Miller. p.

cm.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8143-2737-0 (alk. paper) 1. Jews—Persecutions—Hungary. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Hungary. 3. Hungary—Ethnic relations. I. Braham, Randolph L. II. Miller, Scott, 1958- . III. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. DS135.H9N39 1998 940.53' 1809439—dc21 97-47721 ISBN 0-8143-3095-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Published In association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW Washington, DC 20024-2150 The assertions, arguments, and conclusions are those of the individual contributors. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council or of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The map titled "Budapest 1944" is reprinted from With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Memories of the War Years in Hungary (fourth printing), by Per Anger, with the permission of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The map of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) is reprinted with permission from Historical Atlas of the Holocaust by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, © 1996 by Yechiam Halevy, New York: Macmillan.

ISBN 978-0-8143-3883-4 (e-book)

CONTENTS

Illustrations Maps 7

I Foreword Preface

Michael Berenbaum 9 Randolph L. Braham and Scott Miller 17

Randolph L. THE HOLOCAUST IN HUNGARY: Braham A RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS 27 AUila P6fe

GERMANS. HUNGARIANS, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF HUNGARIAN JEWRY 45

Rudolf Vrba

THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE HOLOCAUST IN HUNGARY: AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT 55

Laszlo Karsai

THE LAST PHASE OF THE HUNGARIAN HOLOCAUST: THE SZALASI REGIME AND THE JEWS 103

Ashcr Cohen Robert Rozett

THE DILEMMA OF RESCUE OR REVOLT 117 INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION: THE ROLE OF DIPLOMATS IN ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE JEWS IN HUNGARY 137

Miklos Hernadl

UNLEARNING THE HOLOCAUST: RECOLLECTIONS AND REACTIONS 153

Charles Fenyvesi

VARIETIES OF THE HUNGARIAN JEWISH EXPERIENCE 167

Menahem Schmelzer

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 177

Contributors 185 Index of Persons 187 Index of Places 193

ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Members of a Jewish Hungarian labor unit, Abony, Hungary, 1940. 2. Members of Zionist Youth dancing on the shore of the Tisza River, 1942. 3. Rabbi Immanuel Loew and actor Oszkar Beregi in the Szeged synagogue. 4. A burned-out synagogue in Sighet, May 1944, after the deportation of the Jewish population. 5. The passport photo of Raoul Wallenberg. 6. Swedish Schutz-Pass provided by Raoul Wallenberg to a Jewish woman and her two sons. 7. The first session of the Hungarian council of ministers under the new fascist government of Ferenc Szalasi, October 15, 1944. 8. Leaders of the National Council of the Arrow Cross celebrate the Szalasi takeover of October 1944. 9. A Jew wearing a yellow badge is forced to clear bomb-damage rubble from a Budapest street, 1944. 10. Hungarian Arrow Cross execute Jews on a bank of the Danube, Budapest, 1944. 11. Hungarian Jews await selection on the ramp of Auschwitz Birkenau.

MAPS Budapest 1944 Hungary 1944 Auschwitz II (Birkenau), Summer 1944 Approximate Situation Sketch of Auschwitz and Birkenau Camp Districts Vrba-Wetzler Escape Route from Birkenau to Slovakia

= FOREWORD

The fate of Jews during the Holocaust differed country by country, region by region. What evolved slowly in Germany over twelve years or in Poland over three took less than three months in Hungary. The Germans invaded in March 1944. Jews were defined immediately and their property was confiscated; by April they were ghettoized. On May 15, the deportation began and by July 8,437,402 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz on 147 trains. By July 9, the date of Raoul Wallenberg's arrival in Budapest, the Jews of that city whom he was sent to rescue were the last Jews in a country that had everywhere else become judenrein in just fifty-four days. Prior to the deportation of Jews from Hungarian territory, Auschwitz had been one of six death camps established by the Germans in occupied Poland. It had been no more lethal than Belzec and less murderous than Treblinka, two of the Aktion Reinhard killing centers established in the spring of 1942. During seven weeks of daily transports from each of the regions of Hungary, however, Auschwitz

Foreword

overtook the other camps and became the epicenter of the killing process. What makes the fate of Hungarian Jewry so haunting is that the destruction took place in 1944, two years after the establishment of the death camps and well after the murder of the rest of European Jewry. By the spring of 1944, it was clear that Germany would lose the war. Their defeat was only a matter of time. Allied leaders had valid and accurate information about the scope of the killings, and general knowledge of their location. Hungarian Jewish leaders could have known and perhaps should have known what was happening. There is reason to suspect that they had been informed of what was happening elsewhere, of what was about to happen to them—and still no warnings were issued. Little was done; less was accomplished. Because of the killing of Hungarian Jews, requests were forwarded to the United States to bomb Auschwitz, appeals were made by the Vatican, by neutral leaders, and by a king to a regent, thereby intensifying our fascination with this most intense chapter of the "Final Solution." All of these issues are raised in this monograph, occasioned by a conference at the Research Institute, the scholarly division of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the deportation of Hungarian Jewry. The conference and this anthology feature the preeminent scholar of the Holocaust in Hungary, Professor Randolph Braham, and scholars and eyewitnesses from three continents and four countries, including scholars of three different generations: those who were adults during the war, those who were children during the Holocaust, and those born long thereafter. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is particularly pleased to present this monograph because a sharp portrayal of the fate of Hungarian Jewry is one of the most striking omissions of the museum's much-heralded permanent exhibition. Those of us involved in planning the permanent exhibition understood that choices had to be made in the narrative—inclusions and exclusions—because the museum could not be an encyclopedia on the wall. It had to tell a story that was inclusive enough to encompass the Holocaust, yet compelling enough to bring the visitor along and communicate the broad story. Thus, although there is consideration of the unique fate of Hungarian Jews, the museum was unable to make it a central feature of the permanent exhibition. Still, the museum is more than its exhibitions. It is a living institution with educational and scholarly components that are inte10

Foreword

grated into the whole of its being, and thus, this significant addition to the scholarship of the Holocaust is intended to refocus our attention on a very important chapter of the whole history of the Holocaust. Randolph Braham provides a clear overview of the Holocaust in Hungary in context. He traverses the history of the Jewish community in Hungary from the emancipation—the struggles between diverse factions of the Jewish community, assimilationists, the Orthodox, and the Neolog. So, too, he explores the relationship of various factions within the Hungarian society and state with the Jews—a relationship that set the context for the Holocaust, and that perhaps set in place the patterns of interaction that led to the catastrophe. Braham's essay is an essential, clear, and concise introduction to all that follows. Read this work and you will learn of the escape from Auschwitz of Rudolf Vrba (Walter Rosenberg) and his documentation of the killings at Auschwitz in April of 1944. You will learn of the impact of his report in Slovakia, in Hungary, as well as in Switzerland, the Vatican, and the United States. Vrba is not a historian but a historical actor, whose daring escape from Auschwitz in 1944 brought concrete documentation of the killing process. When forwarded to the United States, the Vrba-Wetzler Report led to the request to bomb Auschwitz. He reveals here, perhaps for the first time, how he learned of the impending plans for the murder of Hungarian Jews and the preparations that were being undertaken at Auschwitz. Israeli historian Asher Cohen explores the struggle among the Holocaust victims to formulate a strategy for resisting German oppression. Should armed resistance be pursued? Should one advocate a military confrontation against a vastly overpowering enemy when the result would be certain defeat? Or should one deny the Germans the finality of their solution by preserving the lives of some Jews through rescue efforts? Both sides offered compelling arguments backed by worthy values. Those advocating armed revolt felt certain that all were to die; the only question to be settled was the type of death they faced. They vehemently argued that Jews should not go like sheep to the slaughter, but rather resist with their last breath. Death with dignity was their motto; affirm the honor of the Jewish people. They were prepared for the ultimate sacrifice, in part because they understood—sometimes only intuitively—that they had no choice. Advocates of rescue felt that if even a few could be helped to live, that would impede the Nazis' work and defeat their ultimate goal. Thus, while armed resistance fighters stayed put to valiantly take a final stand, proponents of rescue fled; they hid 11

Foreword

under false papers, they crossed borders, they sought all means of escape. Cohen, who has written on Jewish youth movements, reviews many of the theaters of Jewish operation—Hungary and Poland, France and Slovakia, even the Yishuv in Palestine; contrary to contemporary perceptions, those activists in Eretz Yisrael generally were proponents of rescue rather than armed resistance. Precise in his details, Cohen is reticent about drawing the larger conclusion that rescue was a form of resistance less valiant, less overtly heroic, but certainly no less important a phenomenon than armed resistance. He demonstrates that in Hungary rescue was the central focus of Jewish youth movements and Zionist leaders. The contrast between Hungary and the other countries Cohen considers is also quite significant, for in Hungary, Jews had better information about the Final Solution. Unlike French and Polish Jews, who faced the final solution in 1942, before the fate of the Jews and Germany's fate in the war were known or foreseeable, it was clear to most by 1944 that Germany eventually would lose the war. Thus, more outside help was available to Hungarian Jews than had been available two years earlier. Still, in Transylvania the deportation was almost total. Robert Rozett, library director at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum and memorial, evaluates the role of diplomats in Jewish rescue activities. The Hungarian situation, Rozett points out, was unique. The end of the war was in sight and the diplomatic community was aware of the mass murder of Jews. Neutral nations such as Switzerland and Sweden, and neutral organizations such as the International Red Cross and the Vatican were willing to increase their activities. Protests were forthcoming in Hungary as they had not been in Poland and other German-occupied countries. Some may view this increase in activity somewhat cynically as a belated attempt to build a respectable postwar record. Others may view it more as a function of the certain knowledge of the destruction. There is a measure of truth in both interpretations. Still, Rozett describes the heightened activities of the International Red Cross, which was willing to accept responsibility for the welfare of Jews on Hungarian soil, as the cornerstone of many of the crucial rescue activities that saved the lives of Jews in Budapest. Unlike the mythic depictions of Raoul Wallenberg's isolated heroism, Rozett depicts the valiant efforts of the Swedish diplomats in context, along with the activities of other neutral embassies and international bodies. He describes the cooperation that these people received from the Jews themselves in the production and dissemination of protective documents. Ironically, the more documents were forged, the less 12

Foreword

protection real documents provided. Choices had to be made as to whether to provide more maximal protection to the few, or more minimal protection to so many more. Holocaust historians have probed the destruction of Hungarian Jews. Hungarian historians of this era have examined the conditions within Hungary that gave rise to the destruction, as well as the role of the Hungarian government and the Hungarian people in effecting the Final Solution in Hungary. Still, no conference would be complete and no manuscript whole without giving some consideration to the world that was lost. In two personal essays, survivors of the destruction write of this world, presenting less analytical and more evocative perspectives. Journalist and writer Charles Fenyvesi, who has presented his family memoirs in a poignant and memorable work entitled When the World Was Whole, depicts two rather different Hungarian Jews who illustrate, in part, the diversity of the Hungarian Jewish experience. A portrait painter in words, Fenyvesi describes Moric (Maurice) Weisz, who was better known by his pen name, Dezso Szomory, the Hungarian Marcel Proust. An assimilated Jew who sought to integrate into Hungarian society and yet who refused the privileges of his prominence, such as offers of escape and rescue, he chose to die as he had not lived—with the Jews—and insisted on burial as an Orthodox Jew. Fenyvesi also portrays his own great, great, great, great-grandfather, who received a blessing from the Kaller Rebbe and observed the shmitah laws, religious restrictions limited to the land of Israel, in Hungary. In between, he presents a vivid portrait of the struggles of Hungary and of the role of Jews in that national struggle. Menahem Schmelzer was a child of ten on June 25, 1944, when he and his family were deported from Hungary to the north, seemingly bound for Auschwitz. By accident, a few cars on one train among the 147 trains carrying 437,402 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz between May 15 and July 8, 1944, were diverted to Strasshof, a concentration camp near Vienna, to await the outcome of negotiations of "blood for trucks," which Yehuda Bauer described in his book Jews for Sale. It was the wrong train. Because of this error Menahem, his mother, brother, and other members of his family survived. Elsewhere in this book, we read of the deportation. Only in Schmelzer's essay do we experience that deportation through the eyes of a terrified ten-year-old child. Fifty years later, the terror is not diminished, even in its polished recounting. Listen to the voice of the child; listen to both what was said and what could not be said. Laszlo Karsai describes the last phase of the Holocaust in Hungary, the period of the Szalasi regime, which came to dominate 13

Foreword

Hungary with German assistance on October 15-16, 1944, three months after the deportations had ended, but three months before the end of the war in Hungary. The rule of Szalasi's Arrow Cross movement, as Karsai depicts it, had but one virtue—it was brief. Brief but lethal. Szalasi saw himself as a good Christian and a good Catholic and saw his antisemitism as an expression of his Christianity. Karsai describes the pressure Szalasi faced given Hungary's deteriorating military situation and his own quest for international recognition. Szalasi came to power after a period in which international diplomats had effectively secured, for a time, the Jews of Budapest. He aimed to limit the influence of foreign diplomats and was reluctant to cooperate with the Germans unless it served Hungarian state interests as he denned them. Thus, despite his personal antisemitism and the death marches for which the Arrow Cross is infamous, he delayed the deportation of some Jews to Germany so that they could work for the Hungarian state. According to Karsai, Szalasi decided to solve the Jewish question in Hungary permanently during the second week of November, about one month into his regime, by "lending" Jews of working age to the Germans. He formed the ghetto in Budapest and continued deportations on foot and by train. Attila Pok, one of Hungary's leading political and intellectual historians, examines the interrelationship between Germans and Hungarians in the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. He does so from the perspective of the social scientific studies of scapegoating. Pok traces the evolution of antisemitism in Hungary both in the preWorld War I era and in the interwar period, when, according to antisemites, Jews were at fault for the Trianon disaster and Hungarian territorial losses. Prior to World War I, Pok contends, antisemitism was contrary to major liberal trends in politics; during the interwar period, it became part of governmental policy and was formalized in the law. This set the stage for Hungarian cooperation with the German-initiated destruction of the Jews. Pok is at pains to emphasize the German initiation of these activities, but he refuses to mask Hungarian cooperation. Indeed, in his recounting of history, the Jewish tragedy has become a national tragedy as well. Miklos Hernadi, the editor-in-chief at Gondolat Publications, writes less of the Holocaust in Hungary and more of its recollection. The writing of history is shaped by the events of the past and by current perspectives of that past. Hernadi exposes early attempts by Hungarians to deny the Holocaust, as a national self-cleansing after the horrors of the war. Ultranationalists attempted to blame the Jews for the country's post-World War II plight. During the Com14

Foreword

munist era, the plight of the Jews as Jews was minimized and unarticulated. The close of the Communist era has not ended the ideological stake that politicizes the recollection of the past. As the agenda for the future changes, so, too, does the depiction of the past. Thus, at least indirectly, Hernadi underscores the importance of this book—and the conference—which provides for a free exchange and a truthful discussion of Hungarian history and the place of the Jews within that history. Words of gratitude are in order: to Professor Randolph Braham, who convened the conference, who worked so closely with the institute's academic staff in its preparation, and who edited its proceedings. He was ably assisted in all these tasks by Scott Miller of the Research Institute staff. I am grateful to my former colleagues who assisted in planning and running the conference, and to Wesley Fisher, then the very able Deputy Director of the institute, whose assistance is as invaluable as his leadership is essential. To Benton Arnovitz, Director of Academic Publications, and Aleisa Fishman, his assistant, we express thanks for their work in bringing this manuscript to publication. Thanks, as well, are in order to Steven Friesen, an intern at the institute, who proofread and aided in the preparation of this text. May the museum's publications continue to disseminate the most important scholarship of the Holocaust. This conference was convened during the tenure of Jeshajahu Weinberg as Museum Director. Professor Alfred Gottschalk has served throughout these years as the Chair of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, as have Miles Lerman and Professor Ruth Mandel as Chair and Vice-Chair of the council. We are grateful to them for their assistance and support. MICHAEL BERENBAUM Director, Research Institute United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Washington, D.C.

January 1997

15

= PREFACE

This volume is an outgrowth of an international scholars' conference held in Washington, D.C., under the auspices of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on May 22, 1994, in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary. The conference was devoted to a scholarly evaluation of one of the most controversial chapters in the history of the Nazis' war against the Jews. The Holocaust in Hungary, like the history of Hungarian Jewry in general, is full of paradoxes. While the Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe were being systematically subjected to the Final Solution program, the Jews of Hungary continued to enjoy a relatively tranquil life. Although subjected to many discriminatory measures depriving them of basic civil and economic rights, the approximately 825,000 Jews of Hungary (including some 100,000 converts identified as Jews under the racial laws) continued to enjoy the physical protection of the conservative-aristocratic government of Miklos Kallay until the German occupation of March 19, 1944. 17

Preface

The pre-occupation era was not totally devoid of physical violence: more than 60,000 Hungarian Jews lost their lives prior to 1944. Of these, nearly 18,000 were "alien" Jews who were massacred near Kamenets-Podolsk in August 1941, around 1,000 were killed by elements of the Hungarian army and gendarmerie in the Bacska area in January-February 1942, and some 42,000 were labor servicemen who perished or were murdered, mostly along the Soviet front. Nevertheless, before the German occupation Hungarian Jews in general were almost oblivious to the tragedy that befell the Jewish communities in neighboring countries. By late 1943, most of them were convinced that they would survive the war economically impoverished but physically relatively intact. Their optimistic assessment was reinforced by the Kallay government's increasingly conciliatory domestic measures and daring foreign policy initiatives that were clearly designed to bring about Hungary's honorable extrication from the Axis Alliance. Unfortunately, however, the leaders of the Third Reich were fully aware of Hungary's intentions to follow the example of Italy—a move they were resolved to prevent for military, economic, and strategic reasons. The German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, put an end to the Kallay regime, sealing the fate of Hungarian Jewry. The new Quisling government of Dome Sztojay, which included a number of rabidly antisemitic figures, was resolved not only to continue the war on the side of the Axis, but also to urgently solve the Jewish question. Appointed with the blessing of Admiral Miklos Horthy, who decided to stay on as Regent of Hungary and thereby preserve the facade of national sovereignty, the new government's pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish policies were generally accepted as legitimate by the public at large. These policies were loyally carried out by the organs of state power and administration, which proved fatal to the Jews. Guided and actively assisted by the SS, these organs were entrusted with the implementation of the Final Solution program, including the isolation, expropriation, ghettoization, concentration, and deportation of the Jews. The "legal" cover for these measures was provided by the many legislative and administrative decrees that were enacted by the various governmental agencies, as well as by the understanding that Hitler and Horthy had reached at Schloss Klessheim on March 17 and 18. Under that agreement the regent consented, among other things, to the delivery of some 300,000 Jewish "workers" for deployment in German war industries. Exploiting that agreement, the German and Hungarian dejewifiers decided to round up and deport all the Jews, facetiously arguing that the Jewish 18

Preface

"workers" would be more content and productive in the company of their loved ones. The Eichmann Sonderkommando arrived in Hungary with contingency plans. Aware of the Kallay government's consistent and resolute opposition to German demands for the implementation of the Final Solution program, it was somewhat skeptical of the new regime's intentions about "solving" the Jewish question. The SS, however, were surprised by the enthusiasm with which the Hungarians entrusted with this "solution"—including Laszlo Baky and Laszlo Endre, the two rabidly antisemitic undersecretaries of state in the Ministry of the Interior—wanted to carry out the Final Solution program. The schedule and scale of their anti-Jewish operation plans exceeded those of the Sonderkommando. The Sztojay government placed the instruments of state power—the police, gendarmerie, and civil service—at the disposal of the SS and their Hungarian accomplices. Since time was of the essence as Soviet forces were fast approaching neighboring Romania, they subjected the Hungarian Jews to the war's most concentrated and ruthless Final Solution program. What took years in Poland and elsewhere, the Nazis and their Hungarian collaborators accomplished in less than four months in Hungary. By July 9, 1944 (two days after Horthy had officially halted the deportations), all of Hungary (with the notable exception of Budapest) had become judenrein. Ironically, it was on that very day that Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest on his mission of rescue. The studies included in this volume shed light on many of the historical, political, and socioeconomic factors that shaped Hungarian and Hungarian-Jewish history from 1867 to 1945. They provide analytical insights into the dynamics responsible for the spectacular development, decline, and,finally,destruction of Hungarian Jewry. During their relatively short history as Hungarian citizens enjoying full freedom and equality, Hungarian Jewry experienced unprecedented multilateral progress. This period, which coincided with the lifespan of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918), was followed by one that saw the gradual erosion of their rights and opportunities under the counterrevolutionary regimes that ruled Hungary after World War I. The interwar policies aimed at revising the consequences of the Trianon treaty—Hungary was compelled to yield two-thirds of its territory and three-fifths of its population to the successor states—eventually led to the Hungarian government's embrace of the Third Reich. The pursuit of revisionist 19

Preface

objectives in tandem with the Axis soon led to the adoption of ever more restrictive anti-Jewish measures, which, together with the relentless antisemitic propaganda campaign waged by various fascist parties and movements, prepared the ground for the general acceptance of the Final Solution program after the German occupation. The study by Randolph L. Braham provides a retrospective analytical overview of the political, cultural, and socioeconomic forces that shaped the relatively brief history of Hungarian Jewry following its emancipation in 1867. Focusing on the Holocaust era, it identifies the paradoxes that characterized this history, emphasizing the ultimately negative consequences of the political attitudes and cultural perceptions the Jews, and especially the Jewish elites, acquired during the so-called Golden Era. The study demonstrates that, paradoxically, these attitudes and perceptions proved counterproductive during the counterrevolutionary period that followed the dismemberment of Hungary in 1918. Among the most patriotic people in Europe, the Hungarian Jews emerged as scapegoats for all the ills of the truncated country and, their past national services notwithstanding, were sacrificed during the Holocaust era. The scapegoat factor is emphasized in the study by Attila Pok. Using the social-psychological concept of scapegoating, he analyzes the impact of social tensions on individual and group behavior. Fully familiar with the domestic and foreign literature on the subject, Pok succeeds in identifying the relationship between the various forms and stages of Hungarian antisemitism and the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. Some horrifying background details about that destruction are provided by Rudolf Vrba, who escaped from Auschwitz together with Alfred Wetzler in early April 1944. The account by these two young Slovak Jews about the largest extermination camp in Nazidominated Europe was originally recorded and distributed a few weeks after their escape. Vrba's frustrations over the failure of the free world to heed his warnings about the impending deportations from Hungary were expressed in his / Cannot Forgive, first published in 1964. In his current study, Vrba offers a shattering eyewitness account of the preparations that were made in the death camp in anticipation of the arrival of massive Hungarian transports. He describes his encounters with various Jewish and Christian secular and ecclesiastical leaders and takes issue with those who questioned some aspects of his account. When Horthy halted the deportations on July 7, 1944 (they were in fact continued until July 9), only the Jews of Budapest still re20

Preface

mained in the country, although segregated in special yellow stardesignated buildings. They, too, experienced the ravages of fascism after October 15, 1944, however, when the Arrow Cross (Nyilas) Party acquired power through a coup staged with the assistance of the Germans. Details about this last phase of the Hungarian Holocaust, including the death marches to the borders of the Reich and the two ghettos of Budapest, are provided by Laszlo Karsai. One of the most perplexing and agonizing issues raised in connection with the Holocaust in Hungary relates to the absence of any meaningful resistance, even though by early 1944, four and a half years after the beginning of the war, the Jewish and non-Jewish leaders of the world, including those of Hungary, were already aware of the function of Auschwitz. Tragically, the deportations from the Hungarian provinces proceeded with the same ease and smoothness that characterized the "resettlements" from Poland and elsewhere in Nazi-dominated Europe earlier in the war, when the great secret was still unbroken. The dilemma of rescue and/or resistance confronted the Zionist youth movements especially hard. This dilemma is subjected to careful historical scrutiny by Asher Cohen. The help provided by the international community, including the Allies, the neutral states, the Vatican, and the International Red Cross, was basically too little and too late. Virtually no assistance was provided to the Jews in the Hungarian provinces. The conscience of the world was aroused only in late June 1944, when the Swiss press published some details about the realities of Auschwitz based on the Vrba-Wetzler Report. The reaction of the free world was swift and effective: the protests lodged by the Vatican, President Roosevelt, and the King of Sweden—to cite just a few— compelled Horthy to halt the deportations. This decision also reflected a somber evaluation of the military realities at the time. However, this action, like the assistance provided by the international community during the few months before the liberation of Hungary, affected primarily the Jews of Budapest. Details about this international intervention, focusing on the role of diplomats, are provided in the study by Robert Rozett. Miklos Hernadi analyzes the political background of the silence about the Holocaust during much of the Communist era in Hungary. This silence, he argues very cogently, not only froze all free discussion on this great tragedy in Hungarian and HungarianJewish history, but also reinforced and hardened ideological positions on this subject. Hernadi discusses the impact of the Holocaust on Jewish-Christian relations in postwar Hungary, emphasizing that 21

Preface

the ideological battles revolving around this issue failed to bring about the desired reconciliation because of a lack of contrition and forgiveness, respectively. Charles Fenyvesi provides some insights into the differences between Hungarian Jews and those born and raised in the neighboring countries. He illustrates the distinct character of Hungarian Jewry by presenting literary portraits of some of his favorite HungarianJewish personalities, including Dezso Szomory, the great novelist and playwright, and Yitzhak Taub, the legendary Rabbi of Kallo. (Fenyvesi, by the way, is genealogically linked to both of these towering figures in Hungarian-Jewish intellectual history.) Finally, Menahem Schmelzer offers some personal recollections about the impact of the anti-Jewish policies of various Hungarian governments, in particular those of the Holocaust years, on the varieties of Jews and Jewish communities dwelling in Hungary. The views and interpretations expressed by the authors are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors or of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Some of the studies, including those of Braham, Hernadi, Pok, and Vrba, have been published with minor variations elsewhere. We wish to express our appreciation to the organizers of the conference, including Dr. Michael Berenbaum and Dr. Wesley Fisher, then director and deputy director, respectively, of the Research Institute. We are also indebted to Elizabeth Braham for her editorial assistance. We owe special thanks to the contributors for their cooperation and for sharing their expertise with the community at large. Randolph L. Braham Scott Miller July 1997

22

1. Members of a Jewish Hungarian labor service unit lined up waiting to be fed, Abony, Hungary, 1940. (Museum of Contemporary History, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

2. Jewish youth from Tecso, Hungary, members of HaNoar HaZioni (Zionist Youth), dancing on the shore of the Tisza River, 1942. (Leo and Edith Cove, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

3. Rabbi Immanuel Loew and actor Oszkar Beregi (in top hat) at the dais in the Szeged synagogue. Szeged was a center of the modernist Neolog movement of Hungarian Jewry. (Bela Liebmann, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

4. Photographed in May 1944, a burned-out synagogue in Sighet (Sziget)after the deportation of the Jewish population. Sighet was a center of traditional Jewish living and learning in northern Transylvania, a region annexed by Hungary from Romania in 1940. Most of Sighet's Jews perished in Auschwitz. (Albert Rosenthal, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

5. The passport photo of Raoul Wallenberg, returned in 1990 to Wallenberg's family in Sweden. The passport was issued in Stockholm on June 30, 1944, and taken by Wallenberg to Hungary. (Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

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6. Swedish Schutz-Pass provided by Raoul Wallenberg for Frau Alexander Flamm, nee Gizella Szanto, and her two children, Georg Thomas and Stefan Johann. The Flamms survived. Georg and Stefan live in Budapest.

7. The first session of the Hungarian council of ministers under the new fascist government of Ferenc Szalasi (center, with hands folded) meets in the Buda palace, October 15, 1944. (U.S. National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

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8. Leaders of the National Council of the Arrow Cross celebrate after the Szalasi takeover of October 1944. Left to right: unidentified, Jeno Szollosi, Bela Imredy, Jozsef Gera, Ferenc Kassai-Schallmajer. (Hungarian National History Museum, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

9. A Jew wearing a yellow badge is forced to clear rubble from a Budapest street after a 1944 bombing raid. (Jewish Museum of the Dohany Synagogue, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

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10. In this captured German photo, Hungarian Arrow Cross execute Jews along the banks of the Danube, Budapest, 1944. (U.S. National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

11. Hungarian Jewish men and women, separated, await selection on the ramp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. This ramp was built in January 1944, in anticipation of the deportation of the Jews of Hungary. (Yad Vashem Photo Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.)

1. 2. 3. 4.

Rose Hill 5. Harmincad Street No. 6, Royal Castle Wallenberg's last known Swedish Legation residence in Budapest. The "Swedish Houses." One 6. Ulloi Avenue No. 2, of the streets in the vicinity Wallenberg's "headquarters. now bears Raoul Wallenberg's name. Budapest 1944

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OCCUPIED POLAND:

HUNGARY: 1944

; Randolph L. Braham

j THE HOLOCAUST IN HUNGARY: ! A RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS

ANTECEDENTS

The Holocaust in Hungary was in many respects distinct from the tragedies that befell other Jewish communities in Nazidominated Europe. This distinction is reflected in the disastrous set of historical circumstances that combined to doom Hungarian Jewry in 1944. The destruction of Hungarian Jewry during that year constitutes one of the most perplexing chapters in the history of the Holocaust. It is a tragedy that should never have happened. By the beginning of 1944—on the eve of Allied victory—the leaders of the world, including the national and Jewish leaders of Hungary, were already privy to the secrets of Auschwitz. Moreover, except for a few diehards who still believed in Hitler's last-minute wonder-weapons, even the perpetrators realized that the Axis had lost the war. The last major phase in the Nazis' war against the Jews, the Holocaust in Hungary is replete with paradoxes. The roots of one of 27

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the most startling of these can be found in the "Golden Era" of Hungarian Jewry (1867-1918). During this period a cordial, almost symbiotic relationship developed between the aristocratic-conservative and Jewish elites. This very close relationship, however, distorted the Jewish leaders' perceptions of domestic and world politics during the pre-Holocaust era. While the Jewish elites shared the aristocratic-conservative leaders' abhorrence of Nazism and Bolshevism, they failed to recognize that the fundamental interests of the Hungarians were not always identical with those of Jewry. Their myopic views proved counterproductive during the interwar period, and disastrous when the Germans occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. After its emancipation in 1867, the Jewish community of Hungary enjoyed an unparalleled level of multilateral development, taking full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the so-called liberal regime ruling the country during the pre-World War I era. The Hungarian ruling classes—the gentry and the conservativearistocratic leaders—adopted a tolerant position toward the Jews. They were motivated not only by economic considerations, but also by the desire to perpetuate their dominant political role in a multinational empire in which Hungarians constituted a minority. Because of Hungary's feudal tradition, the ruling classes encouraged the Jews to engage in business and industry, so that over time a friendly, cooperative, and mutually advantageous relationship developed between the conservative-aristocratic leaders and the Jewish industrialists, bankers, and financiers—a relationship that was to prove fatal during the Holocaust. The Jews also took full advantage of their new educational opportunities and within a short time came to play an influential, if not dominant, role in the professions, literature, and the arts. As a consequence of the Hungarian policy of tolerance, the Jews considered themselves an integral part of the Hungarian nation. They eagerly embraced the process of magyarization, opting not only to change their names but also to serve as economic modernizers and cultural "magyarizers" in the areas inhabited by other nationalities in the polyglot Hungarian Kingdom. The Hungarian Jews, who had no territorial ambitions and naturally supported the group offering them the greatest protection—as did Jews of the Diaspora during their long and arduous history—were soon looked upon as agents for the preservation of the status quo by the oppressed nationalities clamoring for self-determination and independence. The Jews were fully aware of the protection the regime provided against 28

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the threat of antisemitism. The prompt and forceful intervention of the government in dealing with anti-Jewish manifestations, sporadic and local, further enhanced the fidelity of the Jews to the Magyar state. In the course of time the Jews, especially the more acculturated and assimilated, became ever more assertively pro-Magyar. In many cases this allegiance was not only because of expediency or gratitude for the opportunities and safety afforded by the aristocratic-gentry regime, but also because of fervent patriotism. As Oscar Jaszi, a noted sociologist and social-democratic statesman, correctly observed, "there is no doubt that a large mass of these assimilated elements adopted their new ideology quite spontaneously and enthusiastically out of a sincere love of the new fatherland." Jaszi concluded, however, that the "intolerant Magyar nationalism and chauvinism of the Jews had done a great deal to poison relations between the Hungarians and the other nationalities of the prewar era." Paul Ignotus, a noted publicist, echoed these sentiments, arguing that the Jews had become "more fervently Magyar than the Magyars themselves." A similar conclusion was reached by the noted British historian Robert Seton-Watson, whose sympathies clearly lay with the oppressed nationalities. He claimed in 1908 that "the Catholic Church and the Jews form today the two chief bulwarks of Magyar chauvinism." To some extent the political and economic symbiosis between the conservative-aristocratic and Jewish leaderships during the socalled Golden Era shaped the views and attitudes of both groups toward both the Third Reich and the Soviet Union during the interwar and wartime periods. While the Hungarian leaders looked upon the Third Reich as a possible vehicle for fulfilling their revisionist ambitions, they shared with the Jewish leaders a fear of both German and Russian expansionism and, above all, a mortal dread of Bolshevism. Such attitudes and perceptions guided both leadership groups during the fateful year of 1944 with almost equally disastrous results. Signs that the commonality of interests (Interessengemeinschaft) between the two groups was, in fact, limited, fragile, and based primarily on expediency were clearly visible even before the end of World War I. Despite the eagerness with which the Hungarian Jews embraced the Magyar cause and the enthusiasm with which they embraced acculturation, they failed, with relatively few exceptions, to fully integrate themselves into Hungarian society. Their ultimate assimilationist expectations were frustrated, for they were 29

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accepted socially neither by the aristocratic gentry nor by the disenfranchised and impoverished peasantry. While the gentry exploited Jews politically and economically for the perpetuation of their feudal privileges, the peasants, like a large proportion of the industrial workers, often viewed Jews as instruments of an oppressive regime. Christian-Jewish relations were further strained by the presence in the country of a considerable number of mostly impoverished Yiddish-speaking Jews who resisted assimilation, let alone acculturation. In contrast to the assimilated magyarized Jews, this group was pejoratively referred to as "Eastern" or "Galician," and was almost by definition unworthy of the government's policy of toleration. During the interwar period these Jews became the target of special abuse, for even the "civilized" antisemites regarded them as constituting not only a distinct "biological race," but also an "ideological race" representing a grave threat to Christian Magyars. Miklos Horthy, the regent of Hungary, probably took this threat into consideration when he consented, during his March 1944 meeting with Hitler, to the "delivery of a few hundred thousand workers" to Germany. The Interessengemeinschaft between the Hungarian ruling classes and the Jews ended with the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the dismemberment of the Hungarian Kingdom in 1918. The shortlived Communist dictatorship that followed soon thereafter had a crucial effect upon the evolution of Hungarian domestic and foreign policy during the interwar period. The brief but harsh period of the proletarian dictatorship headed by Bela Kun left a bitter legacy in the nation at large, with a particularly devastating effect upon the Jews. Although the overwhelming majority of the Jews had opposed the proletarian dictatorship and had perhaps suffered proportionately more than the rest of the population—they were persecuted both as members of the middle class and as followers of an organized religion—popular opinion tended to attach blame for the abortive dictatorship to the Jews as a whole. In part, this was due to the high visibility of Communists of Jewish origin in the Kun government and administration; however, it was primarily a consequence of the antisemitic propaganda and activities of the counterrevolutionary clericalist-nationalist forces that came to power later in 1919—forces dedicated to the reestablishment of the status quo ante. Driven by the so-called Szeged Idea (a nebulous amalgam of political-propagandistic views whose central themes included the 30

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struggle against Bolshevism, the fostering of antisemitism, chauvinistic nationalism, and revisionism—an idea that antedated both Italian Fascism and German Nazism), the counterrevolutionaries engulfed the country in a wave of terror that dwarfed in ferocity and magnitude the Red Terror that had preceded and allegedly warranted such action. While their murder squads killed a large number of leftists, including industrial workers and landless peasants as well as opposition intellectuals, their fury was directed primarily against the Jews. This counterrevolutionary violence claimed thousands of victims. Radicalized by the national humiliation, social upheavals, and catastrophic consequences of the lost war, in which Hungary lost two-thirds of its historic territory, one-third of its Magyar people, and three-fifths of its total population, the counterrevolutionaries organized themselves in a variety of ultrapatriotic associations. These associations devoted themselves primarily to resolving the two major issues obsessing Hungary during the interwar period: revisionism and the Jewish question. In the course of time these two issues became interlocked and formed the foundation of not only Hungary's domestic policies but also its relations with the Third Reich. Following the absorption of historic Hungary's major national minorities into the successor states, the Jews suddenly emerged as the country's most vulnerable minority group. With the transformation of Trianon Hungary into a basically homogeneous state, the Jews lost their importance as statistical recruits to the cause of Magyardom. In the new truncated state they came to be exploited for another purpose: as in Nazi Germany a little later, they were conveniently used as scapegoats for most of the country's misfortunes, including its socioeconomic dislocations. In this climate it was no surprise that Hungary—the nation in which the Jews had enjoyed a "Golden Era" just a few years earlier—emerged in the wake of the White Terror as the first country in post-World War I Europe to adopt anti-Jewish legislation. The so-called Numerus Clausus Act (1920), which was adopted in violation of the Minorities Protection Treaty, restricted admission of Jews into institutions of higher learning to 6 percent of the total enrollment—the alleged percentage of Jews in the total population. Although this particular legislation was allowed to expire a few years later, it sanctified the fundamental principle that was to guide many of the "civilized" antisemites of the 1930s who were eager to solve the Jewish question in an orderly and legal manner. This principle was formulated after 1932 by Gyula Gombos, one of the foremost 31

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representatives of the Hungarian radical Right, who stipulated that "the Jews must not be allowed to succeed in any field beyond the level of their ratio in the population." In any event, the Jewish leadership at that time viewed the antiJewish measures of the counterrevolutionaries merely as temporary aberrations caused by the unfortunate outcome of the war, and they retained their patriotic stance. The leadership not only embraced the cause of revisionism, but actually protested and rejected all "foreign" interventions on its behalf—including those by international Jewish organizations—as violations of Hungarian sovereign rights. Indeed, for a while during the 1920s, their optimism was reinforced when Count Istvan Bethlen, a representative of the conservative-aristocratic group of large landholders and financial magnates ruling Hungary before World War I, headed the Hungarian government. The appointment of Gombos as prime minister in October 1932, coinciding with the spectacular electoral victories of the Nazi Party in Germany, brought the Jewish question to the fore once again. It soon became a national obsession that frequently rivaled revisionism in intensity. Borrowing a page from the Nazis' propaganda book, the Hungarian radicals depicted the Jews as naturally unpatriotic, parasitically sapping the energy of the nation, and prone to internationalist (i.e., Bolshevik) tendencies. The propaganda campaign was soon coupled with demands for a definitive solution to the Jewish question. The suggestions offered by the radical Right at the time ranged from legal restrictions on the Jews' professional and economic activities to their orderly "resettlement" out of the country. Although expediency and temporary tactical considerations induced Gombos to "revise" his position on the Jewish question, his policies prepared the ground for the disaster that was later to strike Hungary and its Jews. He tied Hungary's destiny almost irrevocably to that of Nazi Germany. He not only abandoned Bethlen's reliance on the Western democracies and the League of Nations as a means to correct "the injustices of Trianon," but also brought Hungary's foreign policy into line with that of Nazi Germany and made possible the subsequent penetration and direct involvement of the Reich in practically every aspect of the country's life. This was greatly facilitated by the formidable and potentially collaborationist power base that Gombos established during his tenure. He was able not only to replace the civil and military bureaucracies of the state apparatus with his own proteges, but also—and this perhaps 32

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was more crucial—to pack the upper army hierarchy, including the General Staff, with younger, highly nationalistic Germanophile officers. The stage for anti-Jewish excesses to come was further set through the radicalization of the press and the flourishing of ultrarightist political movements and parties. The spectacular domestic and foreign policy successes of the Third Reich, including the 1938 Anschluss with Austria by which Germany extended its borders to those of Hungary, were achieved largely because of the shortsighted appeasement policies of the Western democracies. The Nazi victories induced successive Hungarian governments to embrace the Axis ever more tightly. The Third Reich became increasingly eager to see Hungary involved in establishing the "New Order" in Europe and reaping the benefits of the Nazi revisionist-revanchist policies as an active member of the Axis Alliance. The pro-Reich policy was especially supported by the Germanophile General Staff, the right wing of the dominant Government Life Party, and the industrial-banking establishment, including Jews and converts. While this policy yielded considerable dividends, enabling Hungary to fulfill parts of its revisionist ambitions at the expense of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, it was in the long run disastrous for the country. It was, of course, even more catastrophic for the nation's Jews. In retrospect, the policies of the aristocraticgentry-dominated conservative governments appear to have been quite unrealistic, if not quixotic. Having embraced the Third Reich for its opposition to Bolshevism and the Soviet Union, and for Nazi support of revisionism, these governments were soon compelled to come to grips with the ever more influential Right radicals at home. While they despised and feared these radicals almost as much as they did the Jews—the Hungarian Nazis had advocated not only solving the Jewish question, but also bringing about a social revolution to end the inherited privileges of the conservativearistocratic elements—the governmental leaders felt compelled to appease them, as well as the Germans. In fact, these leaders looked upon the Right radicals' preoccupation with the Jewish question as a blessing in disguise, for it helped draw attention from the grave social-agrarian problems confronting the nation. Consequently, the government leaders were ready to adopt a series of anti-Jewish measures. These became more draconic with each territorial acquisition between 1938 and 1941. In addition to passing three major anti-Jewish laws—the third of which incorporated some of the basic provisions of the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany—the 33

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Hungarian leadership adopted a discriminatory system of forced labor service for Jews of military age, a unique institution in Nazidominated Europe. The anti-Jewish measures of the various governments, endorsed by the leaders of the Christian churches, were based on a number of illusions that guided the ruling elites until the German occupation. The Hungarian leaders thought that passing laws curtailing the Jews' economic power and "harmful" cultural influence would not only appease the ultrarightists, but also satisfy the Third Reich, while safeguarding the vital interests of the Jews themselves. This rationalization was part of the larger quixotic assumption that Hungary could satisfy its revisionist ambitions by embracing the Third Reich without having to jeopardize its own freedom of action. The upper strata of Hungarian Jewry, including the official national leadership, shared these illusions. They were convinced that the Jewish community's long history of loyal service to Magyardom would continue to be recognized and their fundamental interests safeguarded by the ruling elite of the country. They accepted, however reluctantly, many of the anti-Jewish measures as reflecting "the spirit of the times," and as necessary tactical moves to "take the sting out of the antisemitic drive" of the ultrarightists at home and abroad. They tended to concur with the rationalizations of the governmental leaders that the anti-Jewish laws were "the best guarantee against antisemitism and intolerance." In consequence, they were convinced that the safety and well-being of the Jews were firmly linked to the preservation of the basically reactionary conservative-aristocratic regime. Indeed, as long as this aristocratic elite remained in power, the vital interests of Hungarian Jewry were preserved relatively intact. This remained so even after Hungary entered the war against the Soviet Union in June 1941. The regime continued not only to provide haven to the many thousands of Polish, Slovak, and other refugees, but also consistently opposed the ever greater pressure by the Germans to bring about the Final Solution of the Jewish question. While the Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe were being systematically annihilated, Hungary continued to protect its 825,000 Jews (including approximately 100,000 converts identified as Jews under Hungary's racial law of 1941) until it virtually lost its independence in March 1944. The pre-occupation record of Hungary was, of course, not spotless. About 60,000 Jews lost their lives even before the German invasion: more than 42,000 labor servicemen died or were killed in the Ukraine and Serbia, nearly 18,000 were killed in the drive against "alien" Jews, and approximately 1,000 were slaughtered in the Bac34

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ska area. Nevertheless, Hungarian Jewry continued to dwell in comparative personal and physical safety. There were no restrictions on their freedom of movement and they were treated relatively fairly in the allocation of food. Although the anti-Jewish laws had a particularly severe economic impact on the lower strata of the Jewish population, including both skilled salaried workers and unskilled laborers, the economic situation of the Jews as a whole was relatively tolerable, primarily because of the well-developed communal self-help system. Also, those in business and industry, while having their activities severely curtailed, usually were able to circumvent some provisions of the anti-Jewish laws or take advantage of loopholes. The relatively few Jewish industrial magnates, mostly converts, actually benefitted from Hungary's armament program and dealings with the Third Reich. The situation of Hungarian Jewry appeared to improve in 1943 despite the Nazis' relentless war against the Jews in the rest of German-occupied Europe. Following the destruction of the Second Hungarian Army near Voronezh and the subsequent defeat of the Germans around Stalingrad early in 1943, the Hungarians began a desperate search for an honorable way out of the war, a search that was intensified after Italy's extrication from the Axis Alliance later that summer. This ultimately led to disaster, primarily because of the irreconcilably conflicting political and socioeconomic objectives the conservative-aristocratic leaders were pursuing. Hungarian leaders were eager not only to safeguard the independence and territorial integrity of their country, including the areas acquired between 1938 and 1941, but also to preserve the antiquated socioeconomic structure of the gentry-dominated society. While apprehensive about a possible German occupation, they were above all paralyzed by the fear of the Soviet Union and communism. They viewed the latter as the ultimate evil, to which even Nazism, if it proved unavoidable, was preferable. Ignoring the geopolitical realities of the area, the Hungarian leaders unrealistically tried to solve their dilemma by maneuvering "in secret" for a possible separate peace with the Western powers. Unaware of the realities of the Grand Alliance, the leaders fervently hoped that the Western Allies would invade Europe from the Balkans and thereby achieve a double military and political objective: the destruction of the Nazi forces and the prevention of Bolshevik penetration into the heart of Europe. With spies planted in all segments of the Hungarian government, the Germans were fully informed about the nature and scope of the "secret" negotiations between the emissaries of Prime 35

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Minister Miklos Kallay and representatives of the Western Allies in Italy and Turkey. Reports to the Nazis by their many agents in Hungary about the "treacherous and pro-Jewish" activities of the Kallay government were reinforced by two secret memoranda by Edmund Veesenmayer, the German expert on East Central Europe and, later, Hitler's plenipotentiary in Hungary. Veesenmayer warned the Fiihrer not only about the untrustworthiness of the government, but also about the "danger" represented by the Jews. He contended that the Jews were "Enemy No. 1," and that "the 1.1 million Jews amount to as many saboteurs ... who must be viewed as Bolshevik vanguards." In addition, there were weighty military considerations: extrication of Hungary from the Axis when the Soviet forces were already crossing the Dniester would have deprived Germany of the Romanian oil fields and exposed the German forces in the central and southern parts of Europe to encirclement and possibly an immediate and crushing defeat. It was primarily to safeguard their military security interests that the Germans decided to occupy Hungary, to prevent it from emulating Italy. The destruction of Hungarian Jewry, the last surviving large bloc of European Jewry, was to a large extent the concomitant of this German military decision. Ironically, it appears in retrospect that had Hungary remained a militarily passive but vocally loyal ally of the Third Reich instead of engaging in provocative, essentially fruitless, and perhaps even merely alibi-establishing diplomatic maneuvers, Hungarian Jews might have survived the war relatively unscathed. But the fundamental interests of the Hungarians were in conflict with those of the Jews. While the aristocratic-conservative leaders despised the Nazis, they were grateful for the support of the Third Reich in achieving a great part of their revisionist ambitions, and mortally fearful of a Bolshevik takeover. Although most of the Jews shared the Hungarians' abhorrence of both Nazism and Bolshevism, they looked upon the Soviet Union—a member of the Grand Alliance— as the only realistic savior from the threat represented by the Nazis and their local allies.

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION

The German forces who invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944, were accompanied by a small but highly efficient special commando unit {Sonderkommando) headed by Adolf Eichmann. The 36

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Sonderkommando prepared a number of contingency plans to take advantage of any opportunities to "solve" the Jewish question that might be provided by the new Hungarian leaders. Two years earlier, Eichmann had been indirectly approached by some high-ranking Hungarian ultrarightists to help "resettle" thousands of "alien" Jews, but had refused to mobilize his deportation apparatus for this small-scale operation. He preferred instead to wait until the Hungarians consented to total removal of the country's Jews; the occupation provided that opportunity. When Germany occupied Hungary they found a number of accomplices there who outdid even the Nazis in their eagerness to eliminate the Jews from the country. Indeed, it was primarily the joint, concerted, and single-minded drive by these two groups that made the effectuation of the Final Solution in Hungary possible; neither group could have succeeded without the other. While the Germans were eager to solve the Jewish question, they could not take action without the consent of the newly established puppet government and the cooperation of the Hungarian instruments of power. Likewise, the Hungarian ultrarightists, though anxious to emulate their German counterparts, could not have achieved their ideologically defined objectives in the absence of the German occupation. As a consequence of the occupation, the Hungarian Jewish community, which had survived the first four and a half years of the war relatively intact, was subjected to the most ruthless and concentrated destruction process of the Holocaust. The drive against the Hungarian Jews took place on the very eve of Allied victory, when the grisly details of the Final Solution were already known to world leaders, including those of Hungarian and world Jewry. Informed about the barbarity and speed with which the Hungarian Jews were liquidated, Winston Churchill concluded that this was "probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the history of the world." The liquidation of Hungarian Jewry reminds one of a prophecy by Budapest-born Theodor Herzl. In a letter dated March 10, 1903, when Hungarian Jewry was still in the midst of its Golden Era, the father of Zionism cautioned his friend Erno Mezei, a member of the Hungarian Parliament: "The hand of fate shall also seize Hungarian Jewry. And the later this occurs, and the stronger this Jewry becomes, the more cruel and hard shall be the blow, which shall be delivered with greater savagery. There is no escape." Was there no escape? The evidence clearly indicates that had Horthy and the clique around him really wanted to save Hungarian 37

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Jewry they could have done so. According to the testimony of Veesenmayer and Otto Winkelmann, the former Higher SS and Police Leader in Hungary, in the postwar trial of Andor Jaross, Laszlo Baky, and Laszlo Endre—the triumvirate primarily responsible for the destruction of Hungarian Jewry—the Final Solution of the Jewish question was only a wish, not an absolute demand of the Germans. The Eichmann Sonderkommando, numbering fewer than two hundred, could not possibly have carried out its sinister plans without the wholehearted cooperation of the Hungarians who placed the instruments of state power at its disposal. As the examples of Bulgaria, Finland, and Romania reveal—and Horthy's own actions of July 1944 clearly indicate—the regent and his associates could have saved most of the Jews. Unfortunately, these leaders were interested primarily in protecting the assimilated Jews, especially those with whom Horthy and the others had good and mutually advantageous business and financial relations; they were almost as eager as the right wing radicals to rid the country of the "Eastern-Galician" Jews. To protect assimilated Jews and, more important, to protect Hungary from a Soviet invasion, which Horthy viewed as more of a threat than the imminent German occupation, the regent made a number of concessions to the Nazis. These concessions proved fatal for Hungarian Jewry. At a meeting with Hitler at Schloss Klessheim the day before the Nazi occupation, Horthy had consented to "the delivery of a few hundred thousand Jewish workers to Germany for employment in war-related projects." Apparently Horthy was convinced that by giving this consent he would not only satisfy Germany's "legitimate" needs, but also contribute to the struggle against Bolshevism and at the same time get rid of the Galician Jews, whom he openly detested. The Eichmann Sonderkommando and its Hungarian accomplices, based on the rationale that "the Jews will be more productive in Germany if they have all members of their families with them," took full advantage of this agreement to implement the Final Solution throughout the country. Once they were given the green light, the dejewification experts proceeded with lightning speed. Time was of the essence, for the Third Reich was threatened with imminent defeat. Indeed, in no other country was the Final Solution program—the establishment of the Judenrdte, the isolation, expropriation, ghettoization, concentration, and deportation of the Jews—carried out with as much barbarity and speed as in Hungary. Although the dejewification squads were relatively small, the interplay of many domestic and international factors aided them in the rapid implementation of their sinister designs. 38

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The German and Hungarian agents in charge of the Final Solution program had at their disposal the instruments of state power— the police, gendarmerie, and civil service—and were able to proceed unhindered by any internal or external opposition. The puppet government provided them with "legal" and administrative cover. A considerable number of Hungarians proved willing and eager to collaborate for ideological or materialistic reasons. With public opinion having been successfully molded by years of vicious antisemitic agitation, the population at large was at best passive; the bulk of the "proletariat," including miners and industrial workers, maintained the political stance of the 1930s, embracing the Arrow Cross rather than the leftist parties. Postwar Hungarian historiography notwithstanding, there was no meaningful resistance anywhere in the country, let alone organized opposition for the protection of the Jews. This was especially so in the countryside. It was primarily in Budapest that Christians and a variety of church organizations were ready to offer shelter to Jews, saving thousands of them from certain death. By then, late in 1944, however, the countryside was already judenrein, the Soviet forces were fast approaching the capital, and most Hungarians realized that the Allies were bound to win the war. The Allies, though fully aware of the realities of the Final Solution, were reluctant to get involved in the Nazis' war against the Jews. When the Western powers were asked, shortly after the beginning of the deportations from Hungary on May 15, 1944, to bomb Auschwitz and the rail lines leading to the camp, they declined, stating among other reasons that they could not spare aircraft for such "secondary targets." (A few months later, by contrast, they assembled a large armada to destroy another target without real strategic value: Dresden, the art-laden city.) The Soviet air force, which was strategically in an even better position to bomb the death camps and the rail lines leading to them, also did nothing. The record of the leftist, mostly pro-Soviet, underground and partisan forces in Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland is no better in this regard. There is no evidence that they engaged in any but the most isolated individual acts of sabotage or resistance to prevent the deportation of Jews. During the first phase of the deportations from Hungary, the attitude of the neutral states—Portugal, Turkey, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland—was fundamentally no more positive. Their position, like that of the Vatican and the International Red Cross, changed, however, when late in June 1944 the Swiss press began to publicize the horrors of the Final Solution in Hungary. Their pressure on 39

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Horthy, heightening his concerns over the rapidly deteriorating military situation—by that time the Soviet forces were fast approaching the borders of Hungary and the Western Allies had successfully established their beachheads in Normandy—hastened the desired result. Horthy halted the deportations on July 7. (In fact, the dejewification squads continued their operations around Budapest up to July 9.) By that date, all of Hungary with the exception of Budapest had been made judenrein. The success of this belated action is another piece of evidence demonstrating that the German demands for the Final Solution could have been refused or sabotaged even after the occupation. Had Horthy and the Hungarian authorities really been concerned for all of their Jewish citizens, they could have refused to cooperate. Without the Hungarian instruments of power, the Germans would have been as helpless during the first phase of the occupation as they proved to be after early July 1944. What about the victims, the Jewish masses and their leaders? Though the German invasion of Hungary took place on the eve of Allied victory, when the Hungarian and Jewish leaders were already privy to the secrets of Auschwitz, the ghettoization and deportation process in Hungary was carried out as smoothly as it had been almost everywhere else in Nazi-dominated Europe. Helpless and defenseless, abandoned by the Christian society surrounding them, the Jews of Hungary—with the notable exception of some young Zionist pioneers in Budapest—displayed little or no opposition throughout the occupation period. In accordance with well-tested Nazi camouflage methods, the Jews were lulled into acquiescence by assurances that the deportations involved merely their relocation for labor within the country and in Germany for the duration of the war. They—and the rest of the world—were further assured that both young and old were included in the transports only out of "consideration for the close family-life pattern of the Jews." Under the conditions of relative normality prevailing until the German occupation, the predominantly assimilated leaders of Hungarian Jewry were quite effective in serving the community. Firmly committed to the values and principles of the traditional conservative-aristocratic system and convinced that the interests of Jewry were intimately intertwined with those of the Magyars, Hungarian Jews never contemplated the use of independent political techniques to advance Jewish interests per se. They took pride in calling themselves Zsidovalldsu magyarok (Magyars of the Jewish faith). Jewish leadership, consisting primarily of patriotic, wealthy, and generally conservative elements, tried to maintain the established 40

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order by faithfully obeying government demands and fully associating itself with the values, beliefs, and interests of the broader Hungarian society. Consequently, the national Jewish leaders' response to the exacerbating anti-Jewish measures during the interwar period was apologetic and isolated from the general struggle of European Jewry. Their loyalty to the Hungarian nation, and attachment to the gentry-aristocratic establishment, remained unshaken. To the end, they followed an ostrichlike policy, hoping against hope that the ruling elite would protect them from the fate of the Jewish communities of the neighboring countries. The Hungarian Jewish leaders retained misconceptions regarding the plight of Hungary and of themselves. They did not expect that Germany would invade an ally and that the anti-Nazi Christian leadership would also be among the first victims after occupation. Practically until the beginning of the deportations, the Jewish leadership continued to believe that the Hungarian Jewish community, unlike all other large European Jewish communities, would emerge from the war relatively intact, even if generally ruined economically. While tragically mistaken, their belief that they would escape the Holocaust—megusszuk (we'll get by), they frequently said in selfassurance—was not irrational. After all, Hungary had in fact been an island of safety in an ocean of destruction for four and a half years of the war. The Jewish leaders' faith in the Hungarian establishment was not entirely groundless. They personally, along with nearly 150,000 of the 247,000 Jews of Budapest (including some 62,000 converts identified as Jews in 1941), were spared the fate that befell those in the countryside, this due to Horthy's halting the deportations early in July 1944. In addition, many tens of thousands of Jewish males of military age from all parts of Hungary were saved by the armed forces. This constitutes still another paradox of the Holocaust in Hungary. The Hungarian labor service system, which was unique in Nazi-dominated Europe, had been the major source of Jewish suffering before the German occupation. Deprived of their dignity and rights, the Jewish labor servicemen were compelled to do hard and often hazardous military-related work under the constant prodding of mostly cruel guards and officers. Particularly tragic was the fate of tens of thousands of labor servicemen who had been deployed, along with the Second Hungarian Army, on the Soviet front and in the copper mines in Bor, Serbia. Yet, after the occupation, the Jewish labor servicemen—unlike the Jews at large, who at first were placed under the jurisdiction of the Germans—enjoyed the continued protection of the Hungarian armed forces. Moreover, many 41

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Jewish males were recruited from the ghettos and concentration centers by decent military commanders, sparing them from deportation and almost certain death.

THE POSTWAR ERA

In Hungary, too, as elsewhere in the former Nazidominated world, the Holocaust became a highly controversial issue after the war. The subject of much public debate during the first postwar years, largely because of the revelations of the war crimes trials, the Holocaust gradually declined as a major public issue and emerged as a very uncomfortable chapter in Hungarian history. Relatively few Christians—whether politicians, professionals, or laymen—managed to come to grips with it honestly either during or after the Communist era. During the Communist era (1949-89), the Holocaust, like the Jewish question as a whole, was gradually submerged in the Orwell ian memory hole of history, although in a more restrained fashion than in the other Soviet-bloc nations. While the Communists never denied the horrendous crimes committed by the Nazis, they systematically ignored or distorted the Holocaust by routinely subsuming the losses of Jewry as those incurred by their own nations. During the post-Communist era, the treatment of the Holocaust has varied across the newly evolved political spectrum. On the extreme Right are the historical revisionists, the charlatans from the lunatic fringes of Hungarian society who specialize in the distortion and outright denial of the Holocaust. Like their counterparts elsewhere, they are engaged in an obscene campaign to absolve the Nazis and their Hungarian accomplices of all crimes committed against the Jews. They are involved in a sinister drive to destroy the historical record—and memory—and make the world forget the consequences of the Nazis' war against the Jews. Among them are antisemites who are committed to the Nazi thesis identifying Bolshevism with Jewry. In their reckoning, the suffering of the Jews during the war is more than balanced by the "even greater suffering" Jews inflicted on their country through Communism. Failure to come to grips with the Holocaust is also manifested in less extreme and more benign forms. Many highly respectable individuals acknowledge the mass murder of Jews, but place exclusive blame on the Germans. Others attempt to generalize the Holocaust by lumping the losses of Jewry with those incurred by the military. 42

The Holocaust in Hungary

Still others, including top officials of the government, would like to close the book on World War II and ease their conscience by honoring all casualties. They prefer to blur the fundamental differences between persons who were murdered on racial grounds without regard to age or sex and those who—without minimizing their tragedy—fell as a consequence of hostilities in an aggressive war on the side of the Axis. Some in this group try to mitigate the Holocaust's impact by comparing, if not identifying, the horrors of Nazism with those of Communism and rationalizing the Hungarian involvement by citing the impact of the "injustices" of Trianon. Finally, there are those who try to ease their conscience by emphasizing the number of Jews saved in Hungary. In their drive to rehabilitate Miklos Horthy—and by implication the entire Horthy era—these cleansers of history attribute the survival of the Jews of Budapest exclusively to the regent's decision of July 7, 1944, to halt the deportations. Eager to assure Hungary's historical continuity as a "chivalrous" nation, these nationalists fail to acknowledge the important role that others played. In the post-Communist era it has become politically fashionable and historically prudent not to mention the crucial role of the Red Army in liberating the surviving Jews of Hungary, including those of Budapest. These negative manifestations notwithstanding, post-Communist Hungary has made considerable progress toward coming to grips with the tragedy of its Jewish community. The government decided to make some reparation to the surviving remnant of Hungarian Jewry and passed a law on the rights of ethnic and national minorities. Yet while the Hungarian government has been forceful in condemning antisemitism and eloquent in paying tribute to Holocaust victims, it has so far failed to make a national, collective commitment to honestly confront the Holocaust.

43

AttilaPofc

; GERMANS, HUNGARIANS, AND THE i DESTRUCTION OF HUNGARIAN JEWRY

This essay discusses aspects of German and Hungarian responsibility for the unprecedented tragedy of modern Hungarian history: the deportation and murder of hundreds of thousands of Jewish Hungarians.1 Before turning to the actual topic, two preliminary explanations will help clarify my approach and method: First, I share the view (described by, among others, the Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz)2 that the Holocaust is perhaps the most memorable event since the Crucifixion and that the flames of the Holocaust came close to destroying what we can describe as modern civilization. Second, Elie Wiesel says that scholarship can have no vocabulary for the horror of Auschwitz.3 Historical scholarship can shed light on the number of victims and analyze the related political maneuvers in the foreground and the background, but it has no key to the essence of the tragedy. The history of antisemitism prior to the Holocaust can be studied with the traditional methods of 45

Attila Pok

economic, social, political, and intellectual history, but historians working after the Holocaust cannot make do with these alone; seemingly ahistorically, they must also look for antecedents of the later tragedy utilizing the findings of other disciplines, among them social psychology. On the basis of this consideration I use the socialpsychological concept of scapegoating in the present investigation. Gordon Allport, Fritz Heider, and Kurt Lewin were the primary researchers, in their works on group dynamics and prejudices, to deal extensively with this issue.4 Analysis of the behavior of smaller and larger groups shows that whenever tensions of any kind accumulate, a demand appears for finding a scapegoat (be it an individual or a group), presented as the ultimate cause of all troubles. The prevailing attitude in the group toward the scapegoat engenders violence. Both individual and group scapegoats serve for transferring responsibility—a well-selected scapegoat may ease tensions. Responsibility, however, can be defined from at least three points of view: it can be legally interpreted (this also is not unambiguous, since the formally perfect civil and penal codes of dictatorships can serve absolute injustice), but can also be understood in a moral or historical-political sense. Scapegoats are easily born—especially in situations where not only legal norms are changing, but moral and political-historical values as well. The less definable the responsibility, and the less the responsibilities in the legal, moral, and historical-political senses of the word overlap, the easier it is for scapegoats to be born. Scapegoats are also important as objects of communal hatred when radical political mass movements aiming at dictatorial rule use hostility toward a group or a person as a mobilizing force for easy manipulation. Scapegoating, of course, is not a legal procedure; therefore, the measures and sanctions taken against scapegoats cannot be legally regulated either—which may have tragic consequences. This essay primarily addresses, with the idea of scapegoating as a foundation, the relationship between the various forms and stages of Hungarian antisemitism and the destruction of Hungarian Jewry: To what extent is there a continuity, a direct connection, between them? Did antisemitism necessarily lead to the Holocaust? Antisemitism has always been a kind of seismograph, sensitively indicating when the accumulation of social, economic, and interethnic tensions reached critical dimensions. In the early 1880s, the long-existing antisemitic ideological motives were synthesized into the groundwork for a political movement and later a political party; this reflected a qualitative change in major economic and social processes. In the political climate created by the 1873 economic 46

Destruction of Hungarian Jewry

crisis, the impoverished, indebted, and declining Hungarian gentry considered the Jews obstacles to their own "modernization," and threats to "organic" national development. Gyozo Istoczy, a leading figure of Hungarian antisemitism of the time, had this to say in the Hungarian parliament in March 1881: "The Jewish problem is not a religious issue, it is a social, national, economic, political, and lastly racial question."5 His antisemitic party Orszdgos Antiszemita Part (National Antisemitic Party), founded in 1883, had representatives in parliament from 1884 to 1892. This was, in fact, the first example of a party program that subordinated questions related to Hungary's constitutional and legal status in the Habsburg Monarchy to social and economic issues. The party's short-lived success can perhaps best be explained by the fact that its leaders strongly sensed the short- and long-term changes inherent in the decline of large segments of the middle strata of the Hungarian nobility. Instead of conducting a critical self-examination—and unlike the great figures of Hungarian liberalism—they transferred the responsibility for the decline onto the Jews. The social-psychological phenomenon of organizing movements by offering a well-defined object of common hatred to potential members is at work here. Still, this first major antisemitic upsurge in Hungarian history failed quickly: the dominant trend of Hungarian liberalism considered the assimilated Jews as allies in the actual and potential conflicts between Hungarians and national minorities, as well as in the struggle to maintain the political and cultural supremacy of Hungarians in the multiethnic state. The next and most critical juncture in the growth of antisemitism in Hungary came in the aftermath of World War I when, according to the antisemites of the day, Jews had a leading role in the antinational Communist Hungarian Soviet Republic—despite the country's "generous liberal assimilationist policy." This then contributed to substantial Hungarian territorial losses (i.e., "the Trianon disaster"). This line of argument indicates a basic flaw in the Hungarian liberalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I have chosen two case studies from 1920 to illustrate how even most self-critical, intellectually high-level analyses of the Hungarian national tragedy after World War I presented Jews as scapegoats. The first case study is the most influential book in twentiethcentury Hungarian political literature, Three Generations* This book attempted to point out the "deeper-lying" causes of Hungary's post-World War I tragedy. The author, thirty-seven-year-old Vienna archivist and historian Gyula Szekfli (well known as the author of a 47

Attila Pok

realistic book on Ferenc Rakoci's exile years, which earned him the label of a "traitor" to the sacred Hungarian traditions among extreme nationalists), found the causes of Hungary's tragedy mainly in the series of futile attempts at its own liberal transformation. Three generations were misled by the illusions of Western liberalism, which could not take root in Hungary. The backbone of the Hungarian nation, the traditional Hungarian middle class, turned out to be a loser in the emerging liberal market economy—no indigenous Hungarian bourgeoisie could develop, and the economiccultural gap wasfilledby the alien Jewish upper and middle classes. The liberal state did not care about the impoverished segments of society. This unhealthy development of Hungarian society led to a power vacuum after World War I, and to the revolutions that (possibly even more than the military defeat of the monarchy) caused the loss of two-thirds of Hungary's prewar territory. The attempted implementation of liberal principles in Hungary resulted in total failure: Hungarian national interests were pushed into the background—the non-Hungarian national minorities and especially the Jews were gaining ground. A careful reading of the book shows that Szekfu blames the Hungarian liberals who gave way to the Jews more than the Jews themselves. Still, Hungarian public opinion of the 1920s concentrated on the antisemitic implications of his argument (i.e., that the Jews should be blamed for the Hungarian national catastrophe). This interpretation could serve—and indeed did serve—the fatal function of creating a scapegoat. In Three Generations, Szekfu devotes a special chapter to those tendencies in late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century Hungarian political and intellectual life that, in one way or another, were in opposition to the dominant liberalism. He deals at some length with the so-called bourgeois radicals who, from a leftist platform, criticized pre-World War I Hungarian political regimes. They studied modern French, English, and American sociology and wanted to apply their newly acquired intellectual arsenal for planning the modernization of Hungarian society. They concentrated their attacks on the "feudal-clerical" reactionary forces and the rule of the "noble-plutocratic" class, which, in their interpretation, was a peculiar kind of scapegoat. Oszkar Jaszi, the leading figure of this group, was forced into exile (to Vienna) after World War I. In the same year that Szekfii's celebrated work came out, Jaszi published a book on the causes of Hungary's post-World War I tragedy. In his Hungarian Calvary, Hungarian Resurrection, Jaszi also addresses the Jewish problem.7 48

Destruction of Hungarian Jewry

As different as his personality and the framework of his analysis might be, on this crucial point he seems to come very close to Szekfli's conclusions. According to Szekfu's reasoning, the deepest root of the problem was that real liberalism could not gain ground in Hungary: "Since the noble-plutocratic class rule was unable to do any organizational and creative work . . . the Hungarian soul turned out to be sterile and the thinning ranks of the army of culture were increasingly filled by aliens, first of all Jews, which in turn led to a disgusting mixture of feudalism and usury."8 Szekfii thus blames a rootless liberalism imposed on Hungary, whereas Jaszi blames the lack of real liberalism for the enfeeblement of Hungarian society. Still, it follows from both arguments that a successful medicine for the fatally sick Hungarian society would be to limit Jewish presence in Hungarian economic, social, and cultural life. A practical implementation of this demand was the numerus clausus law of 1920.9 Szekfii and Jaszi, of course, had nothing in common with radical right-wing students and politicians who argued in favor of limiting the number of Jewish students at universities—but it was quite impossible to keep antisemitism within moderate bounds. The numerus clausus law represented merely the tip of the iceberg in this second major upsurge of antisemitism in Hungary. In his illuminating monograph, Rolf Fischer lists numerous examples from various fields of public life of policies resulting from dissimilation on the national and local level.10 He mentions Prime Minister Pal Teleki's 1921 proposal of a separate labor service for Jews who could not be drafted for regular military service. Fischer also details the decision of a chief judge in the village of Derecske, not far from Budapest, who argued as follows when refusing to grant permission for a Jewish entrepreneur to start an industrial enterprise in 1922: "The request will be refused because on the territory of truncated Hungary the primary task of officials is to guarantee the living conditions of Hungarians. If he granted the request of a member of a different race, a chief judge would be acting against his obligations."11 A failed medicine—the reemergence of antisemitic views—again, as a peculiar kind of seismograph, shows that the accumulation of social, economic, and political tensions reached a critical level. Though by the late 1920s and early 1930s antisemitic views and movements were, with the gradual recovery of the country, pushed back, there remained a striking difference between the pre- and the post-World War I periods. While before the war antisemitism was 49

AttilaPok

contrary to the main trend of Hungarian politics, during the interwar period it became part of governmental policy and legislation. At this point, it is appropriate to mention briefly the issue of German responsibility for the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. The 1938-41 period, on the one hand, marks the return of many of the territories previously lost to the "mother country"; on the other hand, it also marks stages of increasing discrimination against Jews, including those living in the regained territories. Even if the first anti-Jewish law, of 1938,12 cannot in any way be attributed to German pressure, it can hardly be denied that both the return of territory and the degree of discrimination were largely determined by the "German factor" in Hungarian politics. The German-Hungarian relationship after Hitler's rise to power was shaped by three major factors: Hungary's economic dependence on Germany, shared interest in the revision of the post-World War I peace treaties, and certain similarities between the two countries' internal power structures.13 Additionally, we know from a large number of sources that the Germans grew increasingly impatient over the "too generous" treatment of Jews in Hungary. Despite the cruelty of the labor service system—the openly racist third anti-Jewish law of 194114—and the massacres at Kamenets-Podolsk and Ujvidek (Novi Sad), Romania's Ion Antonescu, Croatia's Ante Pavelic, and Slovakia's Josef Tiso persistently complained to Hitler about Hungarian leniency in regard to the Jews. Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Kallay and other politicians believed that there was a way to work out a middle road in this respect as well, which in turn might also help Hungary retreat from the war. March 19, 1944, brought about the end of such illusions. With the Germans occupying Hungary, the conservative elite also undoubtedly suffered serious losses. This elite, indeed, had helped to preserve elements of constitutional order and a relatively normal framework for everyday life. Despite all good intentions, however, the outcome was an unprecedented disaster in modern Hungary. Of course, members of the so-called Christian national middle class who held leading positions in public administration and the army, and some of whom were part of the machinery of deportation, also suffered losses. Still, this is not an acceptable argument for relativizing the losses of Hungarian Jewry. There is no doubt that if the Germans had not occupied Hungary in March 1944, the full horror of the Holocaust would not have extended to that country. However, we immediately have to add to this commonplace statement that a long series of failures by an antiquated authoritarian regime greatly contributed to Hungary's beso

Destruction of Hungarian Jewry

ing forced into this situation. On the one hand, for many years this regime managed to keep the extreme Right out of power; on the other hand, it incorporated what was construed as "moderate" antisemitism into governmental policy. It should be noted in this context that the same policy that helped pave the way for the Hungarian Holocaust also led to an overall national catastrophe, a catastrophe that endangered the culture and civilization jointly created by all peoples living in Hungary—Hungarians, Germans, Slavs, and others from all religious denominations. We must, however, never forget the outstanding figures of intellectual and practical opposition to antisemitism in Hungary, or the "righteous Gentiles" to whose brave deeds eternal credit is due. Many of them belonged to the ranks of the conservative elite and the Christian middle classes, whose responsibility has been mentioned earlier. The fact that they did not, could not, set the main trend must not obliterate the credit that is their due. There is no collective guilt—but there is no collective innocence either. I shall summarize by again noting the scapegoating concept of social psychology. Jews have often been forced into the position of scapegoats in modern Hungarian history. Scapegoats have the primary socio-psychological function of carrying transferred guilt. Here the question logically arises: What kind of guilt in modern Hungarian history was transferred onto them? The answer is one single word: failure. National and economic failures could easily be explained by transferring guilt (i.e., by holding the Jews responsible). Jews in Hungary also fulfilled another important socialpsychological function of scapegoating: they were often presented as objects of common hatred, functioning as "mobilizing scapegoats" for various types of rightist political movements and parties. Tracking scapegoats is an unavoidable social-psychological process. In a classical biblical sense, however, scapegoats were known to be innocent. Contrary to this, antisemites considered Jews to be responsible for all types of misfortune. Still, the various forms of antisemitism in Hungary did not necessarily have to lead to the Holocaust. A solid bridge does not stand between Hungarian antisemitic parties and movements, various forms of anti-Jewish legislation, and the Holocaust—only temporary planks. As Lesek Kolakowski observes, the seemingly harmless, dispersed, and by themselves weak elements of antisemitism can easily and quickly be combined to form an exploding mixture.15 To an increasing extent, various forms of antisemitism flourished in Hungary from the 1880s onward; until World War I they 51

AttilaPok

went against the main trend of political life, and after World War I they were part of the main trend. German pressure, followed by direct German intervention, was the force that laid down the planks between antisemitism and the Holocaust—fusing elements of antisemitism into a most lethal mixture and bringing about the greatest tragedy of modern Hungarian history.

NOTES 1. I conscientiously use the term Jewish Hungarians and not Hungarian Jews in order to emphasize that Jews—the same as Catholics, Lutherans, or Calvinists—are among the denominations in Hungary and are not a race or other segregated group. 2. Imre Kertesz, A holocaust mint kultura: Hdrom eloadds (The Holocaust as culture: Three lectures) (Budapest: Szazadveg, 1993). 3. Irving Abrahamson, ed., Against Silence: The Voice and Vision ofElie Wiesel (New York: Holocaust Library, 1985). 4. Gordon W. Airport, The Nature of Prejudice (Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley, 1954); Fritz Heider, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (New York: Wiley, 1958); Kurt Lewin, Topological Psychology (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1969). See also the excellent study by Ferenc Pataki, "Bunbakkepzesiforyamatok a tarsadalomban" (Scapegoating in society) in his Rendszervdltds utdn: Tdrsadalomlelektani terepszemle (After the change of the political system: A social psychological perspective) (Budapest: Scientia Humana, 1993), 83-126. 5. Quoted in Zsidokerdes, asszimildcio, antiszemitizmus: Tanulmdnyok azsidokerdesrol a huszadik szdzadi Magyarorszdgon (Jewish question, assimilation, antisemitism: Studies on the Jewish question in twentieth-century Hungary) (Budapest: Gondolat, 1984), 18. 6. Gyula Szekfu, Hdrom nemzedek (Three generations) (1920; reprint, Budapest: Mecenas, 1989). 7. Oszkar Jaszi, Magyar kdlvdria, magyar feltdmadds: A ketforradalom ertelme, jelentosege es tanulsdgai (Hungarian Calvary, Hungarian Resurrection: Meaning, significance, and message of the two revolutions) (Vienna: Becsi Magyar Kiado, 1920). The book was reprinted by Aurora Publishers in Munich in 1969. 8. Szekfu, Hdrom nemzedek, 154. 9. Passed by the Hungarian Parliament on September 26, 1920, as Act 1920: XXV. 10. Rolf Fischer, Entwicklungsstufen des Antisemitismus in Ungarn 1867-1939, Sudosteuropaische Arbeiten, vol. 85 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1988). 11. Ibid., 156,159. 12. Passed by Parliament on May 29,1938, as Act 1938: XV. 52

Destruction of Hungarian Jewry 13. See Gyorgy Ranki, "A nemetek szerepe a magyar zsidok elpusztitasaban" (The role of Germans in the destruction of Hungarian Jewry), in Az 1944. ev historidja (The history of the year 1944), ed. Ferenc Glatz (Budapest: LapkiadoaVallalat, 1984), 64-68. 14. Passed by Parliament on August 8, 1941, as Act 1941 :XV. 15. Quoted by Peter Kende, Ropirat a zsidokerdesrol (Flyer on the Jewish question) (Budapest: Magveto, 1989), 146.

53

Rudolf Vrba

: THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE ; HOLOCAUST IN HUNGARY: = AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

INTRODUCTION

Hungary was an "independent" ally of Nazi Germany until March 18, 1944. An invasion by German troops on March 19, as well as a number of imprecisely defined "legalistic" changes, marked the "occupation" of Hungary. The regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, retained a large measure of power, but German presence became increasingly intrusive. Significantly, Horthy's police and gendarmerie apparatus continued to function throughout this period. Jews were ordered, as of April 5, to wear the yellow star. Shortly thereafter, within four to six weeks, mass deportations of Jews began, clearly with Horthy's approval. On July 7, after neutral and Allied powers issued various appeals and threats of reprisals, Horthy ordered these deportations to cease. By that time, 437,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz. About 400,000 were murdered on arrival. Those remaining were sent to slave labor: fewer than 5 percent of these deportees ever returned.1 55

RudolfVrba

Historians are often puzzled by the remarkable swiftness of this whole operation. Less than four months elapsed between the Nazi invasion of Hungary on March 19 and the end of the deportations on July 7. However, it seldom is recognized that preparations for the murder of these Hungarian Jews had begun at Auschwitz at a much earlier date. I, myself, as a prisoner at Auschwitz beginning in June 1942, learned of these preparations as early as January 15,1944. Previous procedures, employed by the Nazis for the mass murder of Jews arriving from countries in Nazi-occupied Europe from September 1942 to March 1944, were now changed. Specifically, a new railway ramp, providing direct access to the gas chambers and crematoria, was constructed in Auschwitz-Birkenau. This allowed for the increasingly rapid and efficient mass murder of hundreds of thousands of victims scheduled to be transported from Hungary— the last and largest surviving Jewish community in Europe. Secrecy was essential for the success of this mass murder program.2 I escaped from Auschwitz to Slovakia, together with my fellow prisoner Alfred Wetzler, on April 7,1944, with the intention of alerting the Jewish Council in Hungary of the impending and imminent danger facing Hungarian Jewry. I shall describe the principal relevant events before, during, and after our escape. In brief, within fourteen days after escaping from Auschwitz we were able to make contact with the Jewish Council in Slovakia, who gave us the facilities to write down our experiences. The ensuing document became known as the Vrba-Wetzler Report,3 sometimes also referred to as the Vrba-Wetzler statement,4 or anonymously as "Auschwitz Notebook,"5 or "Auschwitz Protocols."6 At the same time we reported on preparations being made in Auschwitz for the impending "reception" of the Hungarian Jews. This report was in the hands of the Jewish Council in Hungary before the end of April 1944. Post factum, we can state that none of the 437,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz between May 15 and July 9, 1944, were ever given this information. The failure of the official Jewish representatives in Hungary to inform the Jewish population about the death mills in Auschwitz contributed to Adolf Eichmann's stunning success in so rapidly organizing the deportation of the majority of Hungarian Jews. It is my contention that this tragedy could have been greatly impeded if our warnings had been effectively and swiftly communicated to the intended victims. Of course, the full and enthusiastic cooperation of Horthy's gendarmerie was also critical. These factors resulted in the annihilation of the Hungarian Jewish community at a rate more rapid than any other in the tragic history of the Holocaust. 56

Preparations for the Holocaust in Hungary

In recent years, some historians have tried to argue that Wetzler and I were not acting on our own initiative, but were "messengers" of some mythical organization also operating in Auschwitz. Others indicate that we were able to describe only those events that took place in Auschwitz during the period of our incarceration (i.e., from April 1942 for Wetzler, or June 1942 for myself, to April 7, 1944). They claim that we could not have been aware of the impending fate of the Hungarian Jews,7 and hence were not in position to alert anyone in Hungary of what was about to happen. Quite apart from the fact that the information contained in the Vrba-Wetzler Report was sufficiently detailed and graphic to alert any potential victim of the dreadful danger, there is evidence that leading Jews in both Slovakia and Hungary immediately recognized the importance of our eyewitness account and the reliability of our prediction that the Holocaust in Hungary was imminent. As evidence I mention the letter sent by Rabbi Michael Beer Weissmandel (signed M. B.) and Gisi Fleischmann (signed G. Fl.), a leading Zionist activist in Slovakia and a relative of Rabbi Weissmandel's, both of whom were active members of the Jewish Council of Slovakia. This letter,8 dispatched on May 22 from Bratislava in Slovakia to the Zionist HeHalutz (pioneer movement) in Switzerland, demonstrates that the Jewish Councils in both Slovakia and Hungary were, on the basis of the report submitted by Wetzler and myself, well informed as early as the end of April 1944 about preparations made in Auschwitz expressly and specifically for the impending mass murder of Hungarian Jews. This accounts for the urgency of their appeals for help to their contacts in Switzerland. Though no immediate response was forthcoming from the recipients, the subsequent publication of the contents of the Vrba-Wetzler Report in the West resulted in pressure upon Horthy's government:9 the massive deportation of Hungarian Jews was stopped early, in the first part of July 1944. Thereafter the death toll among Jews in Hungary declined in absolute numbers, although the Horthy regime was replaced, in October 1944, by the more radically pro-Nazi government of Ferenc Szalasi and his Arrow Cross movement.10 STREAMLINED METHODS OF MASS MURDER AND ROBBERY IN AUSCHWITZ (JUNE 1942-APRIL 1944)

Described here is the broader historical content in which my escape from Auschwitz occurred. The details of theflight,as well 57

Rudolf Vrba

its preparations that constitute the Vrba-Wetzler Report will now be summarized. On January 15, 1944 (i.e., about two months before the actual occupation of Hungary), at about 10:00 A.M., I heard for the first time about the impending mass murder of about a million Hungarian Jews who were then still living in relative freedom. This news was communicated to me in Birkenau at the southern end of Section Blla, also known as the Quarantine Camp. The bearer of the news was a German Kapo (a prisoner—a trustee of sorts—assigned to administrative or specialized duties), a Berliner whose first name was Yup (Joseph). At that moment he was standing on the other side of the southern end of the electric fence surrounding Section Blla of the camp (see fig. 1). Specifically, he was standing on the road between Section BI (women's camp) and Section BII (men's camp), about 30 meters west of the main entrance into Camp Birkenau on the road leading directly into Crematorium II and Crematorium III. Both crematoria were situated about 1 km west of this point, within the internal perimeter (Kleine Postenkette) of Birkenau. I had known Kapo Yup since early in my internment in Auschwitz, but had not seen him for at least a year before this meeting. A number of favorable circumstances existed in connection to our acquaintance and our January meeting; furthermore, it was a stroke of fortune that he managed to pass on this communication, which, under the circumstances, was highly confidential. This German political prisoner risked his life by giving me this information. In fact, a certain mutual trust had become well established long before our accidental meeting in mid-January 1944. By this time I had been a prisoner in Auschwitz—under my former name, Walter Rosenberg, prisoner no. 44070—for more than a year and a half. On the basis of previous experience, I had good reason to trust the reliability of the information communicated to me by Kapo Yup. In order to explain my past experiences in Auschwitz and why I believed this information to be true, I shall have to start this story on June 30, 1942, when I was transferred to Auschwitz from the Majdanek concentration camp, near Lublin. In August 1942, less than two months after my arrival at Auschwitz, I was included in a special working group of prisoners called the Aufraumungskommando. This name, which translated into English means a "clean-up working group," or "putting-in-order working group," was a Nazi euphemism. The actual assignment of this detail (composed of two hundred to eight hundred prisoners at various periods) was to eliminate all traces of routinely organized murder and to confiscate Jewish possessions from the transports to Auschwitz—arranged by the German administration under the pre58

Preparations for the Holocaust in Hungary

text of "resettlement." These transports arrived at a ramp specially built for this purpose. The first such ramp (the so-called old ramp— to differentiate it from the one built in 1944) was a wooden platform about three hundred to five hundred meters long. Along this ramp the arriving deportees were unloaded from the freight cars, made to leave their luggage, and hurried down a wooden staircase stretching along the entire length of the ramp. They then were moved to the eastern dead end of a special road that reached another dead end about two kilometers to the west, at the gates of the gas chambers in Birkenau. The ramp was situated between camps Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (i.e., Birkenau), on a piece of ground that belonged to neither camp and was theoretically "civilian territory." This oddity was due to the fact that the main railway line connecting Vienna to Krakow passed between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II; from this railway line a short siding branched off, and it was this sidetrack along which the ramp had been built (seefig.2). The prisoners belonging to the Aufrdumungskommando (also called the "Canada" commando in the prisoners' slang)11 were housed in Block (i.e., barrack) 4 in Auschwitz I. However, on January 15, 1943, these prisoners were transferred to Birkenau and housed in Block 16 (Birkenau, Section Ib), where we stayed until June 8,1943. The general procedures on the old ramp and in the Aufrdumungskommando remained unchanged during this time, except that the prisoners of the Aufrdumungskommando were marched there from Birkenau rather than from Auschwitz I. I became acquainted with Kapo Yup in 1942, while still imprisoned in Auschwitz I, before I was moved to Birkenau. He was a former German trade unionist who had been arrested in the 1930s for failure to comply with the Hitlerian "new order." He spent a number of years in various concentration camps until he was finally transferred to Auschwitz. He was known to me as a "red" Kapo (wearing the red triangle denoting a political prisoner). Although outwardly Kapo Yup complied with the concentration camp system (and what else could he do?!), inside he remained anti-Nazi. Among the non-Jewish German prisoners in Auschwitz there were very few of this kind. We became acquainted through common friends (other "red" prisoners in Auschwitz), and he was aware that I had been somewhat involved with "leftist" anti-Nazi activities before I was brought to Auschwitz, resulting in a certain amount of mutual trust between us. After I was transferred to Birkenau, as I have said, I did not see him again for at least a year, when he suddenly and unexpectedly appeared in Birkenau. As I will describe in more detail, the reasons for his being in Birkenau in January 1944 were 59

AUSCHWITZ II (BIRKENAU) CAMP SUMMER 1944 CAMP PLAN LEGEND H

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IIIllllllllllllllll II Illllllllllllllll— II Illllllllllllllll Illllllllllllilllll — II Illllllllllllllll Illllllllllllilllll — II Illllllllllllllll II Illllllllllllllll — II Illllllllllllllll Camp Perimeter: Enclosed by electrified barbed wire 13 feet high.

I Rail Spur to y Main Line To Oswiecim Station I and Oswiecim Town

(Partially Completed C a m p Extension)

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| Theresienstadt Family Camp

[$$$^1 Gypsy Camp HI || II Medical Barracks |

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I Hungarian Women's Camp

]

1 Women's Camp H

S S Barracks and C a m p Administration

Men's Quarantine Camp

Watchtowers Wooded Area

Camp Plan Not to Scale

SELECTED FEATURES 1. "Sauna" (Disinfection) 2. Gas Chamber and Crematorium #2 3. Gas Chamber and Crematorium #3 4. Gas Chamber and Crematorium #4 5. Gas Chamber and Crematorium #5 6. Cremation Pyres 7. Mass Graves for Soviet POWs 8. Main Guard House 9. Barracks for Disrobing 10. Sewage Treatment Plants 11. Medical Experiments Barrack 12. Ash Pits 13. "Rampe" (Railroad Platform) 14. Provisional Gas Chambers #1 15. Provisional Gas Chambers #2 Figure 1. Map of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) after the new ramp was installed. I met Kapo Yup on January 15, 1944. He stood just behind the main gate (#8); I stood just across the fence at the right, inside the barracks area.

APPROXIMATE SITUATION SKETCH OF AUSCHWITZ AND BIRKENAU CAMP DISTRICTS

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LEGEND

• IJLJJiJI- Gas chamber and crematorium with distinctive sign a high chimney

Figure 2. This sketch shows the relative positions of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) to the "old" ramp. Auschwitz I (on the left side of the sketch) includes the building of DAW (Deutsche Ausriistungswerke), Siemens and Krupp factories. The "Canada stores" were situated next to DAW. On the right side of the sketch the map of Birkenau is shown, including the four gas chambers and crematoria. The railway line with the branch serving the ramp was situated between the outer chains of sentry posts of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) as shown above. The sketch was prepared by myself (Rudolf Vrba) in Zilina on April 25, 1944, shortly after my escape from Auschwitz (Birkenau). (This rendition of the sketch is from the Englishlanguage version of "The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz [Oswiecim] and Birkenau in Upper Silesia," [Vrba-Wexler Report], Washington, D.C.: Executive Office of the President, War Refugee Board, 1944).

Preparations for the Holocaust in Hungary

connected with the building of a new ramp for unloading the arriving deportees. The work of the prisoner group to which I was assigned in the Aufraumungskommando had the following routine. Whenever a transport arrival was announced (by telephone from a railway station situated near Auschwitz), an SS-man on a motorcycle arrived at the barrack where the prisoners belonging to the Aufraumungskommando spent nights. A group of these prisoners (one hundred to two hundred men, depending on the size of the expected transport) was then marched out of the heavily guarded camp to the ramp (as previously mentioned, this is the ramp I often refer to for clarity as "the old ramp," even though at this time it was still the only ramp in operation), while surrounded by a group of about a dozen heavily armed SS-men. When we arrived at the ramp, a group of about fifty SS-men with firearms would surround the ramp. Numerous lampposts along the ramp were lit so that the light was as bright as in daytime, whether it was summer or winter, rain, snow, or fog. After a group of SS-officers accompanied by noncommissioned officers (NCOs) (all carrying bamboo walking canes, not truncheons) arrived, the train (usually consisting of twenty to forty, but occasionally fifty to sixty freight cars) was pulled into the illuminated area by a steam locomotive and positioned along the now surrounded and brightly illuminated ramp. (As mentioned earlier, the ramp was situated between the outer chains of guards of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, respectively). The SS-men unlocked and opened the freight cars in rapid succession along the entire length of the train. Though these transports arrived from different countries in Europe, the same sight was, to varying degrees, unveiled to us each time (transports arrived from France, Belgium, Holland, Bohemia [from Terezin], Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine [mainly from Grodno and Bialystok], and Greece). During the time I worked in the Aufraumungskommando (August 1942 to June 1943), I saw between one and three hundred such transports arrive on the ramp. As I never made written notes on these events during my incarceration in Auschwitz, I cannot give a closer estimate of the exact number of arriving transports during that time. I tried, however, to keep a reasonably good mental record of the total number of people who arrived in this way.12 The floors of the freight cars were covered with luggage, on which cowered the masses of deportees, usually eighty per freight car, sometimes a hundred, or in some cases even more. In such extreme cases of overcrowding, the number of dead on arrival could 63

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be several dozen people, since the individuals traveled in these locked and heavily guarded freight cars for two to ten days. As a rule the deportees carried along enough food in their luggage, but they were not given enough drinking water during the journey and, tormented by thirst, usually arrived in a hardly imaginable stage of hygienic, physical, and mental deterioration. Thus, they were generally willing to obey any order when promised water—a promise hardly ever kept. Most of the deportees (80 to 90 percent) were killed in the nearby gas chambers soon after their arrival, dying thirsty. They were first ordered by the SS NCOs, swinging their walking canes, to leave the freight cars and descend the staircase of the ramp onto the wide dead-end road built along the ramp, while leaving their luggage in the freight cars. "Raus, raus, alles liegen lassen, raus," was most often the order barked by the SS-men, who usually added more emphasis by an indiscriminate use of the walking canes, which they wielded as truncheons. The deportees were marshalled into a column that had to pass by an SS doctor, who performed the "selection," dividing the arriving deportees into those destined for the gas chambers and "the others" (i.e., those found suitable for slave labor, who immediately were marched off the ramp into either Auschwitz I or Auschwitz II (Birkenau) for registration as prisoners). No additional registration was made of the larger group of deportees, who were immediately transported (not marched) to the gas chambers. A fleet of heavy trucks used for this purpose—not too many, perhaps half a dozen—was parked on the dead-end road. Those individuals identified as "unfit for work" (all women with children, all children, the old and infirm) were immediately ordered to ascend a wooden portable staircase and were loaded onto the platforms of one of these trucks. A truck was then driven to the nearby gas chamber in Birkenau as soon as exactly one hundred persons were loaded. In the meantime, prisoners working in the Aufrdumungskommando had sprung into feverish activity, frequently prodded on by a hail of well-directed walking-cane blows from the SS supervisors. Their first task was to empty the freight cars of their contents. The dead and the dying were dragged im Laufschritt (a Nazi euphemism for frantic running under a hail of blows by walking canes) to one of the waiting trucks, which departed directly to the crematoria as soon as one hundred deportees—dead or dying—had been loaded. The trucks then returned to the dead-end road near the ramp, ready to be reloaded, either with a further batch of people destined for the gas chambers, or with the luggage of the victims. 64

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Collection of this luggage was also a task of the Aufrdumungskommando. Trucks loaded with luggage went in the opposite direction, into the separate "Canada" storage area situated in Auschwitz I, near the facilities of Deutsche Ausrilstungswerke (DAW; see fig. 2). Altogether, then, the trucks followed a pendulum-style trajectory from the dead-end road: when carrying victims they moved westward about two kilometers to the crematoria in Auschwitz II, and when carrying the luggage of the newly arrived deportees they moved eastward about two kilometers to the Canada storage areas in Auschwitz I. When all the freight cars were empty, Aufraumungskommando workers meticulously cleaned the cars of all traces of the former human cargo (blood, excrement, rubbish, etc.). After a strict inspection confirmed the cleanliness of the cars, and the train departed, the last traces had to be eliminated from the ramp and carted away; a dozen SS guards would then march the Aufrdumungskommando back into their barracks. No more than two to three hours elapsed from the arrival of each transport to the removal of its last traces from the ramp. By the time we prisoners belonging to the Aufrdumungskommando left the scene, 80 to 90 percent of the arrivals were dead in the gas chambers and were already being "processed" in the crematoria, their luggage was already stored in the Canada storage areas in Auschwitz I, and the ramp was again immaculately clean and ready to receive the next transport. Thus, outwardly visible signs of this well-organized robbery and mass murder disappeared within two to three hours after a train arrived at the ramp. When we prisoners were not working on the ramp we worked in the Canada storage areas where, under close supervision of the SS, we broke the locks off of or ripped the luggage of all the new arrivals, regardless of their further fate, and sorted the contents. We burned all papers, books, documents, and photo albums. Hundreds of thousands of first- to third-quality men's suits and women's clothes, blankets, underwear, furs, kitchenware, baby carriages, eyeglasses, medicaments, shoes, and other personal effects were carefully sorted, packed according to quality, and dispatched to Germany from the Canada storage areas in more or less irregular transports, as the goods accumulated. Fourth-quality clothing not deemed worth disinfecting was dispatched to a paper factory in Memel. Almost every day we would fill an entire separate suitcase with hard currency (dollars, pounds sterling, Swiss francs), as well as diamonds, gold, and jewelry that had been found more or less well hidden in the luggage or its contents (e.g., inside a can of shoeshine cream or toothpaste, in the heel of a shoe, sewn into a seam or disguised pocket in clothing). These valuables were carried away 65

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daily by the SS, presumably for the Reichsbank. Sometimes the collection suitcase was so full of jewelry and banknotes that the SS-men "in service" (usually SS- Unterscharfuhrer Otto Graf from Vienna or SS- Unterscharfuhrer Hans Kuhnemann from Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia)13 had to use their boots to press down the contents so that the suitcase could be closed. Prisoners attempting to hide any valuables or declared guilty of not finding them ("dereliction of work duties") usually were disciplined on the spot, by clubbing or by a pistol shot, sometimes both. While ^nAufrdumungskommando member (from August 1942 to June 1943), I of course had firsthand experience as to the number of "resettled" Jews arriving in Auschwitz from Europe. I stopped being a member of the Aufrdumungskommando on June 8, 1943, when major administrative changes took place in Birkenau. During this reorganization I became a Blockschreiber in Block 15 of the Quarantine Camp (Blla). The word Blockschreiber is typical Nazi concentration camp slang meaning "barracks pen pusher," although the translators of the Vrba-Wetzler Report in Washington sometimes translated it as "registrar" for lack of a better English equivalent. This new assignment again gave me an excellent observation post for obtaining firsthand information on the number and origin of virtually all arriving transports, as I will explain in more detail in the following. Until June 8, 1943, all prisoners in Auschwitz II (Birkenau) occupied Section I, which was divided into Section Bla, the women's camp, and Section Bib, the men's camp. Meanwhile, during 194243 a new section, BII, was under construction. It was divided into six subsections, Blla through Bllf (the capital B denotes Bauabschnitt—section). On June 8, all the (male) prisoners in Bib were transferred into Blld, and both Bla and Bib became female camps. Blla became a "Quarantine Camp" for new arrivals (i.e., for those men chosen for slave labor and given a prisoner number, while the rest of their transport was murdered in the gas chambers). Sections Bllb, BIIc, and Bile remained empty for some time after the major reorganization, and Section Bllf became a Krankenbau (sick bay), where sick prisoners were deposited either to recover (primitive medical treatment was sometimes available), to die on their own, or to be sent to the gas chamber and crematorium. Although I was no longer a member of the Aufraumungskommando after June 8, 1943,1 again was able to observe very well from my new placement in Blla (see fig. 1) the influx of new victims into Auschwitz. This was due to the fact that from the old ramp there were only two possible roads to the gas chambers. As described 66

Preparations for the Holocaust in Hungary

above, trucks carrying new arrivals passed under the main gate to Birkenau and continued between Section I and Section II to crematoria II and III with their adjacent gas chambers. Trucks headed to the other crematoria did not enter the main gate, but instead made a 90-degree turn to the right, continued 800 meters northward along Blla until they reached the northern end, then made a 90-degree turn to the left (west) and continued along the northern edge of Blla through Bllf for about one kilometer, into the complex of crematoria IV and V with their adjacent gas chambers (seefig.1). In both cases the trucks passed fifty meters or less from Block 15 of Quarantine Camp Blla, where I was Blockschreiber. I was well aware from my previous experience on the ramp that each truck carried exactly one hundred people. Counting the number of passing trucks gave me a good estimate of the size of each transport. Moreover, those men in each transport who were not gassed on arrival were (after a shower, disinfection, and a change into prisoners' garb) first brought into Blla, where they were registered. During the process of registration, I as a Blockschreiber had the opportunity to talk to them and find out the country and locality of their transport's origin. These new prisoners usually knew how many people had been included in their own transport. This gave me a means of doublechecking the estimates based on the number of trucks carrying new arrivals into the crematoria. (I could as easily count these trucks at night as in the daytime, since the whole barrack shook when a truck passed). From the spring of 1942 to January 15, 1944, according to my calculations, more than 1.5 million Jews were murdered in Auschwitz.14 All of these masses of people had arrived on the old ramp, and their robbery and murder had been carried out smoothly and without a hitch when viewed from the point of view of the SS. I became convinced that if at this point the SS wanted to introduce major changes in the well-established and smoothly running procedure, there would have to be a very good reason.

SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU: 1944

On January 15, 1944, at about 10:00 A.M., I saw from my barrack in Blla a group of unusual-looking prisoners being marched through the arched gate of Birkenau into the space between Sections Bla and Blla (see fig. 1). These prisoners were relatively well dressed and thus it was obvious to me that they were neither Jews 67

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nor from Birkenau. In some cases, groups of the veteran Polish prisoners in Auschwitz I were better dressed. When I approached the electric fence that separated them from me, I could hear them speaking Polish among themselves. I could also see that they were putting up tripods with theodolites, carrying around calibrated rods, and recording measurements, like land surveyors before starting a new building project. I soon became aware that the Kapo at the head of this group of prisoners was Kapo Yup, whom I had met while a prisoner in Auschwitz I. The Kapo recognized me, approached the electric fence, and (in a conversation across the barbed wire of the fence) first expressed great surprise to see me, then expressed his pleasure at seeing that I was still alive and "looking well," and then wondered whether I could provide ("organize," in camp slang) some cigarettes, as indeed I could. Thereafter, I asked him what he and "his men" were doing there, and he told me (emphasizing that it was a secret) that they were building a new railway line leading straight to the crematoria. I expressed surprise and mentioned that not so long ago the existing ("old") ramp had been repaired. Kapo Yup then told me that he had overheard from the SS that about a million Hungarian Jews would be arriving soon, and that the unloading system on the old ramp would be unable to handle such masses of people with sufficient speed. I immediately believed this information. I knew, from past experience, that the annihilation of such an enormous number of victims within a very short time would necessitate changes in the well-established procedures on the ramp. In Birkenau we knew that Hungary was the only possible, and indeed last major, community of Jews in Europe; their rapid annihilation would indeed require modification of the routine procedures used in Auschwitz at that time. The relatively minor modification of extending the railway connection about two kilometers—from the old ramp directly to the crematoria—would eliminate the need to transport a million victims from the ramp to the crematoria on thousands of separate truck rides, accompanied by armed guards on motorcycles. In my mind, I immediately accepted as fact that the Germans were then preparing for the mass murder of Hungarian Jews and that Yup was giving me perfectly truthful and reliable information. Many historians still do not appear to appreciate that the Germans had planned the mass murder of Hungarian Jews well in advance of the so-called occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944. As is now known, Eichmann and his henchmen arrived in Budapest immediately after the occupation began with detailed plans as to whom 68

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to contact among the Jewish dignitaries and notables in Hungary.15 They expected to use the files and connections of these Jews and their organizations, as well as those of the Hungarian authorities, for a rapid administrative ghettoization of the Jewish masses, followed by their swift deportation to the mass murder machinery in Auschwitz. Clearly, they planned the "occupation" of Hungary well in advance, and the role of Auschwitz was an important part of this planning. After my meeting with Kapo Yup on January 15, 1944,1 was reminded daily of the Hungarian Jews' impending fate. Yup's working group was soon followed by hundreds of other prisoners, now mainly "locals" from Birkenau, who were put to work on the new ramp. It was soon clear, even to an untrained eye, that a railway section was indeed being built that would extend directly to the crematoria. News of the fate awaiting Hungarian Jews also reached me by other channels. In Quarantine Camp Blla there was an active group of Kapos, most of whom were "criminals" (German prisoners identified by green triangles, denoting Berufsverbrecher—"professional criminals"). These men were organized by a Lagerdlteste (camp elder, the highest prisoner rank in a camp section) named Tyn, a German professional criminal wearing a black triangle (denoting an "antisocial element"). Tyn and his cronies in the camp kept in close contact with the two SS-Unterscharfuhrers, Buntrock and Kurpanik,16 who represented the SS in the Quarantine Camp. Both SS-men were alcoholics; the money for their expensive habit was provided by Tyn and his fellows, who terrorized the newly arrived prisoners (the Zugang) in order to extort gold and money that some of them had managed to retain secretly on their bodies. These SS NCOs were talkative when inebriated—which was often the case— and I quickly learned by this confidential grapevine that "Hungarian salami" was coming soon. A fact of Auschwitz was that transports from various countries were characterized by certain country-specific, long-lasting edible provisions in the deportees' luggage—the kinds of food still available in war-torn Germanoccupied Europe. This food was taken from the new arrivals along with their luggage, as described earlier; from the Canada storage areas the perishable goods as well as the canned foods found their way to the dining rooms of the SS-officers and SS NCOs. Some of the food was also, at great risk, smuggled by prisoners into the camp. When a series of transports of Jews from the Netherlands arrived, cheeses enriched the meager rations. Sardines were the fare when a series of transports of French Jews arrived, and halva and 69

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olives when transports of Jews from Greece reached the camp. Now the SS were talking of "Hungarian salami"—a well-known Hungarian provision suitable for a long journey. Secrecy as to the true purpose of Auschwitz and its industry of death, practiced there for almost two years, was of course very important for the continuing "business" of Auschwitz. Remarkably, however, within the confines of Auschwitz-Birkenau itself, secrecy was not strictly guarded. The SS assumed that in spite of an active "grapevine communication" inside the camp, which they could not stop, no information would leak to the outside world. This assumption was quite justified. Until our escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944, the real purpose of this capital of the Nazis' mass murder and robbery machinery remained a secret to the outside world. Since the war, numerous historians have documented how well the Germans preserved that secret.17 Inside Auschwitz, virtually all prisoners knew that most newly arrived Jews would be killed in the gas chambers. However, throughout my stay in Auschwitz from June 1942 until April 1944, during which time hundreds of transports of Jews arrived from all over Europe, I never met a single prisoner who had known anything about the gas chambers of Auschwitz prior to arrival. The new arrivals' puzzling ignorance, over such a long period, concerning their true destination was astonishing not only to me but to all of the prisoners living in Auschwitz at that time, and has remained so in the subsequent writings of many Auschwitz survivors.18 Preserving the secrecy of the Auschwitz death factory was the cornerstone of the success of the mass murder and robbery routinely practiced there over a two-year period. The alleged passivity of hundreds of thousands of Jewish mothers and fathers who brought their children to their sordid execution in the Auschwitz gas chambers was not the result of "Jewish inferiority," as the Nazis claimed. Neither was it "their inability to comprehend the truth," as Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer suggests.19 Nevertheless, I learned from the Jewish prisoners—survivors of the Selektion—that before leaving home they had been gravely worried about their sinister, unknown destination. Until Nazi rule was established in their hometowns, they had spent their lives in a normal, civilized society. After the Nazi or pro-Nazi administrations were formed, these Jews were subjected to a total deprivation of civil liberties and the infliction of systematic terror. The fascist and pro-Nazi regimes in Europe protected murderous gangs such as the Hlinka Guards in Slovakia and the Ustasha in Croatia. Similar paramilitary and antisemitic terror70

Preparations for the Holocaust in Hungary

ist organizations were active throughout German-occupied Europe, where, with the help of the ruling authorities—sometimes disguised in priestly habits like Josef Tiso in Slovakia, or veiled in nationalistic fervor like Henri Philippe Petain in France or Ante Pavelic in Croatia—they created a pogromlike atmosphere. The Jews were inclined to hope that by obedience they might escape the increasing violence in their hometowns. They even optimistically believed that they would be safer if moved to less dangerous "resettlement areas," or hoped at least that their children would have a chance to survive the war in some sort of Jewish reservation in the East. Against this backdrop, Jews boarded the deportation trains. By the time they realized the deception, they had already arrived at their destinations. Due to the tenacity and speed of the mass-murder technique practiced at Auschwitz and other death camps, most Jews were killed before they had time to contemplate alternatives. I believed that if I could escape and spread the news of the fate awaiting potential candidates for "resettlement," I could make some significant difference. I felt that I might undermine one of the principal foundations—the secrecy of the operation—upon which the success of the mass-murder process rested. I did not doubt my ability to communicate the realities of Auschwitz to the outside world; I was relatively well acquainted with the machinery of Auschwitz, including its detailed geography and operational principles. I could also report on many specifics of what had taken place there during my imprisonment. Due to frequent and meticulous inspections of our assigned work and habitation spaces, as well as to bodily searches, I avoided making any notes whatsoever and relied exclusively on my reasonably accurate memory; the slightest evidence or suspicion that I was keeping track of events for possible communication to anyone outside the camp would have immediately condemned me to death.

ESCAPE FROM AUSCHWITZ

I first planned to escape on January 26, 1944, together with Jewish prisoner Charles Ungluck, born in Czestochowa, Poland, in 1911. Ungluck, incarcerated in Auschwitz since June 1942, had lived in France before his arrest. Due to a technical hitch on January 26, however, I could not get to our agreed meeting place on time. Faced with the dilemma of going alone or waiting for another 71

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opportunity, Ungllick tried to escape by himself and was killed the same day.20 The next escape plan was worked out with a Jewish prisoner from Slovakia, Alfred Wetzler, born in 1918 in Trnava. Wetzler, prisoner number 29162, had been in Birkenau since April 1942. He worked as a Schreiber der Leichenkammer (registrar in the morgue) in Birkenau Bib and later, after the camp's reorganization in June 1943, as Blockschreiber in Block 9 in Blld, which became the main male camp at that time. Although I was born in Topolcany, I knew Wetzler from Trnava, where I had lived before my deportation from Slovakia in 1942. More than six hundred Jewish men from Trnava, including Wetzler's father and two brothers, had been deported to Auschwitz from Slovakia in that year. Of all these people, only Alfred Wetzler and I were still alive in the spring of 1944. With all of our friends and acquaintances from Trnava murdered outright or slowly succumbing to camp conditions, we had become close and trusting friends. This mutual trust was the anchor to which was linked a chain of many small step-by-step operations needed to prepare for the escape. I must stress that there was no "resistance group" or "organization" determining that we two should escape,21 or to where, or what we should do when and if we survived the massive hunt routinely organized after every escape attempt. Our escape was planned for Monday, April 3,1944, but due to unforeseen technical problems we had to delay it until April 7. The alarm was sounded in Auschwitz Birkenau on Friday, April 7, at 6:00 P.M. We managed to stay hidden between the "small" and "large" (i.e., inner and outer) chains of guards in the confines of Birkenau until Monday, April 10, at 9:00 P.M. when, after three days and nights (the standard time period), the hunt for us was called off as unsuccessful. At this point we started our trek southward to Slovakia. I am often asked how we escaped from Auschwitz and how we knew the way to Slovakia. I shall not now describe the technical details of our escape, as I have done so previously in a book published in numerous editions and in three major European languages.22 Moreover, this information is not particularly relevant to the main subject of this essay, except for the aforementioned fact that no "resistance organization" or individual knew in which direction we would move in the event of a successful escape. Neither in Germany nor in Poland (territories through which we inevitably had to move), neither in Slovakia nor in Hungary (territories toward which we were moving), was there a living person who knew anything in ad72

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vance about our escape. At the moment of our escape we severed all connections with friends and social contacts in Auschwitz. There was no one waiting for us outside the death camp in which we had spent the past two years: de facto, we had been written off by the world from the moment we were loaded onto the deportation train in the spring of 1942. Thus we had to step into a complete "social vacuum" outside of Auschwitz—we did not even know which, if any, of our family members were still alive. The only administrative evidence of our existence was an international warrant distributed telegraphically to all stations of the Gestapo, Kripo (criminal police), Sicherheitsdienst or SD (security service), and Grepo (border police). A photocopy of this warrant was published more than three decades after the end of the war.23 Inside Auschwitz-Birkenau existed a complex network of informers among the prisoners. It was built up by the SS camp police Politische Abteilung (political department), whose main objective was to prevent an escape or camp revolt. The danger of being denounced to this body was an ever-present reality. Therefore, I never spoke with anyone about plans for the route we would take after our escape, not even with Wetzler. Wetzler and I, however, had agreed in advance to go south, toward our native country, Slovakia, the only place where our accents would not betray us immediately as "suspect foreigners," and where we had connections before our deportation. In Slovakia we intended to look for contacts that would enable us to make public what had been happening before our eyes in Auschwitz over the previous two years—and to publicize what was being prepared for the Hungarian Jews. Within Auschwitz-Birkenau, any display of curiosity concerning the geography of the facility might have attracted the ears of ubiquitous informers, who would consider it an indication of escape preparations. This would then invite the attention of the political department, with its torture chambers. I, however, had gained some insight into my exact geographical location during myfirstsix months in Auschwitz. Since I had worked in the Aufrdumungskommando from August 1942 to June 1943,1 had quite a good idea about Auschwitz I's relative position to Auschwitz II (Birkenau). The railroad ramp was between these two camps and I was marched to this ramp either from Auschwitz I during the second half of 1942, or from Birkenau during the first half of 1943 (see fig. 2). The church spire of the town of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) could be seen from the Canada storage areas (located next to DAW,fig.2) on clear days at a distance of less than five kilometers. I also knew from having been 73

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marched around Auschwitz I for odd jobs on one or two occasions that the Auschwitz I camp was separated from the town of Auschwitz by a small river called the Sola. While working in the Canada storage areas, I noticed that the victims' luggage frequently contained children's books and notebooks, as parents obviously had been deceived into believing that children would go to school in the new "resettlement areas." One of our tasks was to burn any papers found in the luggage. On one occasion I saw a children's atlas among the papers to be burned. At an opportune moment I took the risk of opening the book and tearing out a map of Silesia, an area that I knew from my school years to be situated around the triangle where the prewar borders of Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia met. I carried the map under my shirt to the latrine, where I was able to study it for a few minutes before disposing of it. I learned that the town of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) on the Sola river is about 50 kilometers north of the northern Slovakian border, that the river Sola originates directly on the borders of Slovakia, and that this river flows in an almost straight line from south to north between the town of Auschwitz and the Slovak border, through the communities of Sol (on the Slovak border), Rajcza, Milowka, Saybusch (Zywiec), Kety, and Auschwitz (see fig. 3). It was clear to me, therefore, that if I escaped from Auschwitz, all I would have to do to reach the Slovakian border by the shortest possible route, in terms of orientation, was to follow the river Sola against itsflow,passing by the above-named settlements. As mentioned above, I escaped with Alfred Wetzler on Friday, April 7, 1944. As part of our plan we first remained hidden in Birkenau about three hundred meters east of Crematorium V in the unfinished Section Bill, and we left Birkenau only after the intensive manhunt for us was called off on Monday evening, April 10. During the first week of our escape we moved only at night, in a southerly direction (toward the mountains) through the rather flat terrain around Auschwitz, which was studded with several minor slavelabor satellite camps. We tried to avoid contact with the civilian population, since this part of Silesia—formerly Polish but now annexed by Germany—had been heavily 'depopulated" by German "colonists." The Germans had expelled large numbers of the former Polish inhabitants from their homes. We started from Birkenau with about three to four kilograms of bread, which we carefully rationed during the night marches, and we drank water from the streams we crossed. During the night marches we frequently lost orientation; indeed, we soon found out that we had wandered much too far to the west from my planned route when we came upon the town of 74

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Figure 3. Escape route of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, from Birkenau to Slovakia, April 1944, showing the main deportation railway from Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary to Auschwitz (through Zilina), and their own route southward (indicated by arrows). (From Auschwitz and the Allies, by Martin Gilbert [New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981]. Reproduced with permission of Martin Gilbert and Henry Holt and Company.)

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Bielsko-Biala on Thursday, April 13. When at the light of dawn we were still lost in the maze of Bielsko-Biala, and there was no alternative but to look for a temporary hideout lest we be spotted by the vigilant German security apparatus, we knocked at the doors of a run-down peasant house in the suburb of Pisarowice. The owner of the house was an old Polish peasant woman who lived there with her daughter. After a traditional Polish greeting (praised be the name of Jesus Christ), both were willing to harbor us for one day, and give us bread, potato soup, and imitation coffee. As both Wetzler and I were fluent in Polish, we gained a general outline of the situation in which we had landed. The surrounding villages—so we learned—had been "Germanized." The German civilians went to work in the fields, armed and instructed to shoot unidentifiable strangers on sight. Polish households were farther away from the river and communication lines. Any help to strangers was punished by executions, often of whole families. Many members of Polish households already had been executed for giving food or shelter to Polish- or Russian-speaking German agents provocateurs disguised as fugitives. We left these helpful Polish women in Pisarowice the next night, and at dawn we reached the mountainous region at the end of the main valley through which the Sola flows. We then moved southward along the western banks of the river on the forest-covered slopes of the valley. The isolated Polish households closed their doors and windows when we approached, and the people did not answer when we spoke to them. Frequently, however, a Polish peasant girl would run across our path, dropping a half loaf of bread as if losing it while running. Our presence in the region must have come to the attention of the German authorities. On Sunday, April 16, while resting in a clearing after emerging from the forest close to Porebka, a group of about a dozen German field gendarmes with dogs on leashes fanned out and approached us concentrically. They opened fire without warning as soon as we tried to move. Fortunately, we managed to reach the nearby forest through a hail of fire without being hit, although we had to abandon our overcoats and all our provisions and continue without them through partially snow-covered forests. Three days later, on Wednesday, April 19, we stumbled upon a Polish woman attending her goats close to the forest on the hills above Milowka. Realizing that we were fugitives from the Germans, she offered us food and rest in her goat-hut, and connected us with another Pole. On the night of April 20-21, this helpful man hiked with us by a relatively short and safe route to the vicinity of the Slo76

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vak border and gave us information about the frequency and usual path of German border patrols. No names or addresses were exchanged. In the case of capture by the Germans, this precluded the possibility of our divulging under torture the names of those who had helped us. On Friday morning, April 21, we crossed the Slovak border and soon came upon a Slovak peasant with his horse, plowing his field. The peasant, Andrej Canecky, from the nearby village of Skalite, at that point knew nothing about us except what he had seen from a distance—that we had crossed the border without passports.24 He was unsure whether we were smugglers or another type of clandestine traveler. I myself was relatively well dressed in a Dutch tweed jacket, a white woolen sweater, woolen riding breeches and excellent high boots—all "organized" (i.e., stolen) from the Canada storage areas in Auschwitz. Alas, my elegance was somewhat tainted by a fortnight of life in fields and forests: I carried my boots over my shoulder because I had had to cut them off my feet with a razor; this was a consequence of swelling caused by marching and a deficient diet (I had eaten little but bread during the preceding two weeks). Canecky offered us a chance to wash up and rest in his house, and gave us dinner. During the meal he gave me a geographical picture of the local surroundings; he provided the names of nearby villages and towns—the nearest one of any size was Cadca—and other information. He also mentioned the names of Jewish doctors in the villages as well as the name of a Dr. Pollack who practiced medicine in Cadca. This attracted my attention as I had met this same Dr. Pollack just before I was deported from Slovakia in June of 1942. I had been part of a transport of Slovak Jews destined for "resettlement"; that group was in due course dispatched across the border from the Novaky camp on June 14. At that time, Dr. Pollack also had been scheduled to be "resettled" with that transport. I made his acquaintance in the Novaky camp. Due to an "exception," however, he had been removed from the list of Jews to be deported and returned to a medical practice in Slovakia. The "exceptions" for physicians were granted for the following reasons: A high percentage of medical practitioners in Slovakia were Jews, and when Tiso's pro-Nazi regime in Slovakia started to "resettle" the Jewish doctors in the spring of 1942, many protests were raised when the villagers suddenly found themselves lacking even basic medical assistance. Consequently the Tiso regime, trying to curry favor with the peasantry, reprieved Jewish medical doctors who had not yet been deported. The regime released the physicians to practice medicine in 77

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the smaller settlements, providing basic services to the peasantry and enabling the few "Aryan" doctors left in the villages to move to the more prestigious towns and major hospitals.

CONTACTING JEWISH REPRESENTATIVES AFTER ESCAPING FROM AUSCHWITZ

When I learned that Dr. Pollack, with whom I had once shared a stage of Jewish fate in Slovakia, was now stationed in the nearest small town, Cadca, I immediately decided to use him as our first contact in the surviving Jewish community. My companion, Alfred Wetzler, agreed. Canecky then explained to us that a night march to Cadca might be unsafe and might take two to three nights; he had a better idea. He said he intended to go to the market in Cadca by train the following Monday to sell his hogs, and offered to harbor us during the weekend, disguise us in peasant clothing, and take us along: while helping with the transport and sale of his hogs we were unlikely to attract the attention of the police, gendarmerie, or informers. We accepted Canecky's magnanimous offer and stayed in his house until Monday morning, then traveled with him and his hogs the thirty kilometers to Cadca by train. On Monday afternoon I presented myself as a patient at Dr. Pollack's office, which was situated at the army barracks. When Dr. Pollack saw me in private, at first he did not recognize me. I was dressed now as a peasant and had a shaven head, no hair being allowed in Auschwitz. When I told him who I was and where we had met, and that I had come back to Slovakia from whence I was deported in 1942, however, he finally remembered me. Inasmuch as Wetzler and I were the first in the tragic history of Slovak Jewry to return from the 1942 deportations, his astonishment was not surprising. Between March and October 1942, approximately 60,000 Jews had been deported from Slovakia (about 30,000 to Auschwitz, the rest to Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor) out of a total Jewish population of about 85,000. When I escaped from Auschwitz, only 67 Slovak Jewish men and about 400 young women were still alive. The rest of the "resettled" Slovak Jews were murdered on arrival in 1942, or subsequently died in the camp. When Dr. Pollack was reprieved from deportation in the spring of 1942, so too were his wife and children, but not his parents, brothers, sisters, or their families. He had not heard from his relatives since 1942 and knew nothing about the further fate of the de78

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portees—except the foreboding of their silence and traceless disappearance. He asked, and I had to tell him that they were dead. He then asked me what he could do for me. I wanted to know whether any representatives of Jewish organizations remained in Slovakia. He assured me that he could discreetly arrange for immediate contact with the Ustredna Zidov (UZ; Jewish Council), representing the 25,000 Jews still alive in Slovakia—those who had not been deported in 1942. Wetzler and I spent the night in Cadca in the household of Mrs. Baeck (a relative of the well-known rabbi Leo Baeck),25 who at that time still lived in Cadca under the aegis of the Jewish Council. The next morning—still in our peasant outfits—we traveled by train to the nearby major Slovak town of Zilina and were met in the park, in front of the railway station, by Jewish Council representative Erwin Steiner. He took us to the Jewish Old People's Home, converted into Jewish Council offices after the "resettlement" of the old people in 1942. There we were joined by his wife, Ibolya Steiner (who acted as a typist), and Oscar Krasnyanski, also an important Jewish Council representative. Jewish Council chairman Oscar Neumann arrived the next day. My identity, as well as that of Alfred Wetzler, could be established immediately, as the Jewish Council had lists of deportees in each transport from Slovakia, as well as a personal file including a photograph of each deportee (the files of the Jewish Council had been used in the organization of the transports).26 After relatively brief preliminary discussions, during which we clearly outlined the impending mortal danger to the Hungarian Jewish community (still largely intact, and the largest such community remaining in Nazi-dominated Europe), we agreed to dictate the substantial facts we knew about Auschwitz to Krasnyanski, a good shorthand stenographer. He then dictated from his notes, in our absence, to the typist, Ibolya Steiner. Krasnyanski wanted separate statements, so that what I said should not influence Wetzler's statements and vice versa. He therefore first locked himself into an office with me. I started with a drawing (by hand, and giving estimated distances from memory) of the inner layout of Auschwitz I Camp, the layout of Auschwitz II Camp, and the position of the old ramp in relation to the two camps (see fig. 2). I then proceeded to explain the internal organization and working of the Auschwitz camp complex, describing both the facilities constructed for the massive slave-labor contingent serving the giants of the German industry (Krupp, Siemens, I.G. Farben, D.A.W.) and the mass-murder machinery of gas chambers and crematoria. Because of my wide 79

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firsthand experience on the ramp and from Quarantine Camp Blla, I was able to reconstruct with a considerable degree of exactness the history of all arriving transports. I particularly emphasized the fate of the so-called Czech family camp, which at the time of my escape was located in Bllb. At this camp about four thousand Czech Jewish men had been "put on ice" (temporarily held prisoner) with their families, including children, for exactly six months starting on September 8, 1943; they were then killed on March 8, 1944, only one month before my escape. Another family transport of Czech Jews from Terezin had been "put on ice" in Bllb around December 20, 1943, and was scheduled to be murdered six months later (in June 1944). The expression "transport put on ice" meant, in practical administrative terms, that the transport was given the denotation Sonderbehandlung mit 6 Monaten Quarantdne (special treatment with 6 months quarantine—"special treatment" was the code term for murder in the gas chambers.) The two Czech family transports were held in Birkenau Section Bllb, and as I was a Blockschreiber in the neighboring Section Blla, I could easily make contact with these people by talking to them across the electrified barbed wire fence dividing the two sections (see fig. 1). They were all Czechoslovak! ans with whom I shared a common language and in part a common background, so it was natural that I formed personal ties with several of them over the last six months of their lives. The fate of these Jews was even closer to my heart (because they were less anonymous) than the fate of the other victims arriving from various places in Europe that had no personal associations for me and who were murdered on arrival. For these reasons the Czech family transport victims play a relatively more prominent role in the Vrba-Wetzler Report than their actual numbers, fewer than nine thousand, would otherwise merit (in comparison to the 1.75 million people whom I estimate to have been murdered in Auschwitz while I was there). Besides the estimation methods I have recounted earlier in this essay, I also spoke to new arrivals stationed in the Quarantine Camp at the start of their imprisonment in Auschwitz. Normally only those who survived the "Quarantine" stage were distributed into the various slots in the slave-labor force. These Zugang people (new arrivals) as a rule knew the origin of their transports and approximately how many persons they had consisted of at their departure point. From my work assignment in Blla I could also see the arrivals not selected for slave labor on their way to the gas chambers (see fig. 1), even when I was no longer working on the ramp (after June 8, 1943). 80

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My companion in the escape, Alfred Wetzler, was probably just as well informed about the events and history of Auschwitz, and he corroborated my data by his independent statement to Krasnyanski (although I obviously do not know exactly what he dictated to Krasnyanski in my absence). The latter then used the protocols of both our statements and in great haste combined these editorially into one typewritten report. In a preface to the final text of the Report, Krasnyanski noted that the document contained the statements of two Jews who had escaped from Auschwitz. Wetzler had arrived in Auschwitz in April 1942, and so it was acknowledged that the initial several weeks of the activity covered in the Report relied on the testimony of only one. I arrived at Auschwitz in June, and the preface makes clear that thereafter the Report is based on the testimony of both escapees. It would of course be difficult to discern which part of the Report stems from me and which from Wetzler; and it is right to consider the report the result of the efforts of both of us—efforts we made to the best of our knowledge and abilities.27 We also added a special appendix to the Report in which my experiences from a short imprisonment (twelve days) in the Majdanek concentration-death camp were recorded (I had been transferred to Auschwitz from Majdanek, rather than coming directly from my native Slovakia). All discussions with the representatives of the Jewish Council in Zilina were conducted in Slovak. The Report originally was prepared in a Slovak version, and with my knowledge immediately translated into German and Hungarian, and later into English and French.28 The fate of this report need not be discussed here in detail, as this has been done in various extensive studies.29 Here I would only add that all work on the Vrba-Wetzler Report was finished and the final version typed by Thursday, April 27, 1944. Although what I had said in this report was clearly intertwined with the contribution of my companion, Wetzler, I approved of the Report as it stood; the most relevant factor was the need for an urgent warning to the Hungarian Jews of their imminent mortal danger. To make further corrections or to retype the report in order to eliminate minor errors or increase the accuracy of unimportant details at that point would have meant losing time at a crucial moment. Indeed, at least one transport of Jews from Hungary passed through Zilina as early as April 28, and the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began about two weeks after we approved, signed, and released our report. On Friday, April 28, 1944, the Slovak Jewish Council convened a secret conference in the Jewish Old People's Home in Zilina. About a dozen people were present, including the chairman of the Slovak 81

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Jewish Council, Oscar Neumann, and some representatives of Hungarian Jewry. Wetzler and I were asked to answer their questions and to give some further explanations. In accordance with the informal rules of illegal work under Nazi occupation, no names were exchanged at this meeting. One of the gentlemen present was a lawyer who had great difficulty believing that people were de facto executed in the heart of "civilized Germany" without the benefit of a legal defense before execution. All were impressed with my tweed jacket with its fashionable Amsterdam tailor's address on the inside, a real rarity in wartime Slovakia. The Slovak Jewish Council was anxious for us to leave the premises in Zilina before May 1, since on this date (a traditional trade union holiday) the state police took special precautions against any demonstration of anti-Nazi sentiment. The police were likely to check any existing Jewish premises, on the assumption that all Jews were traditional "Judeo-Bolshevik agitators." Wetzler and I moved to a small town near the High Tatras (Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas; Liptoszentmiklos in Hungarian). In view of the fugitive warrants we presumed had been issued after our escape from Auschwitz, however, we of course used different names—I picked the name Rudolf Vrba (a not uncommon name in Czechoslovakia). I subsequently retained this as my nom de guerre, legalizing the name change as soon as a normative legal system was reestablished in Czechoslovakia after the defeat of the Nazis. Meanwhile, in April 1944, the Slovak Jewish Council in Zilina provided me with a set of forged documents of excellent quality showing that I, Rudolf Vrba, was certified as a "pure Aryan" for three generations back. These papers allowed me to move around Slovakia without the danger of being picked up by one of the frequent police raids on the streets and in restaurants, trains, and railway stations. We were reassured by Krasnyanski that our report was now "in the right hands," both in Budapest (the name of the "Zionist leader in Hungary," Rudolf Kasztner, was mentioned in this connection with particular reverence) and in Bratislava, and that we had nothing more to worry about in regard to this matter. Therefore my task, dictated exclusively by my conscience (not by a mythical committee in Auschwitz or elsewhere), to inform the Hungarian Jews about the exact nature of their imminent mortal danger, was completed. Wetzler and I spent the next six weeks in Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas. I traveled frequently to Bratislava, where I had a friend, Josef Weiss,30 a Jew from Trnava whom I knew well from before my deportation. Weiss successfully avoided deportation in 1942, and in 1944 worked in Bratislava at the Office for Prevention of Venereal 82

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Diseases. This agency kept very confidential personal data on carriers of venereal diseases, and its offices were well protected, even from the police; it was therefore a very suitable location for clandestine copying of our report. Weiss distributed these copies to several young Jewish men, who then tried to distribute them secretly in Hungary.31 One of these copies found its way to Switzerland and Bern (via Moshe Krausz, director of the Palestine Office in Budapest) and was smuggled to George Mandel-Mantello, a Hungarian Jew living in Switzerland, who managed to have parts of the abbreviated Report published.32 The publication of the Report in Switzerland then led to an extensive newspaper campaign.33 It eventually caused an international chain reaction that finally induced Horthy, the regent of Hungary, to stop the deportations on July 7, 1944.34 During May 1944, we heard only scanty rumors about the deportation of Jews from Hungary. As I learned after the war, the Slovak Jewish Council had knowledge of the massive deportations;35 nevertheless, the council did not pass on any of this information to either Wetzler or myself. All we knew was the rudimentary information on the deportation of the Hungarian Jews published in the pro-Nazi press of Tiso's Slovak State. Then, on June 6, 1944 (D-day in Normandy), two more prisoners from Auschwitz arrived in Slovakia with news from the death camp. The two new escapees from Birkenau (Auschwitz II) were also Jewish prisoners: Arnost Rosin, prisoner no. 29858, born in 1912 in Snina, Slovakia, and Czeslaw Mordowicz, prisoner no. 84216, from Mlava, Poland, born in 1921. Both had been in Auschwitz since 1942, and had escaped together on May 27, 1944. After a difficult trip they crossed the Slovak border on June 6,1944, east of the High Tatra Mountains, about two hundred kilometers to the east of where Wetzler and I had crossed. They heard about the Allied landing in Normandy over a public radio loudspeaker in Nedeca, the first Slovak village through which they passed, and somewhat naively imagined the war was over. They went to the nearest bar and tried to pay for their consumption with dollars they had brought along from Auschwitz. They were promptly arrested, but instead of being treated as Jews they were accused of the much smaller crime of violating currency laws. After a week in prison and payment of a stiff fine they were released. The fine was paid by the Jewish Council of Slovakia, whose connections as well as the rapidly changing political situation in Slovakia (it was three months before the Slovak National Uprising, and the Soviet Army then was approaching the Slovak border) played a significant role in the release of Rosin and Mordowicz. 83

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Wetzler and I knew Rosin and Mordowicz personally from Birkenau, where all four of us were "old prisoners" who had survived in Auschwitz for more than a year. Those survivors were few and were frequently connected by bonds of mutual aid wherever possible; there was a sort of "old hands' Mafia" in German concentration camps, in which survival time in the camp was a measure of distinction. In Auschwitz, more than a year of survival meant considerable seniority. Thus, Wetzler and I did not need to be introduced to the two new escapees. From Rosin and Mordowicz we learned that in the short time between May 15 and their escape on May 27, 1944, over 100,000 Hungarian Jews had arrived in Birkenau—most of them promptly murdered. The Mordowicz-Rosin Report, an addition to the Vrba-WetzlerReport describing the ongoing slaughter of Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz, was recorded by Krasnyanski. It reported that the victims arriving in Auschwitz from Hungary had no knowledge of what "resettlement" really meant (similar to the almost two million other victims who were killed before Wetzler and I escaped from Auschwitz and prepared our Report). I learned only after the war that more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews were brought to Auschwitz after our escape and died a terrible death there up to mid-July 1944, without any warning by the Hungarian Jewish Council about the true nature of "resettlement." They boarded the deportation trains hoping to land in some sort of Jewish "reservation" or ghetto where they would have a respite from the incredibly brutal terror inflicted upon them by the Horthy regime's Hungarian Gendarmerie. This terror induced them "voluntarily" to board the deportation trains in order to avoid reprisals against infirm family members. After a horrifying journey, however, most deportees found themselves in the hands of cruel and merciless Nazi executioners in the German death factory, Birkenau. A fortunate 10 percent were found suitable for slave labor and later "distributed" into various slave-labor camps throughout Germany. Some survived this captivity.

MEETING REPRESENTATIVES OF THE VATICAN AND OF ORTHODOX JEWRY

The Jewish Council of Slovakia made two requests of Wetzler and me during June 1944. I was asked to personally speak to a representative of the Vatican on June 20, 1944, and a few days later to visit Rabbi Michael Beer Weissmandel, considered the lead84

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ing Jewish religious authority in Slovakia. At the request of the Slovak Jewish Council, I was accompanied on both visits by Mordowicz,36 assuring representation from both pairs of escapees. On June 20, 1944, Mordowicz and I met with Krasnyanski and a translator in the monastery in Svaty Jur,37 about forty kilometers from Bratislava. We were received by an elegant priest whom I thought at the time to be the Apostolic Delegate, Msgr. Burzio, but who was in fact a Vatican diplomat, Msgr. Mario Martilotti, a member of the Vatican's nunciature in Switzerland.38 Martilotti—who told us he was to travel to Switzerland the next day—was well acquainted with our report; he already had read a German translation. He actually understood my German very well but spoke it with some difficulty—he was considerably more fluent in French. Martilotti obviously wished to be reassured of the authenticity of the escapees' reports. Our discussions lasted several hours, but as far as we know today, this meeting did not have any far-reaching consequences, other than providing reliable information for the private ears of the Vatican. Contrary to what some believed, the publication of the Vrba-Wetzler Report in the West in late June 1944 was not accomplished with the help of the Vatican, but through other channels. We met with Rabbi Weissmandel in Bratislava after our visit in Svaty Jur. This encounter was even more puzzling to us than the meeting with Martilotti. The real intent of this belated invitation, toward the end of June 1944, was not obvious: Wetzler and I already had been in Slovakia for two months by the time Rabbi Weissmandel invited me to come for coffee and a chat. Even after I accepted the invitation (I was invited along with Mordowicz) I remained puzzled. Perhaps this invitation was only a piece of rabbinical selfjustification, issued to prevent us from saying that we did not get a hearing. The rabbi met with us in his study at the Yeshiva in Bratislava. Neither Krasnyanski nor a translator were present. During our relatively brief meeting (about one hour), I noticed that the rabbi clearly was very well acquainted with all the details of our Report. He did not mention, however, that he had previously received independent information about the mass murder of Jews in Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, as well as some information about Auschwitz—the so-called Polish Major's Report.391 learned all this only after the war, from reading a letter he wrote dated May 22, 1944.40 Rabbi Weissmandel also did not tell us that he had direct and indirect connections with the SS, particularly through Dieter Wisliceny, the German Berater (government advisor) in Slovakia, a close collaborator of Eichmann. Wisliceny helped mastermind the 85

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deportation of 60,000 Slovak Jews from Slovakia to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Belzec in 1942, and the deportation of Greek Jews to Auschwitz in 1943. Rabbi Weissmandel also did not inform us of the truly impractical "Europa Plan," under which he and the Jewish Council in Slovakia undertook to pay two million dollars—money that he did not have and could not pay—if the Germans agreed to refrain from deporting European Jews to Poland. Since most of Europe's Jews had already been deported, the two million dollars would be buying, almost exclusively, a promise to stop the deportation of Hungarian Jews.41 This plan, alternatively, may have served the rabbi and the Jewish Council as an alibi or pretext for unsavory "negotiations" with the SS, as will be discussed below. During the meeting the rabbi was very polite and treated us, to use his words, as the emissaries of almost two million Jews who, by that time, had perished in Auschwitz. I want to add here a few personal recollections as background to my meeting. The Yeshiva of Rabbi S. D. Ungar and later of his son-in-law, Rabbi M. B. Weissmandel, was originally located in Nitra, where I spent some years during my childhood (1930-33). We lived on the same street as the rabbis. There was direct personal contact between my family and this congregation. My maternal grandfather (Bernat Griinfeld, from Nitra, later murdered in Majdanek) was a member of their congregation. I vividly remember Rabbi Ungar, who once when I was eight years old took me into his conference room (a great distinction for a child), where I was allowed to sit with grown-ups and was served tea and cake. After this cake treatment my relation to this Jewish group was always cordial. After the majority of the Nitra Jews (including my grandparents) were "resettled" in 1942, the Yeshiva of Rabbi Weissmandel and its students were allowed to stay in this town. The rabbi, and to some extent his pupils, were protected from deportation in 1942; Slovakia under President Tiso was a "Catholic State," and therefore religious schools (even Jewish schools) were to be left intact. However, the Yeshiva was vandalized by local fascist hooligans, and apparently for this reason was transferred to Bratislava—where "it could be better protected"—some time in 1943. When I returned from Auschwitz in the spring of 1944, I was surprised to see that the Yeshiva of Rabbi Weissmandel was almost in the center of Bratislava, obviously under at least temporary protection of both the pro-Nazi Slovak and the German authorities. The visibility of Yeshiva life in the center of Bratislava, less than 150 miles south of Auschwitz, was in my eyes a typical piece of Goebbels-inspired activity as well as both a tragic and a comic de86

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ception. There—before the eyes of the world—the pupils of Rabbi Weissmandel could study the rules of Jewish ethics while their own sisters and mothers were being murdered and burned in Birkenau. After visiting Rabbi Weissmandel I had little further contact with the Slovak Jewish Council, except for their financial support. I received two hundred Slovak crowns per week, at that time an average worker's salary and sufficient to sustain me underground in Bratislava. On August 29, 1944, the Slovak Army revolted against the Nazis and proclaimed the reestablishment of Czechoslovakia. My connections with the Slovak Jewish Council stopped at that point, as I immediately volunteered to enlist in the army. Due to the rapid military advance of the Germans into Slovakia and the retreat of the regular Slovak Army, I was directed into the Partisan Unit of Captain Milan Uher ("Hero of the Slovak National Uprising in Memoria"). In early September 1944, in Uher's home village of Lubina in western Slovakia, I received my Czechoslovak uniform, gun, and ammunition, and continued my war against the Nazis by conventional means until my official discharge from the army at the end of the war in May 1945.1 left for Prague in the same year to study chemistry and biochemistry, as I had intended to do even before I was sent to Auschwitz. With a distinguished military record gained during the Slovak National Uprising (I was decorated several times) and my newly legalized Czechoslovak name, the doors of all schools were open to me in Prague. There I finished my university studies and postgraduate training and started my career in biochemistry and neurochemistry. I voluntarily left Czechoslovakia in 1958 and continued my teaching and research activities in Israel (Ministry of Agriculture), the United Kingdom (Medical Research Council), the United States of America (Harvard Medical School), and Canada (Medical Research Council of Canada and the University of British Columbia).

CONTROVERSIAL ASPECTS OF THE HOLOCAUST IN HUNGARY

More than fifty years have elapsed since the events described in this essay, with much written about them. There are some controversies with respect to the contents of the Vrba-Wetzler Report as well as the report's reception and handling. Some salient points need further clarification. The Czech historian Miroslav Karny wrote in 1992 that neither I nor Wetzler knew anything about 87

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the preparations made in Auschwitz for the mass murder of Hungarian Jews: "In the whole Report of Wetzler and Vrba there is no mention whatsoever about what supposedly was a public secret in Auschwitz—namely that it was the turn of the Hungarian Jews and that preparations were already being made in Auschwitz for their murder. If such a public secret had existed in the camp, certainly the escaped prisoners from Auschwitz would have considered it necessary to place special emphasis on these preparations in their Report.42 Karny further claims to have found evidence for my and Wetzler's ignorance about these preparations by quoting verbatim the end of the chronological part of the Vrba-Wetzler Report, which stated: Small groups of Jews from Benzburg and Sosnowiec, who had been dragged from hiding, arrived in the middle of March. One of them told me that many Polish Jews were crossing over to Slovakia and from there to Hungary and that the Slovak Jews helped them on their way through Slovakia. After the gassing of the Theresienstadt transport there were no further arrivals until March 15, 1944. The effective strength of the camp rapidly diminished and 'selected' men of transports arriving later, especially Dutch Jews, were directed to the camp. When we left on April 7, 1944 we heard that large convoys of Greek Jews were expected.43 M. Karny further develops his ideas by saying: If Wetzler and Vrba considered it necessary to record rumors about the expected transports of Greek Jews, why would they have not put on record that transports of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were expected, if their expected arrival was indeed a public secret in Auschwitz? If they recorded the help of Slovak Jews to the Polish Jews escaping to Hungary, why would they not warn these Polish escapees of the danger threatening them immediately, particularly in Hungary?44 And, he claims, "[Wetzler and Vrba] . . . did not know that the Final Solution in Hungary was imminent." In other words, Karny implies that preparations for the Holocaust of Hungarian Jews were not passed along because they were not revealed by us at the time. To my present knowledge, a copy of the Slovak original text of the Vrba-Wetzler Report has not been preserved. I cannot therefore categorically state whether the warning of the imminent Holocaust in Hungary was or was not recorded in the original Slovak version of the Report. However, I clearly remember that during the checking of the report's final version, I had a discussion with Krasnyanski on this very point. I insisted on the warning's inclusion, whereas Kras88

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nyanski believed that only murders in Auschwitz that already had occurred should be recorded. He felt that the final report should be a record of facts, not weakened by "forecasts" and "prophesies." I do not remember whose opinion prevailed. I do recall, however, Krasnyanski's assurance that Jewish as well as other authorities would be immediately informed of all the details Wetzler and I had provided about preparations in Auschwitz for the mass murder of Hungarian Jews. Indeed, there is incontrovertible evidence that these preparations in Auschwitz, as described by Wetzler and myself, were made known to leading Jewish authorities in Slovakia, and subsequently to their counterparts in Hungary. Furthermore, this information was soon thereafter passed on to the above-mentioned Jewish contacts in Western countries, specifically Switzerland. The abovementioned letter by Rabbi Weissmandel and Gisi Fleischmann, dated May 22, 1944,45 was written one month after Wetzler and I arrived in Slovakia from Auschwitz, though well before the escape from Auschwitz and arrival in Slovakia of Mordowicz and Rosin (June 6, 1944). The timing therefore precludes the possibility that the letter could have been based on their later information. This letter (five ledger-size pages, single-space typed) was sent by a reliable courier to Switzerland, with the original addressed to the general office of HeHalutz in Bern. The letter starts with twelve paragraphs, labeled (a) through (m), giving detailed information on the practices at Auschwitz. Paragraph (1) states: (1) In December and January [1944] a special railway line [in Birkenau, R.V.] has already been built leading into the halls of annihilation, in order to prepare the new work of annihilation of Hungarian Jews [italics added—R.V.]. That was said by knowledgeable people there in that hell; there they discuss it without scruples, without suspecting that someone outside will learn about it since they assume, in general, that no one in the country knows anything whatever about the work in this hell. In paragraph (m) Rabbi Weissmandel states: "This is their system in Auschwitz, where since yesterday they are deporting [from Hungary] 12,000 Jewish souls daily; men, women, old people, children, sick persons and healthy people, and there every day they are asphyxiated and burned and converted into fertilizer for the fields." In other parts of this letter, the rabbi and Gisi Fleischmann describe the inhuman methods of transporting deportees to Auschwitz, as well as their immediate fate: "(e) These transports arrive in 89

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Auschwitz after 2-3 days of travel without air, without food and without water, body pressed upon body. In this manner a considerable number of persons already die during the journey; the survivors go naked into special compartments of large halls, believing that they are going to have a bath. There they—2,000 souls per section—will be gassed by cyanide." In paragraphs (f) and (g) they state: "According to an authentic message from a few witnesses, there were in Auschwitz at the end of February [1944] four such annihilation halls and according to rumors these facilities are being expanded The bodies are burned in ovens specially built for this purpose." Not surprisingly, Rabbi Weissmandel's letter did not name sources of this crucial information, but states on page three that "two Jews recently escaped from Auschwitz" are the source. We can therefore be certain that his dispatch was based on the fact that he had studied our report at some time between April 28 and May 22. The presumption must be that this was the case, for no other eyewitnesses escaped from Auschwitz during this period, and no alternative source has ever been suggested. And, as noted above, when I met the rabbi toward the end of June 1944, he was well acquainted with the details of our report on Auschwitz. In view of the facts evidenced by the May 22 letter, there can be little doubt that the rabbi based his appeal to Switzerland on the information that Wetzler and I provided about Auschwitz. No other explanation is credible. The historians who have recently sought to show that Wetzler and I knew nothing, before our escape, of the preparations in Auschwitz for the mass murder of the Hungarian Jews are mistaken. We in fact knew of and described clearly these preparations; the postwar testimony of the Jewish Council chairman in Slovakia, Oscar Neumann, provides eloquent confirmation.46 It is of interest to note that Rabbi Weissmandel, though residing in Bratislava, Slovakia, was well informed of the many details involved in the then-in-progress deportations of Jews from Hungary. He states in his letter that the deportation of Hungarian Jews began east of the river Tisa (Theiss), that 12,000 are deported daily, that each freight car contains sixty or more people, that each train contains forty-five freight cars, and the like. This demonstrates that even though Jews were forbidden to travel, Jewish leaders in Bratislava and Budapest were in regular contact. Channels for rapid exchange of information from distant parts of Hungary were available to the Jewish Council in Bratislava, and from provincial Czechoslo90

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vakia to that of Budapest, before and during the deportations of Hungarian Jews in the spring of 1944. The Catholic and Protestant churches also had relatively little difficulty in obtaining the same information about the progress of deportation of Jews from Hungary. There is much evidence, as described in a recent monograph, indicating that virtually all of them had detailed knowledge of these events.47 The inevitable conclusion is that in May 1944, at the latest, representatives of all major denominations (Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant) knew that the deported Hungarian Jews were being taken for slaughter, and that for some reason all religious representatives chose not to warn the masses about the scheduled fate of the deportees. Jewish authorities, for their part, duly informed their contacts in Switzerland about preparations in Auschwitz for the Holocaust of Hungarian Jews, as well as about the progress of the deportations; this vital information, however, was withheld from those who were actually being deported. Interpreting these events is clearly a painful process. My interpretation is very different from those given by Yehuda Bauer, Asher Cohen, and other mainly Israel-based Holocaust scholars who extol the "meritorious work" of Rabbi Weissmandel, Dr. Kastzner, and other "negotiators." I am forced to regard these interpretations as the product of scholars who would like to improve not only the Jewish future but also the Jewish past. Perhaps part of this problem lies elsewhere: it may lie with the inability of those who did not have direct experience with the Nazis to comprehend the truly pernicious nature of Nazism and the absolute futility of negotiations— unless the negotiator could prove that the group he represented was physically as strong or stronger than the Nazis. This basic precondition is easier to understand for those of us who saw the Nazis in action in Auschwitz. If the Nazis entered into any "negotiations" with Jewish Councils in Bratislava or Budapest, it was to use the latter for their own objectives: to rob Jews swiftly of their personal property, to prepare lists of those to be deported on the basis of names and addresses supplied by the Jewish Councils, to make those on the lists board the deportation trains without causing difficulties, and to kill the deportees economically and efficiently once in Auschwitz, all the while preserving the secret of their murderous empire. The fact that Nazis in Budapest took personal bribes from a Jewish notable, Fiilop von Freudiger,48 and from other prominent Jews in Budapest and elsewhere, means very little as far as their dedication to the general objectives of the Final Solution. For 91

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instance, it is well known that in Auschwitz all SS, without exception, from camp commander Rudolf Ferdinand Hoss to the lowliest SS-men serving in the camp, were dedicated not only to killing Jews but also to pilfering. Indeed, this was an unofficial part of their reward for their murderous activity. Robbing, pilfering, and cheating Jews was to the SS—or for that matter to other non-Germans in a weak and vulnerable position—an integral part of the murdering process. Blackmailing Jewish "negotiators" and taking large sums as bribes did not really oblige the Nazis to anything and was part of their cynical game. In this connection I would like to point out a few relevant facts recorded by other participants in the drama of the extremely swift mass murder of Hungarian Jews. Rabbi Weissmandel's confidant and close contact in Hungary, Fiilop von Freudiger, was an important member of the Jewish Council, son-in-law of the late Chief Rabbi of Bratislava (Akiba Schreiber), and former Yeshiva student in Slovakia.49 In a subsequent report, Freudiger noted that on March 19, 1944, the very day the German troops crossed the western border of Hungary, Eichmann's Sondereinsatzkommando contacted the Jewish Council and various influential Jewish notables. These officers of Eichmann's staff were SS-Obersturmbannfiihrer Hermann Krumey, SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Otto Hunsche, SS-Standartenfuhrer Kurt Becher, and the abovementioned Dieter Wisliceny. Wisliceny even brought with him a letter written in Hebrew by Rabbi Weissmandel to Freudiger, stating that "they could trust Wisliceny."50 Freudiger also states that he quite regularly received mail from Bratislava (mainly from Rabbi Weissmandel) via a courier of the Hungarian legation who traveled from Bratislava with the evening express train51 (the distance is only about one hundred miles). Freudiger further states that during the second week of May 1944, Weissmandel informed him that, according to information obtained from the Slovak Ministry of Transportation, permission already had been granted to transport 310,000 Hungarian Jews through Slovakia en route to Auschwitz. Clearly, by that time, more than three weeks after Wetzler and I released our Report in Slovakia, Rabbi Weissmandel must have known not only what Auschwitz meant, but also of the special preparations made for the reception and mass murder of the Zugang from Hungary. Freudiger confirms that the copy of the Report he received from Rabbi Weissmandel contained information not only about the history of events in Auschwitz, but also about the special preparations made for the mass murder of Hungarian Jews.52 Freudiger also claims that Jewish Council members subsequently spread information contained in the report "to Members of Parliament, Bishops 92

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and even Horthy."53 However, it is a fact that those earmarked for deportation between May 15 and July 9, 1944 (i.e., those who most needed the information contained in the Vrba-WetzlerReport) were kept in the dark as to their destination. Negotiations of some Jewish Council members (particularly of the Zionist faction led by Kasztner) met with limited success. In August 1944, a transport of about 1,800 Jews from Hungary was sent by Eichmann not to Auschwitz, but to Switzerland, albeit by a long route. Clearly, those traveling in this transport were not the povertystricken Jews of Hungary. Freudiger records54 that, as partial payment for this transport, the Economic Department of the SS under SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Kurt Becher received cash, foreign currency, eighteen kilograms of gold, and 180 carats of diamonds, plus one or two thousand U.S. dollars per person, an incredible fortune for an average person in Hungary in 1944 (when the black market value of a U.S. dollar was astronomical). Whether the preservation of secrecy about the death mills in Auschwitz was self-imposed by the Jewish Councils or was also part of the payment for releasing a small number of privileged Jews cannot be documented. It is surely not unreasonable, however, to suggest that it was well worth Eichmann's while to grant the release of those 1,800 relatively rich and/or well-connected Jews to Switzerland as a reward for keeping the atrocities at Auschwitz a secret from the remainder of their fellow Jews. It is clear that these prominent Jews already had become acquainted with the information contained in our Report. Andreas Biss, who cooperated with Kasztner and von Freudiger, describes a remarkable episode during this journey when the train, traveling west, was switched toward Auspitz (not Auschwitz). Terrible panic ensued, as the passengers did not understand the difference between the two.55 Thus, while there were 437,000 Jews in Hungary who were not given any information about the nature of Auschwitz or the preparations made for their murder, a tiny minority of 1,800 Jews who traveled to Switzerland knew very well the implications of the name Auschwitz. The simultaneous existence in one small country of these two contrasting groups is a great curiosity, but well documented. There is further evidence of the cooperation between the Nazis and certain favored groups of Jews. When Horthy stopped the deportation of Hungarian Jews in July 1944, and the Jewish Council became useless for the Germans, Wisliceny advised Freudiger to flee to Romania, which he did.56 Yehuda Bauer writes that shortly before the Russians liberated Bratislava from the Nazis (April 4, 93

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1945), "through Becher's efforts a group of 69 people, most of them from Bratislava, left the city on March 31,1945 and reached Vienna on April 3 and then traveled to Switzerland. Among them was Rabbi Weissmandel."57 The Becher referred to is the same SS-Colonel Kurt Becher mentioned above. Res ipsa loquitur. It appears that during these critical times the Jewish masses in Slovakia and Hungary generally placed their trust either in the "Zionist leadership" (e.g., Kasztner and Biss) or in Orthodox and rabbinical Jewish leaders (such as Rabbi Weissmandel, or von Freudiger). The Nazis were aware of this and therefore chose exactly these circles for "negotiations." That the negotiators and their families were in fact pathetic, albeit voluntary, hostages in the hands of Nazi power was an important part of these "deals." It seems clear from the testimony of survivors such as Elie Wiesel that the Jewish masses assumed that if something truly horrible was in store for them, these respectable leaders would know about it and would share their knowledge. As detailed above, however, these leaders did in fact learn what Auschwitz meant but did not share this new knowledge with Jews earmarked for deportation. The puzzlingly passive trip of enormous numbers of Hungarian Jews into the sordid gas chambers of Birkenau was in fact the result of a successful confidence trick by the Nazis. The result was a death toll three to four times larger than that of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This was an incredible and unprecedented organizational success, even for Auschwitz. It is my contention that a small group of informed people, by their silence, deprived others of the possibility or privilege of making their own decisions in the face of mortal danger. One must, of course, also not forget that although 400,000 Jews from Hungary were murdered and burned, their property was not. I am not speaking about the gold crowns extracted from their mouths before they were cremated in Birkenau, or the luggage that ended up in the Canada storage areas. Most Hungarian Jews belonged to the middle class and left behind their homes, gardens, fields, stocks and shares, bank accounts, "shops on Main Street," furniture, cars, bicycles, kitchen utensils, radios, fur coats, and many other items scarce and valuable in the bombed-out territories of Germany and occupied Europe. This partially explains why Horthy and his clique (with the help of his bloodthirsty gendarmerie) were so keen to be rid of the unfortunate Jews. Horthy and his gendarmerie were still in power during the deportations of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz. The Jewish property the regime confiscated was redistributed among Hungarians who demonstrated their loyalty to Horthy, and was used to reinforce the shaky loyalty of Horthy's followers at a 94

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time when the war's direction was clearly not in Hungary's favor. If we assume that the average per-person value of all property of deported Hungarian Jews, from their houses and bank accounts to their last luggage and the gold crowns in their mouths, was only $100, then 400,000 victims represent a profit of $40,000,000 in valuable goods available for immediate redistribution. This was a tremendous windfall in a war-torn country. In fact, of course, the average individual's property was worth many times more than the $100 estimate, and the distribution of Jewish goods and wealth had more political appeal than a distribution of dubious wartime paper money. For these reasons, I believe Rabbi Weissmandel's idea to stop the deportation of Hungarian Jews with his Europa Plan and a $2,000,000 bribe to the Nazis was irrelevant. No doubt the Nazis were amused by these unrealistic, ridiculous, and truly useless ideas, but these "negotiations" were in fact useful as long as the objectives of Auschwitz were not communicated to the intended victims. It is of interest to note that Eichmann's cohorts from Budapest, SS-officers Krumey and Hunsche, were protected from prosecution after the war because Dr. Kasztner, in the name of the World Zionist Congress, issued them protective affidavits.58 Krumey and Hunsche were in fact brought to trial only after 1969—twenty-five years later.59 Dr. Kasztner also issued a ''whitewashing note" to SSObersturmbannfuhrer Kurt Becher,60 and to my knowledge the latter was still a content millionaire in Hamburg in the late 1980s.61 Wisliceny was arrested by the British, delivered to Czechoslovakia, and hanged in Bratislava.62 Kasztner enjoyed a distinguished career after the war in the new State of Israel, but after a complex libel trial was shot dead on a Tel Aviv street in 1958, though his reputation was rehabilitated posthumously.63 Weissmandel became a much-admired rabbi in New York and died there in 1958.64

NOTES 1. Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 1144. 2. Rudolf Vrba, "Footnote to the Auschwitz Report," Jewish Currents 20, no. 3 (1966): 27. 95

Rudolf Vrba 3. John S. Conway, "Friihe Augenzeugenberichte aus Auschwitz," Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 27 (1979): 260-84; "The First Report about Auschwitz," Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 1 (1984): 133-51; "Der Holocaust in Ungarn," Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 32, no. 2 (1984): 179-212; "The Holocaust in Hungary," in The Tragedy ofHungarian Jewry, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York: Institute for Holocaust Studies of The City University of New York, 1986), 1-48; Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981), 367; F. Baron and Sandor Szenes, eds., Von Ungarn nach Auschwitz: Die verschwiegene Warnung (Minister: Westphalisches Dampfboot, 1994), 13. 4. David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 289. 5. Jeno Levai, Zsidosors Europdban (Jewish fate in Europe) (Budapest: Magyar Teka, 1948), 49; Sandor Szenes, Befejezetlen mult (Unfinished past) (Budapest: Sandor Szenes, 1994), 335. 6. Braham, Politics of Genocide, 708; The Vrba-Wetzler Report ("Auschwitz Protocols") may be found at the Yad VaShem Institute Archives in Jerusalem under no. M-20/149. At the Nuremberg trials it was submitted in evidence under NG-2061, but neither I nor Wetzler was called to testify. The report was mentioned anonymously, as a testimony of "two young Slovak Jews." For references to other versions of the report, see Braham, Politics of Genocide, 728, and J. S. Conway, "Der Auschwitz Bericht von April 1944," Zeitgeschichte 8 (1981): 41342. For the French version, see Rudolf Vrba and Alan Bestic, Je me suis evade dAuschwitz (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1988), 361-98. 7. Miroslav Karny, "Historie oswetimske zpravy Wetzlera a Vrby" (History of the Auschwitz Report by Wetzler and Vrba), in Tragedia Slovenskych Zidov (The tragedy of Slovak Jews), ed. D. Toth (Banska Bystrica: Datel, 1992), 175. See also his "The Vrba and Wetzler Report," in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 553-68. 8. I am grateful to David S. Wyman for a copy of this letter. The letter is in German, marked "Hechaluz Geneva Office, Abschrift und Uebersetzung der beigelegten Hebr. Kopie. WRB Archives, Box 60. General correspondence of Roswell McClelland. F. Misc. Docs. Re: Extmn. Camps for Jews in Poland." The Hebrew original of this letter is mentioned in Braham's Politics of Genocide, 938n. 40. 9. Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-45 (London: Valentine, Mitchell, 1968), 469. 10. Braham, Politics of Genocide, 1144; Conway, "Der Holocaust in Ungarn," in Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 27 (1979): 208; Braham, "Holocaust in Hungary," 36. 11. In the storage areas of the Aufrdumungskommando there were clothing, shoes, blankets, food and kitchen utensils, medicine, jewels, gold, and hard currency, all brought by the arriving deportees. These storage areas appeared to represent a "plentiful paradise" in the eyes of the Polish prisoners. Since by tradition in the eyes of Polish peasants the image of a "plentiful paradise" was the country of Canada, the storage areas ofthe Aufrdumungskommandowere named "Canada" in the camp slang. 12. According to the Vrba-Wetzler Report, a careful estimate of the total number of people murdered in Auschwitz by gassing was 1,765,000 at the date of our 96

Preparations for the Holocaust in Hungary escape. It is relatively very well established that after April 7,1944 (i.e., after the Vrba-Wetzler Reportwas released), there were an additional 400,000 victims from Hungary alone. Moreover, transports of Jews from the Terezin and Lodz ghettos, Greece, Berlin, Paris, Trieste, Belgium, Northern Italy, Slovakia, Poland, Holland, Vienna, Kovno, and other places continued to arrive in Auschwitz after April 7, 1944—bringing the number of victims close to 2.5 million in total. On the other hand, Yehuda Bauer in his Jerusalem Post article of September 22, 1989, claims "that the figure for Jews murdered by gassing [in Auschwitz, RV] is 1,323,000 (which is about a half of the Vrba-Wetzler estimate)." He writes: "The basis for these figures is the clandestine registration carried out by a group of very courageous men and women who worked as clerks in the camp administration and had a fairly clear picture of what was going on." Bauer does not identify these very courageous men and women, what sorts of documents they saw, or why their "new" figures were published only in 1989. See also H. Swiebocki, "Raporty Uciekinierow z KL Auschwitz" (Reports of escapees from the Auschwitz concentration camp), Zeszyty Oswiecimskie, vol. 4 (Oswiecim: Wydawnictwo Panstwowego Muzeum w Oswiecimiu, 1991), 77-129, 207-8. In the "Report of a Polish Major" (Dr. Jerzy Tabeau) who escaped from Auschwitz in November 1943, an estimate of 1.5 million victims was given, which is in agreement with the Vrba-Wetzler estimate (1.75 million) made in April 1944. The estimates made by former SS-officers in Auschwitz about the number of victims murdered there are of great interest in this connection. Hermann Langbein collected numerous statements made independently of one another, and these all point to a number of two to three million. See Hermann Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1972), 79. This is in agreement with the estimate in the Vrba-Wetzler Report. 13. SS-Unterscharfiihrer Otto Graf lived unmolested under his own name in Vienna after the war. I heard about this in 1963 when living in London. I started criminal proceedings against him. He was finally arrested in Vienna in 1972 and at the LandsgerichtVienna was accused of thirty cases of criminal acts in Auschwitz. I acted as one of numerous witnesses for the prosecution. The jury found him guilty in twenty-nine cases, but due to the statute of limitation valid at that time, Otto Graf was released and presently lives in retirement in Vienna. Hans Kuhnemann returned after the war to his native Essen in NordrheinWestphalia and became a singer in the local opera. I learned about this only in 1989 and started criminal proceedings against him (for robbery, multiple murders, and active participation in mass murder) in October 1989 at the Oberstaatsanwalt (public prosecutor's office) in Frankfurt/Main. Kuhnemann was arrested in April 1990 but released on bail after one year. He then was tried at the Landsgericht Duisburg (Nordrhein-Westphalen) during 1991-93.1 acted as one of many witnesses for the prosecution. The trial of Kuhnemann was stopped by the Supreme Court in Germany in 1993 because of his heart ailment. He lives at present (1994) in Essen as a retired opera singer. 14. See notes 6 and 12. 15. Fiilop Freudiger, "Five Months," in Braham, Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry, 237. 16. After the war, both SS- Unterscharfiihrers Buntrock and Kurpanik were tried in Krakow for war crimes; they were found guilty and hanged. 17. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, 339-41; Walter Laqueur, The Terrible 97

Rudolf Vrba Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler's "Final Solution" (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 145; Wyman, Abandonment ofthe Jews, 288. See also note 18. 18. Langbein collected testimonies of numerous survivors of various nationalities who arrived at Auschwitz during the period 1942-44. All of these individuals testified that they had not heard of Auschwitz or known of its meaning before their arrival. See Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, 140-42; A. Fiderkiewicz, formerly a Polish prisoner in Auschwitz-Birkenau, describes in his memoirs the numerous talks he had with newly arrived Jewish prisoners from Hungary in May-June 1944. He was still astonished that even at that late date in the war the new prisoners from Hungary had not the slightest suspicion that their children and parents would be murdered on arrival in the "resettlement area." See his Brzezinka, Birkenau (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1962), 246. See also Judith Magyar Isaacson, Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 58-82. In this connection, a particularly informative statement was made by Elie Wiesel: "We were taken just two weeks before D-Day and we did not know that Auschwitz existed. How is it possible? Everyone knew, except the victims. Nobody cared enough to tell us: Don't go." (Recorded by W. Nicholls, Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate (Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1993), 353. 19. Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (New York: Franklin Watts, 1982), 314. Bauer claims that "knowing the facts is not always the same as accepting the facts. To survive, many had to deny what they knew. The later claim that had someone—their leadership, Kasztner or anyone else—only told them, they would have behaved differently, cannot be taken at face value." This implies that "the leadership" and Kasztner had the ability "to know and accept facts," but those who were deported to Auschwitz did not. 20. Rudolf Vrba and Alan Bestic, / Cannot Forgive (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 209-15. See also note 22. 21.1 left Czechoslovakia in 1958. After my departure, various clumsy efforts were made to present our escape as resulting from activities of a mythical resistance organization. See, for example, Adolf Burger, Ddblovd Dilna (The devil's workshop) (Prague: Ceskoslovenska Redakce MON, 1988). Evidence to the contrary of such claims was presented by Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, 78,301. See also notes 24, 27, and 44 below. 22. Rudolf Vrba and Alan Bestic, / Cannot Forgive (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1963). The book has appeared in many editions in English, French, and German, some under slightly different titles. 23. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, 192-93. See also Swiebocki, Zeszyty Oswiecimskie, vol. 26, for a good copy of the warrant. 24. During the 1990s, some attempts were made to depict our contact with Canecky as having been arranged by an underground organization. For references to this "linkage theory," see H. Swiebocki, Zeszyty Oswiecimskie, vol. 2 (1968), 27, and Peter Gosztonyi's article in Menora (Toronto), May 27, 1994. See also notes 21, 27, and 42. 25. Rabbi Leo Baeck, as a member of the Theresienstadt Altestenrat, participated in the effort to withhold the truth about Auschwitz from "common" Jews when "he decided not to tell ghetto inhabitants that the transport to Poland meant death." See Bauer, History of the Holocaust, 220 and Braham, Politics of Genocide, 722. 98

Preparations for the Holocaust in Hungary 26. I. Kamenec, Po stopdch tragedie (Tracing the tragedy) (Bratislava: Archa, 1991), 169: "In preparation of the deportation also Ustredny Zidov (Jewish Council) involuntarily participated. Its department for special tasks was preparing special evidence and various lists, which served as basic materials for preparing the personal lists of the deportation transports." See also Karny, "Historie oswetimske zpravy Wetzlera a Vrby." 27. During the 1960s, in Czechoslovakia as well as in Israel, various innuendos were systematically made to indicate that I and Wetzler were only messengers carrying "mail for a major organization" (sometimes "internationalproletarian," sometimes "Jewish Zionist"), which provided us with information on Auschwitz and prepared our escape. See in this connection, Karny, "Historie oswetimske zpravy Wetzlera a Vrby," 167-68,180; Kamenec, Po stopdch tragedie, 250-51. In Israel, especially, there have been several attempts to hide the identities of Wetzler and me as the authors of the Report by simply referring to "two young people who succeeded in escaping from Auschwitz." See, for example, the statement by Oskar Isaiah Karmiel (formerly Krasnyanski) of February 15, 1961 ("A Declaration Under Oath"), made in preparation for the Eichmann trial, and Livia Rothkirchen, "The Final Solution in Its Last Stages," in The Catastrophe of European Jewry, ed. Israel Gutman and Livia Rothkirchenin (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976), 326. In connection with this phenomenon see also Braham, Politics of Genocide, 711; and Karny, "Historie oswetimske zpravy Wetzlera a Vrby." 28. Only in the 1960s did I learn that at least one translation into English of the Vrba-Wetzler Report from a Hungarian copy was made by Blanche Lucas, who after the war became a member of Goddard and Son, the London law firm. During the war she was secretary to Walter Garrett, the British correspondent in Zurich, who first brought the Report to the knowledge of the British government. W. Rings, Advokaten des Feindes (Vienna: Econ Verlag, 1966), 144. 29. Braham, Politics of Genocide, 691-731. See also note 3. 30. Josef Weiss survived the war and emigrated to Israel, where he became a bus driver for the Egged Company. I met him again in 1959 during my stay in Israel. 31. In the spring of 1944 there was a considerable increase in illegal traffic across the Slovak-Hungarian border. Many surviving Slovak Jews traveled illegally to Hungary, seeking to rescue family members who had previously fled to Hungary to escape the Slovakian deportations of 1942. Now all were threatened by the start of the Nazi measures in Hungary. This was also an opportunity, however, to carry the Report across the border from Bratislava to Budapest, and elsewhere in Hungary. 32. See Conway, "Frlihe Augenzeugenberichte aus Auschwitz," 278, and "First Report about Auschwitz," 144. 33. Levai, Zsidosors Europdban, 327-29. Levai lists more than 200 major articles published in the Swiss press in the summer of 1944. See also Rings, Advokaten des Feindes, 146. Rings noted 383 articles and various abstracts. 34. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, 466: "On April 7 the two Slovak authors of the War Refugees Board Report made their sensational escape from Birkenau to Bratislava. Yet news of the annihilation of Hungarian Jewry was slow in reaching the Western newspaper public. It was not until the beginning of July, when they had almost ceased, that the Allied and neutral press reported the massive 99

Rudolf Vrba gassings. Had this happened sooner, 200,000 Jews or more might not have left Hungary." See also 467-71. 35. The letter sent by Rabbi Weissmandel on May 22,1944 (see note 8) from Bratislava contains extensive information on the progress, from the very start, of the deportation of Jews in Hungary. 36. In / Cannot Forgive I did not mention Mordowicz at all because at the time of its writing (1963) I lived in England, having left Communist Czechoslovakia in 1958. Mordowicz at that time still lived in Bratislava under the neoStalinist regime of Antonin Novotny. To publicly describe in England a close connection between myself and Mordowicz might have caused him problems, including accusations of having been "a Vatican spy," or "closely connected with the exiled heretic R. Vrba." 37. Vrba and Bestic, / Cannot Forgive, 256. 38. Conway, "First Report about Auschwitz," 143. 39. The account by the "Polish Major" was written after November 1943, when the Polish prisoner Jerzy Tabeau (known in Auschwitz as Jerzy Wesolowski) escaped from Auschwitz. A full text of his account was recently published in Swiebocki's Zeszyty Oswiecimskie, 77-129. 40. See note 8. 41. G. Fatran, "The Working Group," in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 8: 2 (1994): 164-201. The same view has been adopted by some historians, including Yehuda Bauer, who have praised Weissmandel and others for their readiness to negotiate with the Germans. See, for example, Yehuda Bauer, The Jewish Emergence From Powerlessness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 24. See also Asher Cohen, La Shoah: L'aneantissement des juifs d'Europe, 1933-1945 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1990), 107-8. 42. Karny, "Historie oswetimske zpravy Wetzlera a Vrby," 174-75. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. See note 8. 46. In this connection, the testimony of Oskar Neumann is of great importance. Neumann was the Jewish Council chairman in Slovakia and it was under his aegis, and with the technical assistance of Krasnyanski and Mrs. Steiner, that the Vrba-Wetzler Report was prepared. In his postwar memoirs, Neumann describes my and Wetzler's escape from Auschwitz without identifying us by name, claiming, among other things, that it was his organization that helped us cross the Slovak border. However, he also stated: "These chaps did also report that recently an enormous construction activity had been initiated in the camp and very recently the SS often spoke about looking forward to the arrival of Hungarian salami." See Oskar Neumann, Im Schatten des Todes (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1956), 178-81. See also notes 21 and 27. 47. Baron and Szenes, Von Ungarn nach Auschwitz. 26, 34, 43-45, 77-78, 81,95-97. 48. Freudiger, "Five Months," 266. 49. Ibid., 238. 50. Ibid., 239, 245. 51. Ibid., 262. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 263. 100

Preparations for the Holocaust in Hungary 54. Ibid., 269. 55. Andreas Biss, A Million Jews to Save (London: New English Library, 1973), 81. 56. Freudiger, "Five Months," 277-78. 57. Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), 449. 58. K. Muller-Tupath, Reichsflihrers gehorsamster Becher: Eine deutsche Karriere (Fulda: Konkret Literatur Verlag, 1982). 59. Krumey and Hunsche were tried in Frankfurt in 1969-70. Krumey received five years in prison and Hunsche was found not guilty. An appeal by the public prosecutor led to a second trial, which found both guilty. Krumey was sentenced to twelve years and Hunsche to five years. In both cases I was a witness for the prosecution. 60. Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust, 432. 61. Muller-Tupath, Reichsfiihrers gehorsamster Becher. 62. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, 567'. 63. Braham, Politics of Genocide, 721. 64. Reb M. Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals (Brooklyn: Neturei Karta, 1977), 12.

101

Laszlo Karsai

: THE LAST PHASE OF THE I HUNGARIAN HOLOCAUST: ; THE SZALASI REGIME AND THE JEWS

SZALASI AND THE JEWS

Ferenc Szalasi was the leader and all-powerful head of the Arrow Cross movement, the regime that came to power in Hungary with the armed assistance of the Germans on October 15-16, 1944. After that date, the fate of hundreds of thousands of Jews was in his hands. Szalasi's hatred of the Jews was a pillar of his Weltanschauung. He seriously believed in the theory of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. In June 1943, he declared that the Jews, de facto and de jure, ruled the world: "Plutocracy, freemasonry, the liberal democracies, parliamentarism, the gold standard and Marxism are all but instruments in the hands of the Jews so that they can hang onto their power and control over the world."x Firmly believing himself to be a good Christian and a Catholic, Szalasi argued that antisemitism was taught in the Bible itself. According to his peculiar biblical interpretation: "The Old Testament is the history and the 103

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description of how God despised the Jews. The New Testament is the sanctification of God's contempt."2 Unlike Hitler or Alfred Rosenberg, Szalasi was merely an antisemite. He knew no inferior and superior races; he merely hated the Jews. As a politician still in opposition, he favored no repressive antiJewish legislation, nor did he want to fight to restrict the economic, political, and cultural influence of the Hungarian Jews. Szalasi's aim was to make Hungary "free of Jews." In his own view, Szalasi was not antisemitic but asemitic, working for a Hungary completely free of Jews. The historian C. A. Macartney claims that Szalasi did not approve of the deportation of Hungarian Jews after the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944. There is no evidence to support this claim. It is true, however, that Szalasi was of a more practical mindset than most members of Dome Sztojay's government. When Szalasi learned that a separate deal with the Germans had enabled members of the Chorin and Weiss families to flee to Portugal, he directed Gabor Kemeny, his future foreign minister, to submit a petition to the prime minister inquiring into the possibility of exchanging Jews for Hungarian prisoners of war.3 This essay will outline the main stages of the Arrow Cross regime's Jewish policies. A number of important issues shall be mentioned only in brief: the history of the Jewish forced labor service is sufficiently treated in other literature on the subject, as are the activities of the Zionist resistance movement and those who rescued Jews.

THE ARROW CROSS AND THE IEWS: OCTOBER 15 TO NOVEMBER 15, 1944

In addition to the occupying German military and police, three centers of power developed in Hungary after October 15,1944. Emil Kovarcz commanded, and was obeyed by, a relatively large number of mostly disciplined, armed Arrow Cross Party troops. In addition to the party troops—and sometimes in complete agreement with them—a mob of hooligans, disreputable elements, and young thugs numbering in the thousands committed murders and robberies, wearing the Arrow Cross armband and carrying guns. The conventional police and military forces occasionally tried to restrain them. In this initial period of the Arrow Cross regime, Jewish houses (i.e., those marked with the Star of David), guarded by disciplined policemen, still provided genuine refuge for the inhabi104

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tants. Some of these police officers, fully aware that the Germans would lose the war, saved the lives of many Jews by protecting— on orders from their superiors—Jewish houses such as the Jewish Council headquarters on Sip Street. Officials, policemen, and soldiers, who often obeyed the Arrow Cross reluctantly and even resisted some of their orders, knew very well that the official Hungarian government policy on the Jews had changed for the third time between March and October 1944. After March 19,1944, most members of the Hungarian administrative apparatus executed in a well-disciplined manner (some of them even enthusiastically) various orders aimed at stigmatizing, robbing, and finally deporting the Jews. Without a word of complaint, the overwhelming majority of those constituting the power apparatus—the gendarmerie and the police—noted that Miklos Horthy stopped the deportations early in July 1944, thus raising the possibility that the not-yet-deported of the Hungarian Jewish community, like the Jews in France, Bulgaria, and Rumania, might survive the war. In this era there could be only one slogan for Jews and Jewish community leaders: zum Uberleben—survival. This would explain why the head of the Budapest police department obeyed not only the Arrow Cross minister of the interior but, on his own initiative, ordered policemen to protect the famous "Glass House" {uveghdz) on Vadasz Street at the request of the Swiss legation.4 It seems fairly certain that neither Szalasi nor other Arrow Cross leaders had elaborated plans for the "solution" of the Jewish question in Hungary. The number of Jews in Hungary made any "solution" exceedingly complex: according to conservative estimates the number of Jews in Hungary on October 15,1944, was approximately 300,000. Most lived in Budapest, and many were at work in the countryside as forced labor servicemen.5 A number of factors influenced the Arrow Cross government's Jewish policy. Szalasi and his followers clearly had to keep the wishes of the Germans in view, but they could not ignore Hungary's deteriorating military situation. Szalasi's intention to secure international legitimacy for his regime strongly influenced his decisions. Edmund Veesenmayer, plenipotentiary of the German Reich in Budapest, reported to Wilhelmstrasse as early as October 17 that Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann had returned to Budapest and had started negotiations with Hungarian authorities. Eichmann wanted 50,000 able-bodied Jewish men marched to the Reich immediately. His plans also included the removal of all Jews from Budapest, with the able-bodied to be used in fortification works and the rest to be concentrated in ghettolike camps.6 105

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Contrary to the claims of historians, Szalasi did not immediately obey the Germans. During Eichmann's negotiations in October 1944, the "Leader of the Nation," Szalasi, was "making difficulties," and was trying to keep the Hungarian Jews at work in Hungary. On October 20, Veesenmayer could report to Foreign Minister Ribbentrop on a partial "success" only: "all males between 16 and 60 are being carried off from Jewish houses, concentrated and registered, and then sent off at once to fortification works."7 This was not deportation to Germany as yet; most of these Jews were indeed deployed in the vicinity of the capital, digging trenches and tank traps. Jewish men between sixteen and sixty, as well as Jewish women between sixteen and forty, were "requisitioned" for military forced labor service by Defense Minister Karoly Beregfy. His decree declared that "exempted Jews, Jews living in exceptional mixed marriages, as well as Jews belonging to Christian churches are also obliged to report for work." Jews having foreign citizenship had to produce foreign passports if they wanted to avoid conscription.8 I have long believed that, especially in Budapest, the Arrow Cross regime could be called the reign of terror of janitors and janitors' helpers—it was their responsibility to supervise execution of decrees concerning the Jews, and indeed, in some cases, to carry out these orders. In the literature on the Arrow Cross era, rescue activities by members of the legations of neutral powers are surrounded by myth. Myths may serve a purpose, though no self-respecting historian should be deceived by even the most sacred of legends. This must be clear: the actual value of the various protective passes was not determined by how many were issued by the legations and how many forged by the Zionist resistance. Arrow Cross patrols on identity checks tended to respect only documents proving one's "Aryan" origins. Most available records and memoirs indicate that Arrow Cross Party thugs carried off Hungarian Jewish employees of the Royal Swedish legation, shot and threw into the Danube people with Vatican protective passes, and committed robbery and murder in Swiss "protected" houses. Szalasi was unable, as well as unwilling, to check his followers and the mob that had joined the Arrow Cross during its coup.9 Documents intended to guarantee safety were taken away from many people in recruiting centers, on athletic fields, or in the brick factory at Ujlak.10 In such circumstances diplomats from neutral countries had very little room to maneuver. As early as October 21, 1944, Szalasi deigned to receive Papal Legate Angelo Rotta, the doyen of the dip106

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lomatic corps. Rotta submitted four concrete requests. He asked that: {a) exemptions from labor service previously granted to Jews be maintained; {b) passports issued by neutral states to Hungarian Jews for emigration be respected; (c) persons living in mixed marriages with Jews not be separated from their spouses; and (d) inhabitants of Jewish houses be allowed some freedom of movement. Szalasi declared that the government wished to review all exemptions issued to date. He was clearly blackmailing Rotta and the diplomatic corps in Budapest when he "insisted that the countries showing an interest in the Jewish question should first recognize the present government." n Eight days after this meeting, on October 29, Szalasi issued a decree proclaiming that exemption documents would be reviewed by the minister of the interior and those concerned would be notified of his decision by November 15.12 Interior Minister Gabor Vajna eventually approved 582 exemptions. It is difficult to determine exactly how many people were affected, since the decree also applied to an unspecified number of family members of the named persons; a cautious estimate would put their number at approximately 1,500 to 2,500.13 In this early phase of Arrow Cross rule, Szalasi was tough with not only these neutral diplomats, but also with those who helped bring him to power. The record indicates that he immediately identified with the role of a sovereign head of state, and denied the first German request to hand over, "as a loan," 50,000 Jewish forced military laborers. He then agreed to the deportation of 25,000 people, claiming that Hungary also needed most of the Jews, "for digging trenches and doing other jobs of primary importance."14 Although he probably knew precisely what had happened to the large majority of the Jews deported from Hungary since March 19, 1944, Szalasi's reluctance was not due to humane philosemitic intentions. He had not given up the idea of "freeing" Hungary of Jews; he merely wanted the Jews to work for the benefit of the Hungarian State during the war. It was only on November 1,1944, that Veesenmayer could finally report that the first transport of 25,000 Jewish forced military laborers had left for Germany.15 Hungarian police records reported on November 2 only that Jewish forced laborers were being marched through the capital.16 As late as November 6, a police dispatch recorded that Jews still were being escorted through Budapest to western Hungary (Dunantul).17 Able-bodied Jews were not the only ones that Arrow Cross troops, Hungarian soldiers, and police officers "escorted" as part of 107

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the death columns between Budapest and Hegyeshalom, near the old Austrian border, in November 1944. A Jewish Council member wrote the following in the first days of November: "According to reports received thousands of Jews are being marched towards the border. The old, the sick, as well as young children, in the scantiest attire, without rest and food, are thus marching with no time even for attending to their bodily needs. Great numbers are lying dead along the roads, unburied, and many commit suicide because of the terrible sufferings."18 Incidentally, according to Otto Komoly, a leading Jewish Council member, the reason Eichmann had given for ordering the roundup and deportation of Jewish children and old people was that "too many Jews had gone into hiding." Eichmann was simply not able to have the planned 55,000 to 60,000 Jews taken to Germany.19 The official gazette published very few decrees relating explicitly to Jews. On November 3, 1944, Decree No. 3.840/1944.M.E. was issued with the signature of Ferenc Szalasi, "on the subject of the property of Jews." This decree is worth considering in some detail, because it shows how economic interests directed the passions and actions of these antisemites—a fact often overlooked. This decree declared that property of Jews was to go to the state as property of the nation; exempted were only objects used in religious services, prayer books, religious relics, family portraits, cemetery monuments, crypts, private letters, school implements, medicines, and wedding rings. Jews were allowed to keep food for two weeks, 300 pengos in cash, domestic and kitchen furniture, and personal objects; anything containing platinum, gold, silver, or gems was confiscated. Szalasi also urged non-Jews in possession of movable property abandoned by Jews to report this property within eight days. It is unlikely that many of those in possession of plunder from Jews or stolen Jewish property did their best to comply with this decree.20 Jews still in Budapest with various foreign protective passes and passports were first ordered to move into the so-called protected ghetto (i.e., designated houses on Pozsonyi ut, Szt. Istvan korut, the bank of the Danube, and Szent Istvan Park) by the evening of November 10.21 These houses clearly were protected in name only; this designation often merely invited attacks by the Arrow Cross. Many believed, not without reason, that these houses were used by those who had enough money or connections for Swedish, Swiss, Portuguese, Spanish, or even Vatican protective passes. Since several tens of thousands of people were supposed to move into and 108

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out of these houses, on the following day (November 11), Szalasi extended the deadline to November 15. This was published in the daily papers as well.22

THE GHETTO OF BUDAPEST: NOVEMBER 1944-JANUARY 1945

Szalasi likely decided to permanently solve the Jewish question in the second week of November, 1944.23 He and his ministers were continually being "pestered" by diplomats in Budapest. Having had enough of this mediation, Szalasi decided to divide the Jews in Hungary into six groups: (1) foreign Jews with protective passes; (2) so-called Jews on loan; (3) Jews who had remained in Hungary, concentrated in ghettos; (4) exempted Jews; (5) members of the clergy of the Jewish ''race"; and (6) foreign citizens of the Jewish "race." Szalasi had decided to "lend" the Jews of working age to the Germans. By identifying the working-age Jews as "Jews on loan," he let the Germans know that he wanted them back. To ensure the return of Hungary's Jews, Szalasi argued that the transfer of Jews to Germany had to take place individually, on the basis of a list of names.24 The memorandum handed over to the Germans on November 17 strongly emphasized the benefit for Hungary of Hungarian Jews doing forced labor in Germany. It is particularly remarkable that Szalasi consented, as head of state, to organize the "large ghetto" in Budapest. Eichmann and other German authorities, wishing to permanently "free" Hungary from Jews, opposed this decision. At the end of October 1944, Himmler ordered a halt to the mass murder of Jews, probably without Hitler's knowledge. After Himmler's order, Germany was interested only in the deportation of able-bodied Jews from Hungary. Indeed, Obersturmbannfiihrer Hose asked Veesenmayer on November 21 not to urge the deportation of all Jews in Budapest, since the Germans at that time were willing to take only "absolutely able-bodied" Jews.25 The German leadership, however, was divided on this issue as well. Upon hearing that Szalasi had stopped the massive deportation on marches of the Jews from Budapest, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, on November 21, instructed Veesenmayer to demand that Szalasi continue the "resettlement" of the Budapest Jews.26 109

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Szalasi was probably induced to end the massive deportation marches following pressure from representatives of neutral countries as well as the impending approach of the Red Army; nor can it be ruled out that the Germans themselves may have reproached him for letting the Jews arrive at the border literally dying of fatigue and hunger after two hundred kilometers of forced marching. A series of memoirs confirms that in November 1944, German authorities welcomed Hungarian Jews arriving at the German border with two pounds of bread, a hot meal, and half a pound of margarine each.27 It is certain that able-bodied Jews, a total of about 70,000 persons, were still being deported from Budapest by train in late November and early December 1944. According to available records, the plan for the proposed Budapest ghetto was handed over to the representative of the Jewish Council on November 18, 1944, by Janos Solymossy, deputy head of the Budapest police department.28 The Jewish Council's first reaction was to raise a desperate protest, which the authorities of course ignored. It seems clear, on the basis of available documents, that the organization of the Budapest ghetto started immediately after November 18. The Jewish Council was officially notified of the government's decision and therefore advised against postponing the deadline. In the last week of November, an increasing number of Jews started moving into the still officially unannounced ghetto. These were the well-informed Jews, trying to find accommodation with friends or relatives already living in the ghetto area. When moving from a star-marked building into the large ghetto, Jews were allowed to take along only as much as they were able to carry in their hands. Some of the most serious problems were caring for the sick, who were also being herded into the ghetto, and providing utilities and supplies. Just feeding ghetto inhabitants was a major problem. Unable to provide for so many people themselves, municipal authorities were still waiting, on November 24, for the Ministry of Public Supplies to take some kind of action.29 According to Solymossy's statistics, the proposed ghetto area contained 162 star-marked buildings, of which only 18 were inhabited solely by Jews. According to Jewish Council calculations, if "practically every opening was declared a room," and if all Christians moved out in time, there would be 4,725 rooms altogether for 63,000 Jews—about thirteen to fourteen persons per room, worse than in the large ghettos of Poland.30 Solymossy issued five decrees, numbered 142/1 through 142/5, probably during the last few days of November, regulating the way no

Last Phase of the Hungarian Holocaust

the Jews of Budapest were to move into, and the Christians to move out of, the designated ghetto area. Decree No. 142/4 contained a three-page list of buildings into which the Christians moving out of the ghetto could move. However, as is clear from the decree's closing sentence, he also trusted the resourcefulness of the nonJewish population: "Anyone who finds an adequate evacuated Jewish apartment may rent it without further authorization using the 'Certificate of Apartment Entitlement.' "31 Minister of the Interior Gabor Vajna issued a ghetto decree on November 29. Seventeen of the eighteen articles discussed problems concerning the housing and apartment allotment of the Christians who had to move, trying to inform, indeed to comfort them.32 The major concerns of administrators, no doubt, were the problems facing the inconvenienced Christians. A few weeks later, in early December, the most urgent problem for Vajna was informing the population in a special decree that it was absolutely necessary that "streets, roads, and squares that at the moment bear the family names of Jewish persons be given adequate new names, and in general all street (road, square) names that have any Jewish associations be changed immediately."33 On November 25 the Jewish Council requested Solymossy to define the food ration for ghetto inhabitants. They also noted that at most 60,000 people could be accommodated in the proposed ghetto area, and that their daily food supplies, "most minimally calculated," would cost 500,000 to 600,000 pengos.34 As recorded in the Jewish Council minutes, Lajos Stockier, Miksa Domonkos, Bela Berend, and their fellow Council members did their best to provide for the food supplies and safety of the inhabitants of the Budapest ghetto, the last and only ghetto still containing large numbers of Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe. The Jewish Council could expect help from only a few sources: the diplomatic corps in Budapest, the International Red Cross, and the Budapest representatives of the latter's national organization.35 The first piece of good news in connection with the large Budapest ghetto is an entry in the minutes of the Jewish Council dated December 1, 1944: the capital began feeding the ghetto and providing the means of transportation of goods as well. By the time of this entry, Miklos Szego, a Jewish Council member, had ordered cauldrons and cans of food. "Feeding is more or less settled," wrote Lajos Stockier on a hopeful note at the end of that day's entry.36 On December 2, having talked to Solymossy and Arrow Cross Commissioner of Supplies Endre Rajk, Councilman Janos Rosta informed the Jewish Council of the daily ration allotted for Jews: 150 grams of in

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bread (the ration for Christians had been set on October 18 by the Arrow Cross minister of public supplies at 200 grams), 40 grams of flour, 10 grams of cooking oil, and 0.3 liters of legumes. He added, as though by way of an encouragement, that if the capital should get some meat, the Jews would receive weekly 100 grams per head. By the following day Jewish Council medical experts determined that the proposed ration added up to 915 calories—not enough on which to survive.37 The minutes of the Jewish Council show that both Rosta and Albert Kallay, the member responsible for fuel, did the best they could for the ghetto inhabitants.38 On December 7, Janos Rosta informed Istvan Foldes and Lajos Stockier that four weeks' rations had been distributed. Considering the slow—from the Jews' point of view, the tragically slow—but steady advance of the Red Army, this was a promising development, but not yet adequate. Jewish Council members, however, immediately replied to Rosta: "This quantity is significantly below the amount absolutely necessary for survival." Rosta also said that the supplies for the ghetto were being paid for by the state and not by the capital.39 Only a few major events can be highlighted here from the black pages of the chronicle of December 1944. On December 12 the police began to evacuate the children's homes operated by the International Red Cross, taking the children to the ghetto. The Jewish Council was informed that since the neutral states still had not recognized the Szalasi regime, other agreements were null and void— clearly a simple case of revenge and attempted blackmail. It was not the Jews from the protected ghettos, but rather those in the unprotected children's homes of the International Red Cross who were taken away.40 On December 14, Solymossy told the Jewish Council that he did not know when he would be instructed to move those living in the protected territory—the "international ghetto"—into the large ghetto. He reiterated that the cause of this transfer was the neutral states' reluctance to recognize the Szalasi government.41 Tens of thousands of Jews attempted to survive the Arrow Cross era by living unnoticed with Christians or hiding in abandoned Christian homes. In December, Arrow Cross authorities rounded up many of these Jews throughout the city. Those captured were either shot and thrown into the Danube or taken to the ghetto. Daily records of the Jewish Council registered in a dry, official tone the events they called, simply, "atrocities." For example, on December 16, the former janitor of 10 Rumbach Street and his deputy appeared in front of the building and, "making elderly women undress, they took various things from them." The inhabi112

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tants of 5 and 30 Klauzal Street lost money, clothes, and rucksacks in a similar raid by persons dressed in Arrow Cross uniforms.42 During this period Solymossy had been promoted to chief of the Budapest Police Department. His successor as deputy head, Istvan Locsey, promised the Jewish Council as early as December 17 that he would have the ghetto guarded by a mixed squad consisting of Arrow Cross personnel and professional police officers. He also said that a special blue pass would be required in order to enter the ghetto. These measures were necessary because until then the ghetto had been guarded only by police officers, who often did not have the courage to stop the armed party troopers.43 However, while the Arrow Cross personnel and professional police officers kept out the German and Hungarian armed thugs, they very often did not allow transports carrying food, medicine, and fuel to enter the ghetto either.44 According to the minutes of the Jewish Council, Locsey was usually fair-minded and polite when negotiating or taking steps in connection with ghetto affairs. When the Arrow Cross District Seven personnel did not allow a car from the International Red Cross carrying cheese and eggs to enter the ghetto, Locsey summoned their district commander in the presence of Jewish Council members. Locsey explained to District Commander Batta that the ghetto needed at least four wagons of food a day. At the end of the discussion Batta confessed that "it was impossible to get cheese and eggs in the town, so he could not understand that things like these should go to the ghetto."45 Despite this constant negotiating, as late as January 8,1945, Lajos Stockier and Miksa Domonkos entered into their memoirs that about 64,000 Jews were in the ghetto, and that the food supplies were barely enough to last two or three days.46 This section has focused on the relations between the ghetto and outside authorities as regards supplies, food, and protection. The relationship clearly went beyond this. For example, various German and Hungarian authorities continued to make assorted demands on the ghetto, most frequently requisitioning laborers. The ghetto police were responsible for producing these laborers.47 The Red Army blockade around Budapest was completed by Christmas 1944. Bombings and shelling, as well as other actions aimed at the Arrow Cross and the Germans, frequently took a heavy toll on ghetto inhabitants. The actions of the Arrow Cross and other military personnel also continued to devastate the ghetto. On January 12, 1945, Rabbi Bela Berend, a member of the Jewish Council, reported to the Council that he had accompanied the Hungarian Royal Police and an Arrow Cross Party commission to the 113

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buildings at 27 and 29 Wesselenyi Street in the ghetto. This group established the following: on the previous day twelve to fifteen persons, dressed in party troop uniforms or Hungarian or German military uniforms, had looted the air-raid shelters of the two buildings and shot twenty-six women, fifteen men, and one child in the building at No. 27. In the same building a married couple found in bed in Apartment 5 on the first floor also were shot dead.48 The Budapest ghetto was liberated by Red Army units on January 18, 1945. The Arrow Cross and German occupying forces finally were driven out of Hungarian territory by the middle of April, 1945. Those who wish to rehabilitate the Arrow Cross regime in Hungary have become increasingly vociferous in the last few years. Indeed, there is a member of parliament who has found "positive features" even in the functioning of Szalasi's regime. I must confess that with some difficulty I have also been able to come up with a positive feature of the Arrow Cross rule: it lasted only six months.

NOTES 1. Ferenc Szalasi's lecture in Loyalty House {Huseg Hdza), June 15-16,1943 (Sydney: Hungarista Mozgalom Kiadasa, 1978), 16. 2. Ferenc Szalasi, Bortonfuzet(Prisonnotebook), February5,1939,Budapest Fovdros Leveltdra (Archives of Budapest), 19.618/49; "A Szalasi per" (Papers of the Szalasi trial), 8.a.k. 3. Magyar Orszdgos Leveltdr (Hungarian National Archives), K750, "Hungarista Naplo" (Hungarist diary), vol. 5, July 18, 1944. See also Laszlo Karsai, "Ferenc Szalasi," in Reformists and Radicals in Hungary, ed. Ferenc Glatz (Budapest: Etudes Historiques Hongroises, 1990), 5:191-210. 4. A budapesti rendorfokapitdny kivezenylese (Order of the head of the police department of Budapest), November 24, 1944, No. 25; Archives of Budapest, VI.2.e.lOO.k.Rfp.492O/95/Rfp.l944.sz. 5. At that time, according to Edmund Veesenmayer, 150,000 Jews were in forced labor service and more than 200,000 lived in Budapest. "Telegram from Veesenmayer to the German Foreign Office, October 28, 1944," in A Wilhelmstrasse es Magyarorszdg: Nemet diplomdciai iratok Magyarorszdgrol 1933-1944 (The Wilhelmstrasse and Hungary: German diplomatic papers on Hungary, 1933-1944), ed. Gyorgy Ranki, Ervin Pamlenyi, Lorant Tilkovszky, and Gyula Juhasz (Budapest: Kossuth, 1968), 907. 6. Telegram from Veesenmayer to the GFO, October 17, 1944, in Wilhelmstrasse, 904-5. 114

Last Phase of the Hungarian Holocaust 7. Telegram from Veesenmayer to Joachim von Ribbentrop, October 20, 1944, in Wilhelmstrasse, 906. 8. Quoted in Elek Karsai, ed., Fegyvertelen dlltak az aknamezokon ... Dokumentumok a munkaszolgdlat tortenetehez Magyarorszdgon (They stood unarmed on the minefields . . . Documents on the labor service system in Hungary) (Budapest: Magyar Izraelitak Orszagos Kepviselete Kiadasa, 1962), 2:643-44. 9. YIVO Archives, New York, Oral Testimonies, RG.104, Series 1: Mrs. G. Dach, No. 768, Protocol 3584; Mr. I. Ban, No. 772, Protocol 2411; Mrs. P. Hegyi, No. 772, Protocol 2337; Ms. K. Berger, No. 774, Protocol 2602. 10. Ibid., testimony of Mrs. I. Marion, No. 772, Protocol 2444. See also Barbala Szabo, Budapesti naplo (Budapest diary), ed. Judit Elek (Budapest: Magveto, 1983), 215. 11. Hungarian National Archives, K707, Nyilas Kulugyminiszterium i (Papers of the Arrow Cross's Foreign Office), No. 2-1944.12.932. 12. Decree No. 3.780/1944.M.E., Budapesti Kozlony (Budapest Gazette), October 29, 1944. 13. Decree 13.577.600/1944.II.BM, November 29, 1944, Hungarian National Archives, K150, Beliigyminiszterium dltaldnos i (General papers of the Ministry of the Interior), Il.kf. 7.t. 2855.cs. 14. Telegram from Veesenmayer to the German Foreign Office, October 26, 1944, in Wilhelmstrasse, 907. 15. Telegram from Veesenmayer to the German Foreign Office, November 1, 1944, reproduced in Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry: A Documentary Account (New York: Pro Arte for the World Federation of Hungarian Jews, 1963), Doc. Nos. 239, 526. 16. A budapesti rendorfokapitdny kivezenylese (Order of the head of the police department of Budapest), order of November 2, 1944; Archives of Budapest, s.p. No. 27. 4920/54. 17. Ibid., order of November 6, 1944; Archives of Budapest, s.p. No. 23. 4920/58. 18. Hungarian National Archives, K150, BM alt. XXI.kf. 4517.cs. 19. Diary of Otto Komoly, November 15, 1944 (manuscript), Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, University of the City of New York. 20. Budapesti Kozlony, No. 250, November 13, 1944. 21. A budapesti rendorfokapitdny kivezenylese, order of November 10, 1944; Archives of Budapest, s.p. No. 22. 4920/74. 22. Uj Magyarsdg (New Magyardom), November 11, 1944, 6. 23. Telegram from Veesenmayer to the German Foreign Office, November 15,1944, in Wilhelmstrasse, 911. 24. Note from Grell to the German Foreign Office, November 20, 1944, in Braham, ed., The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry, Doc. Nos. 241, 528-31. 25. Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsfuhrer-SS (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), 545. See also Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), 857-58. 26. Telegram from Ribbentrop to the German Embassy in Budapest, November 21,1944, in Wilhelmstrasse, 912. 27. YIVO Archives, Testimony of Ms. G. Lachapelle, No. 769, Protocol 1312. See also Miklos Julesz, Kirdndulds a pokolba (Trip to Hell) (Budapest: Szepirodalmi, 1971), 64, 69. 115

Ldszlo Karsai 28. Notice from Solymossy to the Jewish Council of Budapest {Budapesti Zsido Tandcs), November 18, 1944 (cited hereafter as/C£), Hungarian National Archives, K150, BM alt. XXI.kf. 4517.cs. 29. Journal of the JCB, November 24,1944, Hungarian National Archives, s.p. 30. Ibid., November 23, 1944. 31. Decrees ofJanos Solymossy, No. 142/1,2,3,4,5, Zs.il. 1944. Ibid., Hungarian National Archives. 32. Decree of Gabor Vajna, No. 8.935/1944. BM, November 29, 1944, Hungarian National Archives, s.p. 33. 960/1944. BM. Budapesti Kozlb'ny, No. 279, December 6, 1944. 34. Journal of the JCB, November 25,1944, Hungarian National Archives, s.p. 35. Ibid. See also Arieh Ben-Tov, Holocaust: A Nemzetkozi Voroskereszt es a magyar zsidosdg a mdsodik vildghdboru alatt (The International Red Cross and the Jews of Hungary during the Second World War) (Budapest: Dunakonyv, 1992), 297; Jean-Claude Favez and Genevieve Billeter, Une mission impossible? Le CICR, les deportations et les camps de concentration nazis (Lausanne: Ed. Payot, 1988), 429. 36. Journal of the JCB, December 1, 1944, Hungarian National Archives, s.p. 37. Ibid., December 3, 1944. 38. Ibid., December 6,1944. 39. Ibid., December 7, 1944. 40. Ibid., December 8, 1944. 41. Ibid., December 14, 1944. 42. Ibid., December 16, 1944. 43. Ibid., December 17, 1944. 44. Ibid., December 18, 1944. 45. Ibid., December 21, 1944. 46. Ibid., January 8, 1945. 47. Circular from Miksa Domonkos to the Heads of the Ghetto Districts, January 9, 1945, Hungarian National Archives, s.p. 48. Report from Bela Berend to the JCB, January 12, 1945, Hungarian National Archives, s.p.

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: Asher Cohen

THE DILEMMA OF RESCUE OR REVOLT

The Nazi policy of wholesale extermination determined the historical context of Jewish youth movement activity during the Holocaust. This essay focuses on choices facing Zionist youth movements at a time when their principal goal was resisting implementation of Nazi genocide. This inquiry is limited chronologically to the period of the Final Solution (beginning in early 1942), and in the main is confined thematically to "youth movement" organizations. The focal point is these movements' organized responses as a framework for the particular case study of the Zionist Halutz (Pioneer) resistance in Hungary. Clearly, the role of Jewish youth movements was not equivalent in all countries, and where such movements did exist they operated under significantly different sociopolitical conditions. Thus, this essay concentrates on entities that were relatively important in the local context, and uses the diversity of circumstances as part of my analysis of Halutz activities—more specifically, of their choices in the crucial dilemma of rescue or revolt. 117

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The first document to reveal an awareness—apparently more intuitive than rational—that Nazi policy would lead to total annihilation is the January 1, 1942, manifesto of Halutz youth in Vilna. The manifesto contains the well-known phrases: "Hitler aims to destroy all the Jews of Europe. . . . Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter!... Resistance is the only reply to the enemy!" [Emphasis in the original.]l By this time, a significant number of Zionist youth movement leaders in Vilna were refugees from Poland. Since the German occupation of Vilna on June 24,1941, more than two-thirds of the Jewish population of the city had been murdered. In this Abba Kovner document, actual massacres of Jews were depicted as an extremely realistic expectation. The text called for resistance, meaning armed resistance, and nothing else. If we look, however, into events preceding the drawing up of this document, we find that Halutz youth attempted great varieties of rescue actions at the close of 1941. Not only were rescue options already being seriously discussed, but there existed a diversity of views on the subject. One of the participants in the underground discussions expressed the opinion: "We must make all possible effort to rescue the greatest possible number of our comrades. There are options for rescue and for the continuation of work [for the movement]." On the other hand, the leader of the group, Abba Kovner, insisted with great conviction: "Is there a possibility of rescue? Even if it is cruel to respond, we have to answer—No—there is no rescue." The manifesto eventually drafted by Kovner, after his arguments prevailed, reflects a decision taken after a very animated deliberation.2 About the same time, a Halutz group led by Mordecai Tenenbaum-Tamaroff moved from Vilna to Bialystok. Prospects for rescuing most of the movement's members were among the factors determining this move, although Tenenbaum agreed with the option of armed resistance as a long-term policy. Nevertheless, the dilemma of rescue versus armed struggle continued to vex the underground leadership remaining in Vilna. Typically, it responded to these issues much later, in an illuminating document dated April 4, 1943, addressing the questions: "Should we not go to the forest immediately? . . . Is there a necessity to hide in a maline [bunker]?" The answers were unequivocal: "To go to the forest at this time would mean the search for individual security, individual escape It is treason under all circumstances to go to a maline." [Emphasis in the original.]3 118

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It is clear, therefore, that some among the movement's rank and file continued to express doubts, though the organizational decision in the matter remained unchanged; it was this second factor that ultimately determined the course of action. The same deliberations occurred elsewhere. Chaika Grossman, one of the resistance leaders in Bialystok, recalls: "The rebels demanded that we stop preparations for a revolt in the ghetto and begin large-scale actions to save our comrades."4 One of those "rebels," a devoted member of the movement active in the underground, is quoted as saying: "The most effective way to fight the Germans is to go to the forest. We must stop playing these childish games, this heroism that does not befit public individuals responsible for the fate of the movement and our people."5 The expression "going into the forest," in the present case as well as in other contexts, meant a fighting response; however, and this was the crucial point in the argument, it also seemed to offer a relatively high probability for survival. On the other hand, for armed confrontation in the ghetto—in "Jewish territory"—the likelihood of survival was regarded as practically nil. This same argument was valid for most of the Polish and other East European territories. Another example that provides good insight into the doubts, hesitations, dilemmas, and conflicting opinions so rife in the youth movements in Poland is furnished by a discussion in Bialystok in February 1943. In an atmosphere heavy with foreboding concerning the impending disaster, Tenenbaum-Tamaroff assembled the movement's activists. In the course of the deliberation, questions were raised about the manner of armed resistance, fully revealing the inner struggle experienced by these young people. One of the young women who participated in the discussion maintained: "It is more important to stay alive than to kill five Germans. I have no doubt that in a counter -Aktion [armed resistance to take place when the Nazi Aktion against the Jews was scheduled to begin] we shall all be killed. In the forest, on the other hand, perhaps forty orfiftypercent of our people might be saved."6 Another participant, in contrast, argued: "The forest will not save us, and the counter-Aktion will certainly not save us. The choice that is left to us is to die with dignity."7 The group's conclusion was to concentrate on preparations for an armed response in the ghetto, but at the same time not to completely abandon efforts to smuggle people into the forest. As illustrated in documents of the Eastern European Jewish youth movements, armed warfare remained the primary form of 119

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resistance. This is illustrated most emphatically in the case of the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB; Jewish Fighting Organization), the source of inspiration for youth movements in cities throughout Poland. Headquartered in Warsaw, the movement's leadership was in more or less continuous communication with branch organizations and cells. Because of these connections, the resistance policy hammered out in Warsaw after September 1942 assumed a significance that extended far beyond the walls of that largest ghetto. In discussions among ZOB leadership, the fundamental assump tion was that there could be no rescue—that the only alternative to Treblinka was "resistance" in the form of an uprising, or what the resisters preferred to call a "defense of the ghetto." In the January 1943 call, addressed "to the Jewish masses," the themes already heard in Vilna were reiterated: "Be prepared to offer resistance and do not let yourself be slaughtered like sheep." The motto, as recorded by Emmanuel Ringelblum, was "Never again shall the Germans move us from here with impunity;. . . We must think not so much of saving our lives, . . . but rather of dying an honorable death, dying with weapons in our hands." These pro-resistance Jews undertook the famed Warsaw Ghetto revolt in April 1943.8 The situation differed somewhat in the eastern districts of Poland—in Volhynia, western Belorussia, and Polesie—where the massacres began. In these areas, partisan units already were active at the onset of the deportations from the ghettos, thus enabling escape into the forest. Although the immediate motive for leaving the ghetto was joining the partisan struggle, the fact that survival appeared more realistic in this area than in central or western Poland also carried considerable weight. Another area of Poland in which youth movement responses took a somewhat exceptional turn was the Zaglembie District, in the cities of Bedzin and Sosnowiec. The region's ghettos were not established until March 1943, and were not sealed off as were those in most Polish cities. The Jewish population therefore was not cut off from the surrounding environment. Also, in comparison with what Jews experienced in other ghettos during the years 1940-42, the people in the Bedzin and Sosnowiec ghettos did not live in exceedingly crowded conditions, suffering famine and grinding poverty. Furthermore, they were closer to Slovakia's frontier. The situation of youth movements in nearby Krakow was in many ways similar.9 The Halutz movement in Bedzin raised the issue of rescue during the first deportations from the city. Due to particular local circumstances, the choice between revolt and rescue remained more 120

The Dilemma of Rescue or Revolt

viable there than in other locations. Rescue efforts assumed two directions: escaping to Austria and Germany disguised as Polish workers, an option primarily open to young women; or crossing the Carpathians into Slovakia, where deportations had stopped in the fall of 1942. The youth movements exploited both options, though involving only a small number of members. Since the movements in Zaglembie were in close communication with the headquarters in Warsaw, the directives of the latter greatly influenced local decisions. The option of smuggling individuals out of the region was generally limited to those members with whom the movement decided it could dispense. The leadership was to remain, and effectively did remain, in place. Discussions of the question occurred, and clear instructions were subsequently issued: rescue would be secondary to preparation for the uprising, but left open as an eventual possibility. Nevertheless, the largest wave of escapes took place only after the final deportation from Bedzin, following the suppressed revolt of August 1943.10 Ideology was not the sole or perhaps even the dominant reason in Poland for the cessation of large-scale rescue operations. Objective circumstances placed extraordinary difficulties in the way of such activities. The primary factor was the sheer size of the Polish Jewish population. In addition, the majority of Jews were unable to conceal their identity by using "Aryan" documents, due not only to their great numbers relative to the general population of the country, but also to their minimal integration into Polish culture and frequently inadequate knowledge of the language. Except for the southern part of the country, there were no nearby frontiers to cross; and even where such frontiers existed, they were geographically beyond the range of most Jews. Finally, during the two years preceding the initiation of the Final Solution (1940-41), the Nazi occupation regime physically wore out the Jews, to the point of utter exhaustion and impoverishment. In addition to these obstacles, the forests of central and western Poland afforded little opportunity for escape, certainly not before the end of 1943. Many Halutz youth groups' attempts to escape into the forest ended only in tragedy.11 Objectively, therefore, real prospects for rescue in most areas of Poland were extremely limited. Yet the very people who had relatively the best prospect for escaping—those having no family obligations nor elderly or infant dependents, those free to move about, the highly resourceful, a type of person highly represented among Zionist youth movement members—were paradoxically the very ones who regarded their chief objective as organizing ghetto uprisings. Rather than attempting to escape with their lives, those who 121

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had some chance of personally surviving the destruction nevertheless sought, as best they could, to find an appropriate national response to the Final Solution. Youth movement attitudes in Poland toward the possibility of rescue changed to some extent after the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Yitzhak Zuckerman and Zivia Lubetkin recall the assistance given to Jews in hiding in Warsaw. According to Lubetkin's estimate, twenty thousand persons (Zuckerman's estimate is sixteen thousand) were helped in Warsaw by the Polish aid organization Zegota and the National Jewish Committee, with participation by the Halutz movement's underground leadership as well. The number of Jews in hiding in Poland, either on their own or with some form of organizational assistance, is estimated to have been about forty thousand.12 In summation, the dominant choice of Jewish youth movements in Poland was armed resistance—not rescue—or, alternatively, joining partisan units in the forest when and where possible. This choice was supported by ideological arguments highly debated within each movement, and between movements. Nevertheless, these arguments should not be divorced from the reality of viable options. Although objective conditions, mentioned previously, greatly impeded rescue efforts, thousands of Jews were nevertheless rescued. The significant number of people recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" remains irrefutable proof of these rescue activities. Self-rescue, however, was another matter. All movements at this juncture, without known exception, opposed and condemned any attempt at self-rescue. The number of youth movement members who despite their adjurations chose this option is unknown: by choosing self-rescue members would have been forced to sever all connection with their movements. In France, the situation was very different from that in Poland, not withstanding some common denominators. Following the massive deportations during the summer and fall of 1942, the remaining Jews in France (more than forty thousand) comprehended the mortal danger of deportation and began to articulate an organized response during the same period that such a response was being organized in Eastern Europe. Concurrent with the Vilna manifesto, a group of young people in Toulouse, southern France, published a plan of action for what they called the Armee Juive (Jewish Army). This plan contains a statement almost identical to that of Abba Kovner: "The extermination of the Jewish people is already on the way 122

The Dilemma of Rescue or Revolt

to realization {Vextermination du peuple juif est deja en cours de realisation)."13 The Armeejuive, Zionist in orientation, was founded by two Revisionist Zionists, but was later joined by Jews of other factions. Until 1944, this group remained rather small and concentrated its efforts on two activities: helping Jews interned in French camps and smuggling Jews across the Spanish border. Rescue efforts were widespread in France beginning at the end of 1942. Two groups active in rescue were the Eclaireurs Israelites de France {EIF; Jewish Scouts) and the Mouvement de Jeunesse Sioniste {MJS; Zionist Youth Movement). It is worthy of note that France was the only country in which there was a single unified active Zionist youth movement. At the end of 1943 and during 1944, the EIF and MJS helped tens of thousands of Jews, furnishing them with false documents, hiding places (often in exchange for payment), and daily subsistence.14 The Jewish Scout movement was the larger and the more established of the two movements, and had deeper roots in French life. Both movements were active primarily in the south of France. Various units of the Jewish Communists, though neither Zionist nor scouting, were active during the Holocaust. Since the 1930s, the French Communist Party had groups consisting of immigrant workers, called Main d'oeuvre immigree (MOI\ Immigrant Labor). These included a Yiddish-speaking group, which, in view of the illegality of its activities, played an extremely important role in the Communist Resistance. The Jewish units operated under direct Communist command and followed party policies calling for unrelenting sabotage and armed skirmishes against the German occupiers. These policies were in opposition to those of the other movements, which unequivocally opted for rescue activities. When news of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt reached France, it was the Communist Jewish press that publicized the event. They wrote: "The Jews of Warsaw have given to all their brethren and to the world at large a magnificent example of courage. Their sacrifice is not in vain. Every Jew in France is clearly aware that only a manly attitude in the battle being fought for life and death between the Hitlerites and ourselves will ensure the redemption of the Jewish people."15 In contrast to the Jewish Communists, the Zionist Youth Movement, the Jewish Scouts, and the Armeejuive did not publicize the Warsaw Ghetto revolt. These divergent attitudes reflected opposing policies concerning the dilemma of rescue versus revolt. Nevertheless, by the second half of 1943, all of the groups had established a 123

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coordinating organization called the Comite Generate de Defense des Juifs {CGD; General Committee for the Defense of Jews). The establishment of the CGD, however, did not eliminate previous disagreements on the issue of rescue versus armed resistance, at least not until the Allied landing in France in June 1944. When the Allies launched battles of liberation, the Armee Juive took an active part, and individuals associated with the Scouts, the Zionist Youth, and other groups joined the fighting in large numbers. Those involved in rescue operations in both Western and Eastern Europe frequently resorted to clandestine crossings from one country to another; these operations usually were denoted as Tiyul (Hebrew for "trip" or "excursion"). These border crossings were undertaken as a second stage in underground activities, due to the amount of time required for organizing and establishing minimal cadres capable of moving about freely using "Aryan" papers. In Eastern Europe, the organized Tiyul was initiated in 1941, during escapes coordinated by the Polish Jewish youth movements and authorized by their Koordynacja (the coordinating agency of the youth movements) in Warsaw. This route was discontinued due to difficulties in organization. However, about thirty-five active members of the Polish Jewish youth movement fled to Slovakia; most of these reached Hungary by 1943. A second wave of Tiyul activity began in April 1942, after the start of deportations from Slovakia. It involved crossing from Slovakia into Hungary. Most Halutzim (Zionist Pioneer Youth) who fled from Poland to Slovakia took part in this operation. The organized Tiyul undertaken by the Zionist Halutz movements was an inseparable part of the spontaneous flight of Slovak Jewry. The border between Slovakia and Hungary was relatively new, having been established only in 1938, when parts of southern Slovakia were handed over to Hungary. With the onset of deportations from Slovakia, there was a simultaneous movement of Jews fleeing south. Most Slovak Jews had extensive family connections on the Hungarian side of the frontier and, since they also spoke Hungarian, they experienced little difficulty in moving through Hungary. Movement from Slovakia continued during the course of 1942. At the end of that year a permanent liaison was established between youth movements in Hungary and representatives of Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) in Istanbul. The latter not only encouraged activists in Budapest to focus most of their efforts on maintaining organized Tiyul as an ongoing enterprise, but also went so far as to give the operation the status of a major Zionist undertaking. At the same time Eretz Yisrael representatives furnished most of the financial as124

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sistance for smuggling Halutzim across frontiers and maintaining the refugees in Hungary. Thus, if this instruction can be considered an expression of the attitude of the Yishuv (the Jewish community of Palestine) in the rescue-versus-resistance dilemma, it would seem that in this case the Yishuv opted for rescue. More refugees from Poland, most from the Bedzin-Sosnowiec Region, fled from Slovakia to Hungary during the latter half of 1943. The arrival of approximately ten thousand illegal refugees in Hungary by March 1944 (the beginning of the German occupation), among them hundreds of young Halutzim, raised a new problem of producing and providing forged documents. The arrival of refugees from Slovakia and Poland, whose numbers were very large in comparison to the limited size of the Zionist youth organizations in Hungary, also exerted a decisive influence on the development of these local Zionist movements. These refugees not only helped young Hungarian Jews to understand for the first time the severe situation faced by Jews under Nazi rule, but also encouraged development of skills needed to deal with the challenges and threats of Nazi policy. Moreover, they did so before the Germans actually set foot on Hungarian soil. The Germans occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. For Hungary's Jews, a reevaluation of their deeply assimilated national sentiments suddenly became imperative. Reevaluation of deep-rooted popular beliefs based on a century-old assimilation into the dominant national culture is normally a painful and lengthy process. In Hungary, however, there was no time for such reconsideration— especially for those who had been for so long unprepared. The speed of deportations from the Hungarian countryside following occupation is unprecedented in the history of the Shoah.16 At no other point in the Nazi genocide were such a great number of Jews deported, at such a rapid rate, from so many dispersed locations. Except for a few individual cases, some well-known, no significant aid or rescue was rendered by non-Jews. Initially, there were no protests or interventions on behalf of the Jews, either from inside Hungary or from neutral countries, despite widespread knowledge of the deportations. The established Jewish community organizations, closely linked to the Hungarian political elite until the latter severed connections, remained disoriented and helpless. No initiative or rescue operation can be credited to these community organizations. It is difficult, however, to claim that a different type of leadership would have acted in a more salutary way under the conditions created by the Germans and the Hungarians, including head-of-state Miklos 125

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Horthy, his government, and the entire Hungarian administration, as well as the Hungarian people. Nevertheless, there is a sharp difference between the official Jewish leadership's reaction and that of the Zionists. The Hungarian Zionist movement was one of the smallest in interwar Europe; its influence on the community was minimal. The Magyar Cionista Szovetseg (Hungarian Zionist Association) operated within the law until March 1944. The important role it played under German occupation was certainly unexpected. Four distinct and practically independent initiatives merit note: that of Otto Komoly, president of the association, who maintained contact with a number of prominent politicians and in August, 1944, established "Department A for Children's Protection" of the International Red Cross; that of Moshe Krausz, secretary of the Palesztina Hivatal (Palestine Office), who was in close communication with Swiss Consul Charles Lutz and played a leading role in establishing a haven for many Jews at the so-called Glass House at 29 Vadasz Street, a Budapest building that enjoyed extraterritorial status; that of the Relief and Rescue Committee, led by Rudolf (Rezso) Kasztner and Joel Brand; and finally, that of Halutz youth movements. Only the last of these will be discussed here. Halutz movements utilized their accumulated experience, much of which came from absorbing refugees, to turn their formerly lawabiding units into underground organizations. Membership in Halutz resistance varied at different stages of its activity, but never numbered more than a few hundred individuals throughout Hungary. However, these activists maintained daily contact with their comrades from Slovakia and Poland, some of whom had escaped after the Warsaw Ghetto revolt. These ties were so strong and intimate that, in 1944, Halutz movements in Hungary functioned as an amalgamation of local and refugee activists. This twofold contact— with Slovakia and Poland on the one hand and with the free world, via Istanbul, on the other—created a unique situation for Halutz movements in Hungary. It meant that they not only received reports about the mass exterminations, but they also understood and internalized the information. This enabled Halutz members to grasp relatively quickly that German occupation had created a totally new situation in Hungary. This is why, for the first time in the history of Hungarian Jewry, Zionists were able to play a significant role in the community. During the early period following the German occupation of March 1944, Halutz rescue activities were very limited, barely more than collective self-rescue efforts. Their most important achieve126

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ment was success in consolidating a relatively sophisticated and efficient underground organization and in saving some of their comrades from ghettos in the countryside. At the same time they also tried (rather unsuccessfully) to warn Jews in the ghettos against boarding the deportation trains. In May and June 1944, envoys of the Halutz underground arrived in various ghettos, bringing along many sets of false identity documents to be used to facilitate escapes. True, they did not get to all of the ghettos; but it is also true that frequently papers remained unused even in those ghettos they succeeded in reaching. Jews simply refused to believe the "horror stories" told by the refugees and now repeated by the young activists.17 The more successful of these envoys' activities were connected to Tiyul. During the mass deportations, illegally crossing the frontier from Hungary into Romania often proved to be less difficult than other options and thus was widely done. Operation methods between May and August 1944 remained relatively unchanged. Organizers in Budapest prepared the candidates and furnished them with false papers. Near the Transylvanian border a permanent Resistance activist awaited their arrival and made contact with the arranged-for smuggler. This whole procedure was very risky and many were arrested on trains and in border towns. A total of between five and seven thousand men and women escaped to Romania. Most of them originated from the northern part of Transylvania, and about two thousand were saved directly by Halutz efforts. The relatively large number of individual escapees from Transylvania was due to their proximity to the border, as well as to their knowledge of the deportations. In June, during the height of the deportations, three Jewish paratroopers from Palestine, including Hannah Szenes, arrived in Hungary. Though they were prevented from contributing to the practical work of rescue, their arrival had a sizable psychological impact on those involved in Halutz resistance, for whom it symbolized the unity of the Jewish people. Strong international protests took place at the end of June 1944—when there were no more Jews in Hungary except for those still in Budapest and in the military labor service companies. These protests coincided with the success of the Allied landing in Normandy. The beginning of July marked two vital changes. The first and most important was that Horthy stopped further deportations. The second was the "Horthy Offer" (i.e., his offer to allow the emigration of a number of Jews, provided the neutral states were willing to take them). The Horthy Offer failed as an emigration initiative, 127

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but some neutral consulates were able to issue a limited number of Schutzpdsse (protective passes) for Jews intending to emigrate. The Swiss Legation, representing Great Britain in Hungary, was authorized to protect Jews emigrating to Palestine. The so-called Glass House was opened; it served not only as a protected building but also as one of the headquarters for resistance. Sweden sent Raoul Wallenberg as special representative for "humanitarianactivities."18 Although concentrating its efforts on rescue activities, Halutzresistance never completely abandoned the idea of organizing some kind of armed revolt. The first efforts to acquire arms and to create bunkers had begun even before the German invasion. Instructions were received from Istanbul in March 1944, prior to the invasion, to set up a Haganah (defense) committee; it was also at this time that the first pistols were obtained. The degree of importance that the initiators and executors of the Haganah policy attached to the idea of revolt is difficult to judge today. Actually, the committee was practically inactive. The exact number of weapons the resistance possessed cannot be determined—but no more than at most a few dozen firearms of various types. Preparation of bunkers was undertaken almost instinctively. Some were initially set up in apartments in Budapest, and later they were also set up in caves, cellars, and similar locations. The significant fact remains, however, that efforts to obtain weapons, prepare bunkers, and engage in related activities were never pursued on the same scale or with the same emphasis as preparation of false papers or organization of Tiyul.19 It is difficult to unequivocally identify the actual decisionmaking process. Discussions were endless, though close study indicates a clear preference for rescue over revolt. The basic elements required for armed struggle were completely lacking. Young men aged twenty and over were nearly all drafted for the labor service. In Hungary, time spent in the ghetto, which in Poland lasted for more than two or three years and served as the major source of resistance power, was limited to only two or three weeks, under barbaric conditions. There was no defeated army—a potential source of weapons—as in Poland, Yugoslavia, and France. More significant was the absence of a significant Hungarian resistance with whom to cooperate; geographical conditions throughout most of Hungary were not conducive to guerrilla warfare. Above all, however, the sharp and sudden change from conditions of relative tranquility to the brutal and dizzying pace of the annihilation process precluded any opportunity to organize a fighting resistance. As a corollary to these circumstances, Halutz resistance had to formulate policies not only under the constraints of local condi128

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tions, but also in accordance with instructions received from Yishuv representatives in Istanbul. All letters arriving from Istanbul after March 1944, which steadily decreased in number, continued to stress the necessity of maintaining rescue work and allyah—immigration to Palestine—as the main objectives of the Zionist youth movements. An additional factor was the profound influence exerted by youth movement members who fled from Slovakia in lanuary 1944. These refugees not only knew of the uprising in Warsaw and elsewhere (which was also known to the movement in Hungary), but also had met personally with survivors of the ghetto revolt. They already had considered the implications of the event during their movements' organized discussions. The conclusions reached, in this instance in the following dialogue of a single movement, characterized the orientation of all youth movements. One of the discussion participants gave the following summation: "The question was how many Jews would survive after the war, and how they would build Eretz Yisrael."20 Speaking in the same spirit, another said: "I do not want a village in my name in Eretz Yisrael, I wish to live in one of them."21 In other words, a decision had already been made in Slovakia that youth movement energy should be chiefly devoted to the task of rescue. It should be noted, though, that this option was not exclusive: many youth movement members later played an active role in the Slovak National Uprising of August 1944. Debates revolved around intermovement Zionist ideological arguments. These tensions reflected the year 1944, when many specifics of the murder of European Jewry were manifest and known. The war was in its last stages, and there were reasonable grounds for believing that organized rescue operations had a fair chance of success, and could be carried out on a considerable scale. It was the Tiyul to Romania that in effect provided an unequivocal response to all doubts in the matter. When the resistance leadership removed many of its people from Hungary at a time when others were still considering alternative courses of action, it was actually specifying rescue as its goal and rejecting the choice of hopeless revolt. This satisfied the requirements of Zionist policy at the time, and also constituted an efficient exploitation of the limited possibilities available in Hungary as the war seemed to be approaching its end. On the other hand, there were many resistance comrades, especially those from Poland, who were not satisfied with the rescue policy, which had gradually become dominant and excluded any 129

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possible attempt at revolt. To a certain extent there was a suppressed desire in the heart of each member to fight the German enemy—each activist had before him the example of the heroic stand of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto—and a decision was difficult. There was discussion of this issue from the very outset until liberation. At every stage there were those who argued that the moment should change their entire approach. Even in the final stages of the war, efforts were made to acquire arms and to prepare bunkers.22 On October 15, 1944, after an ill-fated attempt by Horthy at a volte-face, the fascist Arrow Cross regime was established. The Red Army already had penetrated into Hungary to within 120 miles of Budapest. Two weeks later deportations were renewed. Due to war conditions and absence of transportation, approximately eighty thousand people—some labor service units but mostly women aged sixteen to sixty—were marched on foot to the German border. The resistance and a number of dedicated neutral nation representatives, such as Wallenberg, were able to save some of these women with the aid of real or forged protective passes. Due to the selective character of these deportations, thousands of children were left behind without care. Halutz resistance, without contingency plans for this situation, took up the challenge. They were the only body able to care for these children, under the official cover of Department A of the International Red Cross. From October 1944 until the liberation of Budapest in January-February 1945, nearly forty children's homes were set up; they provided protection for five to six thousand children and approximately two thousand adults. During this same period the Glass House became the headquarters for complex and intense activities. The new regime honored the protective passes of the residents of that building, and it also respected the extraterritoriality of the house itself. In the first weeks of Arrow Cross rule, Jews from all classes looked to the Glass House for physical protection. Offices quickly became dormitories; by December 1944, more than three thousand Jews were living there, "invisible" to the authorities. At the same time thousands of others crowded the streets, begging for more and more protective passes, which then seemed to be the only way of saving their lives. The manufacture of forged passes became an important contribution of Halutz resistance to the rescue activities. On the basis of 7,800 legal passes issued by the Swiss, Halutz was able to forge as many as perhaps 100,000 additional documents. These documents were, in many instances, successful. 130

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During this period the forged documents workshop of Halutz resistance was able to produce, in quantity, any required papers. Papers were forged not only for resistance activists, but also for many other Jews and a considerable number of non-Jews persecuted by the fascists. Most of the identity papers used by the Hungarian resistance movement, which had initiated its activity in this period, also came from these workshops. These false papers, furnished to non-Jewish resistance organizations, were among the prerequisites for the latter's very existence.23 In the period after November 1944, newly established Hungarian resistance groups outnumbered the Jewish underground. Their numbers enabled these Hungarian resistance groups to provide effective armed protection for important Jewish rescue centers such as the Glass House, a number of Red Cross offices, the childrens' homes, and several "protected houses" outside the ghetto. During this period official protection gradually vanished. The only real authority consisted of armed Arrow Cross gangs in the streets; only armed protection had a chance of being effective. The instinctive willingness of rank and file in the Hungarian resistance movements resulted in the amalgamation of armed groups. These groups implemented a number of effective rescue operations, liberating hundreds or perhaps thousands of Jews driven to the banks of the Danube by the Arrow Cross gangs. On December 31,1944, gendarmes and Arrow Cross thugs broke into the Glass House, which provided shelter for about three thousand people. They drove all of them out into the street with blows and gunfire; three people were killed. While this drama was being enacted, a sizable group of Halutz resistance people was stationed in the neighboring building. Their commander recalls: We possessed aboutfiftyor sixty rifles and a considerable number of grenades. . . . The decision was mine to take, whether and when to break out and attack the fascists. I felt we should wait. . . . Then our people in the Swiss Legation succeeded in getting some police, . . . and the Jews, who were about to be marched off to the Danube [to be shot], were returned to the building If I had made a hasty decision to break out we would have caused a catastrophe.24 In summation, no organized rescue operation of significant size was undertaken in Hungary between May and July 1944—the critical period of mass deportations. The majority of the Hungarian people sympathized more with the persecutors than with their Jewish victims. The appointed Jewish leadership was the victim of its own nonpolitical background. Halutz organizations saved several 131

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hundred lives, a task not easily achieved, but failed to influence the fate of the Jewish masses. Their major success was in the building of a relatively sophisticated underground organization. The situation after October 15, 1944, was quite different from that of the months of the great deportations. For the first time a number of neutral-nation representatives in Budapest, as well as members of the organized Hungarian resistance (nonexistent before October 1944), could be called upon to contribute to rescue operations. This avenue, however, could only be efficiently activated in the presence of a Jewish organization able to transform it into a practical large-scale rescue activity. Arrow Cross rule was characterized by total inefficiency and administrative disorder; in fact, it was this chaotic situation that made possible the murder of so many Jews in the streets of Budapest. This same chaos, in part, however, enabled Halutz resistance members to implement a degree of rescue. They certainly became the best organized and most active rescue organization in Hungary during the Holocaust. Accumulated information concerning the fate of European Jewry during the Shoah was utilized in Hungary, and most of all used for Halutz resistance activities. Though their rescue operations were tragically belated, they were nevertheless relatively efficient. The experience of Halutz resistance in Hungary follows closely the general pattern of resistance by Jewish youth movements during the Shoah. All groups had to confront the dilemma of rescue or armed revolt. In each case, even if precise information concerning the Shoah was unknown, Nazi policy was clearly viewed as leading to certain death and served as the departure point for resistance activity. The major component of the dilemma between rescue and revolt was the constraint imposed by the narrow limits of the given place and time. In addition to the binding confines of reality, ideological elements always played an important role. In Poland, for example, not only was individual rescue rejected, but in most cases even "going to the forest" was opposed. In fact, for both geographical and chronological reasons, the latter often was not even a viable option. In other cases, at a later date and in the East, this solution was accepted, even encouraged, and organized by primarily Zionist movements. The case of the Jewish French Communists serves as an even more obvious demonstration. By late 1942, it was evident that large-scale rescue activities pursued by movements and organized groups in France had been carried out with considerable success. Clearly, the Jewish Communists never opposed rescue; they even practiced it on a large scale, especially when it involved saving 132

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children. Nevertheless they continued to give primacy to sabotage and armed attempts against the occupiers. Their fighting operations were numerous and important in the local context, though none were directed at objectives of specifically Jewish significance. The role of ideology as a determinant factor in the dilemma of rescue or revolt could not be more clearly demonstrated. In Hungary, time was the most important single factor. The sudden change of conditions in March 1944 was the major reason for the meager results of rescue work during the period of the great deportations. Neither real conditions nor the historical necessity for the emergence of armed resistance had previously existed. The choice of Halutz resistance activists to concentrate on rescue was essentially dictated by the objective situation. The hesitations and the dilemma, which actually existed and were very real, had no "realistic" basis. Nevertheless the choice of rescue was also supported by ideological arguments, strengthened and subsidized from Eretz Yisrael by the Yishuv delegation in Istanbul. It seemed a matter of major importance that Jews remain alive, and there appeared to be a real prospect for its realization. The dilemma was there; the conclusion was nearly the only one that it was possible to realize.

NOTES 1. The manifesto has been published in English in Documents of the Holocaust, ed. Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981), 433-34. See also Abba Kovner, "A First Attempt to Tell," in The Holocaust as Historical Experience, ed. Yehuda Bauer and Nathan Rotenstreich (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981), 77-94; Asher Cohen and Yehoyakim Cochavi, eds., Zionist Youth Movements during the Shoah (New York: Peter Lang, 1995). 2. Reizl (Ruzka) Korczak, Lehavot Ba-Efer (Flames in the ashes) (Tel Aviv: Merhavia, 1946), 46-60. On general aspects of organizing the resistance in Vilna, see Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1980), 221-70. 3. Quoted from Arad, Gutman, and Margaliot, Documents of the Holocaust, 435-38. Among the first rescue operations, which evidently were instinctive responses to ensure Jewish survival and did not yet involve a comprehensive assessment or understanding of the situation beyond the immediate event, was the maline built by Jews during the first roundups in Vilna, in June and July of 1941; Korczak, Lehavot Ba-Efer, 165-180; Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 202-7. 133

Asher Cohen 4. Chaika Grossman, The Underground Army: Fighters oftheBialystok Ghetto (New York: Holocaust Library, 1987), 253-69. 5. Ibid. 6. Arad, Gutman, and Margaliot, Documents of the Holocaust, 296-301. 7. Ibid. 8. Quoted in To Live with Honor and to Die with Honor: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives "O.S." [OnegShabbath], ed. Joseph Kermish (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1986), 584-606. In terms of German extermination policies, it was not the murders in Vilna but rather the start of roundups in the General Government that caused this change in the character of Jewish resistance. See also Israel Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 119-80. 9. Concerning Krakow, see Hehalutz Halohem (Fighting pioneer) (Israel: Ghetto Fighters' House, 1984). Rivka Perlis raises the matter in "The Halutz Resistance in Cracow," in Dapim: Studies on the Shoah, ed. Asher Cohen, Yehoyakim Cochavi, and Yoav Gelber (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 221-53. For a primary account of the underground in Bedzin, see Fredka Mazie, Re'im Basa'ar (Comrades in the storm) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1964), 55-132. 10. On crossing the frontier from the Bedzin Region into Slovakia, see Tushiah Hertzberg (Gutman), Yad Vashem Archive, G-103/1380, Center for Historical Documentation at the University of Haifa, Doc. Nos. H3c65, H3cl4/10; Yaakov Rozenberg, Center for Historical Documentation at the University of Haifa, Doc. No. H3cl4/6; Massuah Archives, AD 2/3. On Zivia Lubetkin's visit and her proposal, see Rivka Perlis, Tnu'ot Hanoar ha-halutsiyot be-Polin ha-Kevushah (The Halutz youth movement for occupied Poland) (Israel: Ghetto Fighters' House, 1987), 60-74. On the activities of the "Tiyul Committee" led by Joel Brand, see Asher Cohen, The Halutz Resistance in Hungary, 1942-1944 (New York: Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies of The City University of New York, 1986), 16-51. 11. Zivia Lubetkin, Bimei Kilaion Vamered (In days of destruction and revolt) (Israel: Ghetto Fighters' House, 1979), 84-85; Perlis, Tnu'ot Hanoar, 293-94. 12. Lubetkin, Bimei Kilaion Vamered, 181; Yitzhak Zuckerman, Ba'geto U'bamered (In the ghetto and in the revolt) (Israel: Ghetto Fighters' House, 1985), 155. Joseph Kermish also writes that the number of Jews on the "Aryan" side reached 20,000, in "The Activities of the Council for Aid to the Jews [Zegota] in Occupied Poland" in Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust: Proceedings of the Second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Jerusalem, April 8-11, 1974, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Efraim Zuroff (N.Y.: KTAV Publishing House, 1978), 367-96. 13. Claude Vigee, La Lune d'hiver (Paris: Flammarion, 1970), 404. 14. See also Alain Michel, Les Eclaireurs Israelites en France (Paris: Edition des E.I.F., 1984); Lucien Lazare, La Resistance Juive en France (Paris: Harrassowitz, 1987). For various types of assistance given by the youth movements to rescue operations see Archives of Ghetto Fighters' House, Z/1063, Fc.33, copies of letters dating from July 30 to August 7, 1943, Fc.54, Fc. 95, April 1943, and Fc.107, July 11, 1944. 15. Notre Parole, May and June 1943. See also La Presse antiraciste (Paris: Edition UJRE), 179-91; Stephan Courtois and Adam Rayski, Qui savait qois? (Paris: La Decouverte, 1987), 188-219; Jacques Ravine, La Resistance organisee desjuifs 134

The Dilemma of Rescue or Revolt (Paris: Julliard, 1973) 150-51; Adam Rayski, Nos illusions perdus (Paris: Ballard, 1985), 135-41; David Diamant, Les Juifs dans la Resistance Frangaise (Paris: Le Pavillion, 1971), 177-82; Asher Cohen, Persecutions et sauvetages (Paris: Les Editions Du Cert-Otto, 1993), 359-97. 16. For details see Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, revised and enlarged edition (New York: Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies of The City University of New York, 1994) and Gyorgy Ranki, 1944 mdrcius 19 (March 19, 1944) (Budapest: Kossuth, 1978). 17. Cohen, HalutzResistance, 52-105. 18. For details on Wallenberg's activities in Budapest, see Per Anger, With Wallenberg in Budapest (New York: Holocaust Library, 1981); Frederick E. Werbel, Lost Hero: The Mystery ofRaoul Wallenberg (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982); Alexander Grossman, Nur das Gewissen: Karl Lutz und seine Budapester Aktion (Geneva: Wald, 1986). 19. Cohen, Halutz Resistance, 67-71. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 141-46, 195-203. 23. Ibid., 155-94. 24. Ibid., 238-39.

135

: Robert Rozett

i INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION: ; THE ROLE OF DIPLOMATS : IN ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE IEWS IN HUNGARY

In the wake of the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, the Western Allies and the neutral governments responded in several significant ways to the unfolding destruction of Hungarian Jewry. Although their response was neither sufficiently decisive nor effective enough to prevent the murder of 560,000 members of the Jewish community, which on the eve of the occupation numbered over 800,000 (according to the Nazi racial definition), their activities created an atmosphere conducive to rescue work. The international community issued warnings and protests to the Hungarian authorities about the treatment of the Jews, extended official protection to Jews on Hungarian soil, and worked with local Jewish activists to rescue Jews from deportations and help keep them alive until the approaching Soviet conquest of Hungary. Owing in large measure to these activities, a majority of Jews residing in Budapest after the cessation of the first wave of deportations, in July 1944, survived to see Russian troops take the city in early winter of 1945. 137

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At the time of the invasion of Hungary, several factors combined to put the Western Allies and neutral states in a better position than ever before to help a Jewish community faced with the threat of Nazi atrocities. Western leaders had a great deal of information about the murder of European Jewry by March 1944. It may be argued that they did not yet grasp the enormity of the Final Solution, though they were aware that mass killing had proceeded unabated for several years.1 Through the period of the first stages of the German occupation of Hungary, from March to October 1944, Western leaders' access to information increased and concomitantly it may be inferred that their understanding of the Nazi murder machine became finer. In addition, by mid-1944, following Allied military successes in Italy, France, and on the Eastern front, the end of the war was in sight. Rescue of Jews therefore began to be eyed anew, in the context of the ensuing postwar evaluation of wartime behavior. By March 1944, the international community also had a sturdy vessel through which to foster rescue, the War Refugee Board (WRB), created by Franklin Roosevelt in January of that year. At least on paper, the board was given extraordinary powers to help the Jewish victims of Nazi terror. With the German occupation of Hungary, these powers were put to the test for the first time.2 Within days of the German occupation, the Western Allies warned the Hungarians against the impending destruction of their Jewish community. On March 24, 1944, Franklin Roosevelt broadcast a message to the people of Hungary and Admiral Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian regent, forewarning them against participating in Nazi crimes.3 Six days later, the British foreign minister, Anthony Eden, made a strong statement on the persecution of Jews in Hungary and called for the Hungarians to act humanely toward the Jewish community.4 Throughout the spring of 1944, the War Refugee Board urged the neutral governments, the Vatican, and the International Red Cross to undertake tangible rescue operations in Hungary. As early as March 24, 1944, the WRB asked the Nuncio in Washington to convince the Holy See to intervene to help the Jews. The response the following week declared that "instructions had already been given to the representatives of the Holy See in Hungary to do everything possible for the relief of the Jews."5 The International Red Cross also said it would be willing to increase its activities in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. The organization demurred at extending diplomatic protection to Jews, however, claiming, "this might be considered as unrelated to the 138

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committee's traditional and conventional competence.'^Nevertheless, the International Red Cross sent Friedrich Born to Budapest at the end of May 1944, who soon thereafter received "confidential instructions to get in touch with Jewish circles to examine with them possible channels of relief for Jews concentrated in ghettos and camps, (to make) estimates of supplies and their availability locally, and to inform himself generally, as far as possible, on the situation of the Jews."7 The United States prevailed upon authorities in Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey to undertake special efforts on behalf of Hungarian Jewry. On the strength of these appeals, the Swedes made several important contributions to the general atmosphere of rescue evolving in Budapest. On June 11, 1944, they appealed to the Hungarian foreign minister to ameliorate the suffering of the Jews, imploring him to allow the Swedes to help orphans and abandoned children, by providing clothing and establishing a children's home, and to aid those people who had lost their homes through destruction by bombing. They also requested that Jews with Swedish papers, relatives in Sweden, or even business ties with Sweden be permitted to go there, and that other Jews be permitted to emigrate to Palestine. Ten days later, the United States representative in Stockholm, Herschel Johnson, reported that the Swedes would be sending Raoul Wallenberg to Budapest to foster rescue efforts. Wallenberg arrived on July 9, 1944.8 In light of the detailed information on the murder of European Jews contained in the Auschwitz Protocols and an appeal by the chief rabbi of Sweden, Marcus Ehrenpreis, King Gustav of Sweden declared in a message to Miklos Horthy on June 30, 1944: "Having received word of the extraordinarily harsh methods your government has applied against the Jewish population of Hungary, I permit myself to turn to your highness personally, to beg in the name of humanity that you take measures to save those who still remain to be saved of this unfortunate people. This plea has been evoked by my long-standing feelings of friendship for your country and my sincere concern for Hungary's good name and reputation in the community of nations."9 The papal nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, and the Swiss minister, Maximilian Jaeger, also protested to the Hungarian authorities about the persecution of the Jews. In the name of the Pope, Rotta called the deportations and other anti-Jewish measures "abominable and dishonorable." Specifically, he asked for the suspension of recruitment of Jewish workers and for the protection of Jewish converts to Christianity.10 Following Jewish appeals in early July, 139

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Swiss Minister Jaeger warned the Hungarians that if anti-Jewish measures were not ended, his government would consider breaking off relations with Hungary.11 The Romanian commercial attache in Bern, Dr. E. Florian Manoliu, was dispatched to Hungary on May 22, 1944, through the offices of the El Salvadorean government representative in Switzerland, George Mantello. Manoliu arrived in Budapest on June 19. In his possession were one thousand Salvadorean citizenship papers, which he distributed to Jews through Moshe Krausz, a leader of the religious Zionist Mizrachi movement.12 This was not the first time during the Holocaust that foreign citizenship papers had been used in an attempt to rescue Jews. The poet Yitzhak Katzenelson was one of sixty Warsaw Jews in possession of Honduran papers who were brought by the Germans to the Vittel transit camp in France in 1943. They remained there in relative safety until the Germans had a change of heart in the spring of 1944 and deported bearers of Latin American papers from France to their deaths.13 At the height of the deportations from Hungary, the Americans appealed directly to the Hungarian government, entreating them to allow the International Red Cross to feed and clothe Jews in ghettos and camps, and to allow the WRB to finance this aid and exchange dollars for Hungarian currency. They also asked the Hungarians to permit Jewish children under the age of ten to leave for Palestine. This request led to two extremely significant developments, providing cornerstones for subsequent rescue operations. First, Admiral Horthy proposed that certain Jews be allowed to leave Hungary; and second, the International Red Cross was given responsibility for the welfare of Jews on Hungarian soil. According to the Horthy Offer, as this proposal came to be known, the Hungarians gave permission for two categories of Jews to go to Palestine: one thousand children under the age of sixteen who would be accompanied by one hundred adult chaperons; and 9 families per week, which meant about thirty to forty people. According to the offer, about six hundred Jews would be permitted to leave for Palestine by boat from Constanza, Romania, while 1,400 families would be allowed to travel to Palestine over land. In total it was proposed that about seven thousand Jews would be permitted to leave, at a rate of between four hundred and five hundred per month.14 The Horthy Offer was never consummated, but it provided the basis for placing Hungarian Jews under international protection as bearers of diplomatic documents, with the agreement of the Hungarian authorities. Jews who received aliyah certificates—documents allowing them to immigrate to British-controlled Palestine— 140

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were potential British subjects. As such, Britain took a special interest in their well-being. Due to the neutral Swiss government's representation of British interests in Hungary, these Jews also became the responsibility of the Swiss. Hence, Jews receiving aliyah certificates also received documents from the Swiss—placing them under their diplomatic protection. Once the principle of international protection was established in Hungary, other governments and international bodies could also—and did—issue documents to Jews, providing them with a degree of protection. Eventually, through the Swiss, 8,700 aliyah certificates and accompanying protective documents were issued. These papers were generally issued to family heads, thus protecting entire families, and raising the number of Jews under Swiss protection to about forty thousand. The Swiss also promised that betweenfivethousand and ten thousand children would be afforded refuge in their country. The Swedes promised to provide the same for "thousands of released persons."15 Following Swedish proposals to accept Hungarian Jewish refugees, Raoul Wallenberg was directed to distribute 4,500 papers. By the time of the Szalasi coup in October 1944, he had distributed well over half of them.16 The Spanish disseminated documents after agreeing to allow somefivehundred children to go to Tangier. Later Spain also agreed to take in 1,500 more Jews, and papers were given them as well.17 Responding to American pressure, Ireland declared its intention to allow 500 Jews to come to its shores, though no Irish protective documents were issued in Budapest.18 The protective value of the Salvadorean documents, issued through Mantello, increased after the announcement of the Horthy Offer. While the Horthy Offer was brewing, the International Red Cross decided to dispatch, on July 4, 1944, a handwritten note to Horthy from its chairman, Max Huber, coinciding closely with the American appeal. Detailing Hungarian acts against the Jews, and asking for verification of the information, the letter included an offer by the Red Cross to supervise the distribution of food and medicines to the deportees.19 Along with the American appeal, this led Horthy to declare that the International Red Cross was to bear responsibility for the physical needs of Hungary's remaining Jews. Horthy's declaration therefore provided the underpinning for much of the crucial rescue activity of Friedrich Born and his aides.20 After being charged with responsibility for the physical wellbeing of Budapest Jewry, the International Red Cross accelerated its activities. Robert Schirmer of the Red Cross Berlin office was dispatched to Budapest to join Born and Born's assistant, Dr. Tudicum. In their talks with the Hungarian authorities, the Red Cross 141

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delegates gained a significant concession for Jews under their protection: exemption from wearing the Jewish badge. They also received official permission for members of the Budapest Zsido Tandcs (Jewish Council) and the Hungarian Red Cross to work with the International Red Cross.21 To help foster aid, the International Red Cross petitioned the Western Allies for funds.22 In early August 1944, they received permission to supply Hungarian refugees through Allied blockade.23 In addition to helping internees and Budapest Jewry at large, the International Red Cross delivered food parcels to Jews under the protection of other foreign countries and agencies.24 Urged by Jewish leaders, the International Red Cross and the Hungarian Red Cross also attempted to locate deportees and obtain permission to send them food, clothes, and medicines. As of the end of August 1944, however, attempts to trace the deportees had proved fruitless.25 Another important linchpin in the Budapest rescue operations was hammered into place when Friedrich Born appointed Otto Komoly, a leader of the Zionist Rescue and Relief Committee, to head Section A of the International Red Cross. This section's official task was to help Jewish refugees.26 Its role expanded, however, after Born gained permission from the Hungarian authorities to direct child rescue and other social work.27 The first houses for Jewish children under international protection were set up in August 1944; eventually there would be some six thousand children in such houses.28 Along with about forty Zionist youth, including Efra Agmon, who became a coordinator of Section A, Komoly was installed in the International Red Cross office on Merleg utca 4.29 Born placed Komoly and the workers in Section A under his protection; he also set up other offices in which various factions of the Zionist youth movement worked and were protected.30 In addition to Section A, Born created a parallel department designed to aid Christians who were considered to be Jews according to the racial definition current in Hungary. This department, Section B, was led by Gabor Sztehlo of the jo Pdsztor Misszio (Good Shepherd Society), an organization founded in 1942 primarily to help Jews who had converted to Protestantism. As events progressed, Section B became increasingly involved in general Jewish rescue activity. Eventually some two thousand Jewish children were hidden by the society, primarily in monasteries and other religious institutions.31 Early in September, together with the Jewish Council, the International Red Cross tried to obtain permission to extend diplomatic protection to all residents of the approximately two thousand apart142

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ment houses marked with the Star of David by Hungarian authorities. This approach was unsuccessful.32 Nevertheless, as of early October 1944, using WRB and Joint Distribution Committee funds, the International Red Cross had brought potatoes, legumes, condensed milk, conserves, and meat—sent in three shipments to Budapest and distributed to the Jewish community.33 Swedish relief also increased during the relatively quiet summer months. Working under the Swedish minister in Budapest, Carl Danielsson, Raoul Wallenberg set up a special department to help Hungarian Jews. He eventually had four hundred coworkers, most of whom were Jews who also benefited from Swedish protection. In addition to Swedish workers, the Swedish diplomats Per Anger (attache), Lars Berg (head of the Swedish department for foreign interests), Grotte Carlsson (attache), and Yngve Ekmark (responsible for purchasing supplies) also took part in rescue activities. Wallenberg and his staff devoted much time and energy to relief work, especially toward the middle of September, when it appeared that fewer people would be eligible for Swedish protection.34 As of the end of the month, the Swedes purchased 200,000 pengo worth of food, giving various sums to Jewish relief agencies. Late in September, it was reported that one thousand Jews holding Swedish papers would be released from labor service, and community workers under Swedish protection would be exempted from wearing the Jewish badge.35 Yet promises did not necessarily lead to immediate action and as of mid-October, five hundred holders of Swedish papers still remained in the labor corps. The Hungarians now promised to release only half of them.36 Another important set of Swedish rescuers were Waldmar Langlet and Asta Nilsson, representing the Swedish Red Cross in Budapest. Langlet was a professor of Swedish language at a university in Budapest, and Asta Nilsson was a dynamic member of the Swedish royal family sent to Budapest to work with him. Langlet and Nilsson maintained contact with Otto Komoly, Lajos Stockier of the Jewish Council, and Peretz Revesz, a No'ar HaTsiyoni (Zionist Youth) activist.37 Having received permission to send food and clothing to deportees, they had sent out thirty thousand packets of clothes as of the Arrow Cross seizure of power on October 15, 1944.38 The Swiss minister in Budapest during most of this period was Maximilian Jaeger; his staff member most involved in helping Jews was Charles Lutz.39 Lutz was the consul responsible for representing the Hungarian interests with various nations at war with Hungary. His office was on Szabadsag ter, where he first developed close ties 143

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with a leading Zionist activist, Moshe (Miklos) Krausz. They initially came into contact in attempting to arrange aliyah from Hungary before the German occupation. When the Germans entered Hungary, Lutz invited Krausz to continue his activities in the Szabadsag ter office. In June 1944, Krausz moved into another Swiss office building, the so-called Glass House on Vadasz utca 29. Krausz and other Jewish residents of the Glass House enjoyed the protection of the Swiss government. The Glass House became a meeting ground for the activities of the Palestine Office, the Zionist youth underground, and the Swiss. On October 15,1944, the Nazis firmly established Ferenc Szalasi, head of the Arrow Cross {Nyilas) Party, as leader of Hungary. Following the summer months' relative calm, the situation of the remaining Hungarian Jews deteriorated precipitously. During the first days of the Szalasi regime, the Arrow Cross murdered about six hundred Jews. Soon thereafter, Jews were called upon to build fortifications.40 On November 8, the deportations were renewed. Until Heinrich Himmler ordered its cessation on November 24, 1944, Jews were marched out of Hungary by foot in what came to be known as the Fussmarsch, or death march.41 While deportations by foot were proceeding apace, the Arrow Cross ordered the creation of a general ghetto in Budapest on November 13. The establishment of this ghetto was declared as steps were taken toward establishing the socalled international ghetto for bearers of protective papers.42 By December 2, most of the unprotected Jews had been moved into the general ghetto. During December and January, random Arrow Cross acts of violence against Jews increased in number and intensified. In overlapping stages, those interested in helping Jews in Budapest had to respond to rampages, deportations, ghettoization, renewed rampages, and the chaos that followed the Russian advance on the city. Throughout the various stages, international diplomats in Budapest and their Jewish allies strove to safeguard and simply keep alive as many Jews as possible, using the tools they had developed over the past months. When the Arrow Cross took control, the diplomatic power of international diplomats in Budapest plunged dramatically, jeopardizing many of their gains. None of the neutral countries recognized the Szalasi government; it, in turn, respected the rights of foreign governments and organizations only grudgingly. Several diplomats, however, managed to maintain some political leverage by dangling the possibility of official recognition of the new Hungarian government in front of its principal figures. The diplomats, therefore, were 144

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able to use their lessened prestige to ameliorate the situation of the Jews.43 During the first days of the Arrow Cross regime the foreign diplomats, headed by Angelo Rotta, frequently addressed themselves to the Hungarian government on behalf of the Jews. They asked that Jewish documents be respected and exceptional treatment be accorded to those who bore them. Their pleas included exempting document-holders from wearing the Star of David, exempting or releasing them from forced labor, and facilitating their emigration.44 By October 19,1944, following a series of International Red Cross protests to the new Hungarian foreign minister, Gabor Kemeny, the organization achieved several important concessions: promise of official recognition of International Red Cross buildings and documents; exemption of women, children, and invalids from building fortifications; and designation of the Jewish Council as a protected body. Soon thereafter, Friedrich Born met with the German plenipotentiary in Budapest, Edmund Veesenmayer. This meeting led to a declaration on October 23 that brought the Horthy Offer back to life. The Germans and the Hungarians declared that eight thousand Jews could leave Hungary by November 15,1944. Toward the end of October, Hungarian radio twice announced that the government would honor protective documents.45 In the wake of these declarations, the Swiss announced: ". . . in order to offset any possible use by the Germans or the Hungarians of lack of readiness on the part of the Swiss as an excuse not to allow these people to depart," they would permit them to enter Switzerland. Fearing the large number of potential immigrants, the Swiss at first hesitated and began seeking an alternative haven. As early as November, however, the Swiss Federal Council had decided to accept twelve thousand Hungarian Jews, and negotiated for their exit.46 The WRB did not regard the revived form of the Horthy proposal as seriously as it did the original, believing the Germans would never let the Jews leave.47 Their suspicions were apparently well founded. Despite the Swiss declaration, the November 15 deadline passed without a mass emigration of Jews. Despite Arrow Cross statements, the renewed possibility of emigration during the autumn of 1944 did not lead to an immediate and comprehensive recognition of foreign papers. It was reported to the WRB in early November 1944 that Swedish documents were not respected, although Swiss papers were considered legitimate. Concomitantly, the Spanish complained that their documents also were 145

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not being respected in the streets, although the Hungarian government had "officially" recognized their validity.48 International diplomats often intervened personally to help those Jews holding their documents; papers alone did not guarantee protection. Raoul Wallenberg, for example, on October 17,1944, reported that all his Jewish staff, numbering some four hundred, had disappeared. Riding a bicycle around the capital, the Swede managed to round up all but ten of them. On October 28, Angelo Rotta also used his political position to rescue 150 Jews in a Jewish house on Thokoly utca 69. Soon thereafter, on November 8, Charles Lutz protested to Foreign Minister Gabor Kemeny concerning rumors he had heard that Jews, including holders of aliyah certificates and letters of protection, would be collected at the train station for deportation.49 Through their activities, these diplomats managed to obtain a degree of respect for their documents. On November 10, for example, it was reported to the WRB that the Swedes had managed to obtain the release of one thousand bearers of Swiss and Swedish papers from labor camps and confinement.50 Shortly thereafter, when special houses were set up for bearers of protective papers in the "international ghetto," foreign diplomats became responsible for the well-being of the Jews residing there. With the help of Jewish activists, especially the Economic Division of Section A of the International Red Cross and the Zionist youth underground, they fed and supplied those in the houses. The Economic Division of Section A was headed by Efra Agmon (Hungarian HaShomer HaTsaif), Hansi Brand (wife of Joel Brand), and Zolly Weiner. Rudolph Weisz, an older and experienced teamster, was in charge of transporting the goods. He worked with Section T of the International Red Cross (the transportation unit), under Gyorgy Wilhelm of the Jewish Council.51 Aboutfiftysuch houses were eventually set up and maintained. The phenomenon of Jews holding forged documents proliferated during the Szalasi period; their certificates modeled on the legitimate papers issued by the international diplomats, many residents of the protected houses and lews in the general ghetto held false documents. The forging and distribution of these papers, primarily by the Zionist youth, clearly illustrates how Jews working under international auspices exploited their positions to further rescue work. It is estimated that the Zionist youth manufactured and distributed up to 120,000 Swiss letters and several thousand in the name of other nations.52 Due to the large number of Zionist youth residing in the Glass House, itself a center for drawing up and dis146

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tributing legitimate Swiss papers, a great number of false Swiss documents were manufactured there as well.53 The profusion of counterfeit papers had a dual effect. They helped save many Jews but, alternatively, their abundance and authorities' awareness of them led to a disregard of legitimate papers. By the third week in November 1944, forged papers had become so widespread that the police brought them to the attention of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, noting that many labor servicemen, women, and children had obtained them. Cited as well were the many bearers of unofficial papers residing in the protected houses. In turn, the authorities discussed the matter with Charles Lutz. The Swiss diplomat told the Hungarians that his government would consider police raids on their houses as trespass and, should that occur, would lodge an official protest with the Foreign Ministry. On November 23, 1944, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry approached Lutz and Wallenberg about taking steps to affirm the validity of the protective documents that they had dispensed. In an attempt to curtail the proliferation of false papers, the Foreign Ministry declared on the following day that protective documents could no longer be given out.54 Bowing to this pressure and hoping to prevent the disintegration of the entire rescue operation, Lutz began to cooperate somewhat with the Hungarians to control the spread of counterfeit papers. On November 26, he told the Hungarians he was aware of and looking into the problem of false papers held by residents of protected houses on Vadasz utca, and the existence of an office on Merleg utca that seemed to be functioning illegally. Two days later, Lutz acknowledged the existence of a "few thousand" Swiss false papers. Lutz, however, opposed the Arrow Cross's exclusive control of the documents. Citing an incident that had occurred earlier in the day in Szent Istvan Park, where the Nyilas had mishandled bearers of authentic aliyah certificates and confiscated their papers, Lutz demanded that the Arrow Cross cooperate with the international diplomats to control the distribution of the papers.55 In this way, he and his wife were essentially forced to separate out holders of legitimate documents from those with false papers, among them the Jews concentrated for deportation in the brickyard of the Budapest suburb of Obuda.56 Although Lutz became enmeshed in the murderers' work in Obuda, international diplomats and Jewish activists for the most part worked together to stave off deportations, ghettoization, and murder. At Obuda and along the trail to Austria, they sought out 147

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bearers of protective documents, or distributed them to Jews. They then brought bearers of papers back to Budapest. They also distributed food and water to the Jews, who were forced to march for days with almost no sustenance. In one such rescue attempt, a Hungarian Major named Nandor Batizfalvy made it known that thousands of Jews had been taken from Obuda to Hegyeshalom, a transit point on the Austrian border. He gave this information to Zionist leaders Arie Breslauer and Moshe Krausz, to Wallenberg, and representatives of Portugal and Spain. Batizfalvy gave out passes to the rescuers to allow them to go to the border to help the deportees. Breslauer, a driver named Kluber, and a Jew named Pollack set out with blank forms from various neutral diplomats. Once they reached the border, they filled them out and distributed them, returning Jews to Budapest. Upon their return, they reported to Krausz about the treatment of the deportees. In turn, he forwarded the report to Switzerland.57 In another incident, Eliezer Kadmon, known as Kepes (a member of the Zionist youth underground), arrived in Obuda in an International Red Cross vehicle, supplied by Section A. He managed to bring back to Budapest all the children who had been concentrated in Obuda. Several times Kepes also followed deportees to Hegyeshalom; on those forays he successfully rescued between one hundred and two hundred Jews.58 It is extremely difficult to determine how many Jews were rescued in this manner. Herschel Johnson reported from Stockholm to the WRB on December 22, 1944, that approximately two hundred sick Jews had been rescued from assembly sites, while two thousand Jews had been brought back from deportations—five hundred from Hegyeshalom alone.59 In early January 1945, Hans Weyermann, appointed Friedrich Born's deputy that December, reported that one of his coworkers, Sandor (Alexander) Ujvary, had contributed to the rescue of nine thousand Jews from the Obuda brickyard and Hegyeshalom.60 Although the creation of a general ghetto could not be averted, the international diplomats and their Jewish helpers tried to keep as many Jews out of it as possible. The Arrow Cross decreed that they intended to transfer to the general ghetto the nearly six thousand Jewish children who were protected in houses set up by Section A of the International Red Cross. Charged with the supervision of the move, the International Red Cross, with the help of other neutral diplomats, managed to have the deadline postponed several times. From the original target date of November 13, 1944, they eventually had the deadline changed to December 31, 1944.61 Their intervention included a joint protest by the Swedes, Swiss, Spanish, 148

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Portuguese, and the Vatican on December 20, 1944.62 Using their physical presence and special diplomatic status, the diplomats also tried to obstruct Arrow Cross attempts to remove Jews from the international ghetto.63 Similar to the rescue activities during the summer of 1944, those of that year's autumn and the first few weeks of 1945 rested on the pillars of international concern, wide cooperation between international diplomats and Jews, and the approaching Soviet conquest. These factors combined to impede the completion of the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. Although tens of thousands of Jews were deported or murdered by the Arrow Cross in Budapest, tens of thousands more lived to see the destruction of the Arrow Cross regime.64 Either directly or indirectly, most of the survivors owed their lives to the activities of international diplomats and Jewish activists.

NOTES 1. Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), 181. 2. Henry Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust (NewYork: Holocaust Library, 1970), 239-94. 3. Ibid., 252-53. 4. Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, 185-86. 5. War Refugee Board Hebrew Archive, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, Israel (hereafter WRB), October 9, 1944, LS Lesser. 6. Ibid., March 27, 1944, International Red Cross; Arieh Ben-Tov, Facing the Holocaust in Budapest: The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Jews inHungary, 1943-1945 (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988), 143-46. 7. WRB, June 1, 1944, Roswell McClelland; Yad Vashem Archive, P19/114, Lutz File, "Bericht an das Internationale Komitee vom Roten Kreuz erstattet von Friedrich Born Delegierte fur Ungarn, Juni 1945." 8. WRB, June 21, 1944, Herschel Johnson; WRB, "Report on the Treatment of Jews in Hungary," no date, unsigned. 9. Per Anger, With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest (New York: Holocaust Library, 1981), 43; "Report on the Treatment of Jews in Hungary," no date, unsigned. 10. Elek Karsai, Vddirat a ndcizmus ellen (Indictment of Nazism), vol. 3 (Budapest: A Magyar Izraelitak Orszagos Kepviselete Kiadasa, 1967); Hungarian National Archive, Kum res. pol 1943-44, Napi Daily Reports, July 6, 1944, 93-97.

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Robert Rozett 11. Bela Vago, "The Horthy Offer—A Missed Opportunity for Rescuing Jews in 1944," in American Jewry and the Holocaust, ed. Seymour Maxwell Finger (New York: American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust, 1984). 12. Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 1120; Eliezer Gevirtz and David Kranzler, To Save a World (New York: CIS, 1991), 155-79. 13. YitzhakKatzenelson, VittelDiary (Tel Aviv: Ghetto Fighters' House, 1964), May 22, 1943 to September 16, 1943. 14. Karsai, Vddirat a ndcizmus ellen, 199-202 (Hungarian National Archive, Kum, pol 1943-44, June 27, 1944, note from the Hungarian government to the German legation); Central Zionist Archives, L15/277, July 13, 1944, Moshe Krausz. 15. Vago, "The Horthy Offer"; Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Joint Distribution Committee, 1939-1945 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), 441. 16. As of the date of this memo, he had handed out 2,700 sets of documents. Joint Distribution Committee Archives, Hungary General 1941-44, February 9, 1944, Raoul Wallenberg. 17. Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust, 441. 18. WRB, August 28, 1944, Benjamin Akzin. 19. WRB, July 10, 1944, Gerhart Riegner. 20. Ben-Tov, Facing the Holocaust in Budapest, 187. 21. WRB, August 3, 1944, John Pehle. 22. Ibid., International Red Cross. 23. WRB, August 4, 1944, Benjamin Akzin. 24. WRB, August 24, 1944, Roswell McClelland. 25. Hungarian National Archive, Kum, Be II/2-27/27, September 2, 1944, Denes Csopey. 26. Braham, Politics of Genocide, 984. 27. Joint Distribution Committee Archives, SM 38, September 29, 1944, Otto Komoly. 28. Robert Rozett, "Child Rescue in Budapest, 1944-5," Holocaust and Genocide Studies2, no. 1 (1987): 49-59. 29. In November, Komoly moved to Baross utca 52 and again to Munkacsi Mihaly utca 19, although Merleg utca 4 remained one of Section A's offices. 30. Maccabi HaTsair worked out of an office on the Perczel Mor utca, HaNoar HaTsioni first had an office on Jozsef Korut and later on Benczur utca 35. HaShomer HaTsair and Dror-Habonim used Komoly's offices. Asher Cohen, The Halutz Resistance in Hungary 1942-1944 (Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 1986), 149-54. 31. Hungarian National Archive, A Budapesti Getto iratai, M 70,1944, A Zsido Tandcs napldja, December 1, 1944, Solymossy telephone conversation; Hungarian National Archive, A budapesti getto iratai, M 70, December 21, 1944, Lajos Stockier; Ben-Tov, Facing the Holocaust in Budapest, 326. 32. These houses were originally set up throughout the capital due to the Hungarian government's belief that the Allies would stop bombing lest they harm Jews. The bombing, however, continued and the number of houses fell to 1,840. WRB, September 3, 1944, Roswell McClelland; Bauer, American Jewry

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International Intervention and the Holocaust, 442; C. A. Macartney, October Fifteenth (Edinburgh: University Press) 284-85. 33. Joint Distribution Committee Archives, SM 39, Hungary General, October 1944-46,1949, October 3, 1944, International Red Cross. 34. WRB, September 22,1944, Herschel Johnson. 35. Joint Distribution Committee Archives, Hungary General 1941-44, February 9, 1944, Raoul Wallenberg. 36. WRB, October 12, 1944, Raoul Wallenberg. 37. Anger, With Raoul Wallenberg, 55-57; Hungarian National Archive, A Zsido Tandcs naploja, December 16, 1944, Lajos Stockier; Hungarian National Archive, A Zsido Tandcs feljegyzesei, December 22, 1944, Otto Komoly; Cohen, Halutz Resistance in Hungary, 135. 38. Karsai, Vddirat a ndcizmus ellen; Hungarian National Archive, M 70, October 12, 1944, ProMemoria, 614-15. 39. Harald Feller became the head of the Swiss legation in mid-December 1944. Ben-Tov, Facing the Holocaust in Budapest, 345. 40. WRB, November 9,1944, Riegner-Schirmer conversation. 41. Himmler's order apparently resulted from contacts among a member of his staff, Colonel Kurt Becher, Rezso Kasztner, and Saly Mayer, the Joint Distribution Committee's representative in Switzerland. Hungarian National Archive, 26,455/2, November 8, 1944, protocol of Lutz-Kemeny conversation; Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust, 426. 42. WRB, November 15, 1944, signed S from Foreign Office. 43. Yad Vashem Archive, Charles Lutz File. 44. Hungarian National Archive, kum, pol, 1943-44, Zsido ugyek, 12922, October 21, 1944, Swedish Embassy in Budapest to Hungarian Foreign Ministry; ibid., 12998, October 23, 1944, Angelo Rotta; WRB, October 23, 1944, Friedrich Born. 45. WRB, November 9, 1944, Riegner-Schirmer conversation; WRB, October 23, 1944, Friedrich Born. 46. WRB, November 10, 1944, Stucki. 47. WRB, November 13, 1944, Roswell McClelland. 48. Hungarian National Archive, Kum, pol, 1943-44, Zsido ugyek, 13005, November 8, 1944, Spanish legation; WRB, November 4, 1944, Gerhart Riegner. 49. WRB, October 30,1944, Herschel Johnson; Yad Vashem Archive, PI9/115, Lutz File, June 1945, J. Szatmari, "Aufzeichnungen aus Ungarns dunklenTagen," in Easier Nachtrichten; Hungarian National Archive, November 8,1944, protocol of Lutz-Kemeny conversation. 50. WRB, November 10, 1944, Herschel Johnson; WRB, November 15, 1944, signed S from Foreign Office. 51. Cohen, Halutz Resistance in Hungary, 183-84. 52. For a detailed list of false papers distributed by the Zionist youth, see Rafi Benshalom, Ne'evakanu Lema'an HaHayim (Our struggle for life) (Tel Aviv: Moreshet, 1977), 182-94. 53. Cohen, Halutz Resistance in Hungary, 182-94. 54. Hungarian National Archive, Kum, pol 1943-44, Zsido ugyek, 13113, November 22,1944, Bellyey Arpad, and Solymossy; ibid., 13084, November 23,1944, no signature; ibid., 13117, November 24,1944, Hungarian Foreign Ministry.

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Robert Rozett 55. Ibid., 13150, November 26, 1944, Swiss legation; ibid., 13150, November 24, 1944, Swiss legation. 56. Yad Vashem Archive, P19/15, Lutz File, "The Persecution of the Jews under Hitler in Hungary," 1946, Charles Lutz. 57. Eichmann Trial, Session 61, June 1, Arie Breslauer testimony; Hungarian National Archive, A Zsido Tandcs feljegyzesei, 13125, Swedish legation; Anger, With Raoul Wallenberg, 68, 90. 58. Cohen, Halutz Resistance in Hungary, 208-9, 225. 59. WRB, December 22, 1944, Herschel Johnson. 60. Weyermann's declaration apparently included some eight thousand children whom he said Ujvary had saved from being sent from Budapest to the general ghetto on Christmas Eve 1944. Eichmann Trial, Session 61, June 1, Arie Breslauer testimony; Yad Vashem Archive, Wallenberg, vol. 14, August 1,1945, Hans Weyermann. 61. Hungarian National Archive, A Zsido Tandcs naploja, December 20,1944, Stockier; ibid., December 24,1944, Lajos Stockier. 62. Jeno Levai, Hungarian Jewry and the Papacy (Dublin: Clonmore and Reynolds, 1967), 50-51. 63. From November 21, 1944, onward, Charles Lutz and his wife tried to be present in the international ghetto to foil Nyilas raids on the protected houses. Raoul Wallenberg became a legend for his activities in this sphere; Yad Vashem Archive, P19/115, Lutz File, Szatmari; Anger, With Raoul Wallenberg, 89. 64. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1973), 553-54; Macartney, October Fifteenth, 450.

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; UNLEARNING THE HOLOCAUST: ; RECOLLECTIONS AND REACTIONS

The Holocaust, originating as it did from one of the foremost Kulturvolker of human civilization, may very well be incomprehensible.1 The sheer size and horror of the Holocaust induces even its victims to suspect divine wrath in its background.2 Very soon after the Holocaust, efforts were made on all sides to insert the event into the realm of normalcy with easy-to-grasp interpretations.3 Even the most miraculous or devastating occurrences must be rationalized by finding justifications—otherwise the entire edifice of rational human discourse may crumble.4 Thus, punishment on the Holocaust's massive scale must be justified, at least retroactively, by proving that those punished (i.e., the victims) had indeed committed a crime. It is not relevant whether the punishment was of divine or merely human making; what matters is that the event must be kept within the logical bounds of "what everybody in his right mind understands by punishment" (i.e., it has to have the structure and ingredients of a justice process: culprit, sentence, and enforcement). 153

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Obliterating the potential innocence of those punished by making the entire Hungarian Jewish population guilty of having taken something that was not theirs (i.e., fraudulently shortchanging Hungarians of their livelihood, occupying too many jobs and positions of a limited supply that did not belong to them, or even taking away Hungarian women or embracing their religion—both with overtones of sly infiltration), much of the Hungarian press and most of the legislature had, by 1944, successfully built up the image of the Jew as a thoroughly criminal figure. The sentence itself—first the major anti-Jewish laws of 1938, 1939, and 1941, then the decrees to segregate, plunder, mark, round up, and deport all Jews indiscriminately to an unknown destination under disgraceful circumstances—had the built-in advantage of having been passed by a highly impersonal political force totally out of the reach of ordinary Hungarians. It came as a godsend for some, since it envisaged an eagerly awaited redistribution of wealth throughout the country. For others, the sentence's demographics made it relatively easy to overcome the perceived conspicuous injustices in one's own locality. For still others, who were none too enamored of the government or its decrees, the notion of law and order, the sheer virtue of remaining a law-abiding good Hungarian {jo magyaf) citizen simply overruled any emotional opposition that may have arisen. At most, there was a quiet wish for more leniency and less discrimination, especially on the part of various church dignitaries.5 As to enforcing the sentence, each step was cleverly designed to produce quod erat demonstrandum effects. For example, by crowding Jews together in ghettos without facilities, the proverbial— though entirely false—accusation concerning the uncleanliness of the Jews was readily demonstrated; the torturing of Jews for hidden valuables, whatever the result of the search, demonstrated their criminality in holding or still stubbornly hiding proscribed valuables. The few Jews who attempted to escape were found guilty, in the popular consciousness, of forsaking their brethren, while the meek, law-abiding masses of Hungarian Jewry were found guilty, again in the popular consciousness, of not resisting in the brave "good Hungarian" fashion. A culprit was found, a sentence passed and duly enforced. Even for some Jews, the decrees pouring out of the Ministry of the Interior in the spring of 1944 evoked equanimity, if not remorseful consent, for these laws seemed the "normal" solution to an "anomaly" that was to be remedied somehow.6 154

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The Hungarian Holocaust thus already entered the realm of "normal" occurrences at the time of its unfolding. Not surprisingly, it resisted many subsequent attempts at reinterpretation. It is a sizable emotional task to become worked up, let alone shocked, over an event one has lived through with malicious joy, composure, or resignation. In fact, reaffirmation, rather than a shift in focus or perspective, took place in the early post-Holocaust period. Rather than the Holocaust itself, it was the survivors who came to appear as "abnormalities," spoiling an otherwise neatly executed scenario. Once written off for dead by popular sentiment, how dare they come back with revengeful ideas such as wanting to retrieve their confiscated property and valuables? Prominent left-wing writer and politician Jozsef Darvas obviously could not afford to openly embrace the violent antisemitism of the previous regime, but by way of retroactive incrimination (a method coming to renewed use in the post-1989 period), he reestablished early on, in March 1945, the "normality," as well as the "justness," of the Hungarian Holocaust by rejecting the "false martyrdom," the "opportunism" and laziness, and the thirst for "racial prerogatives" of some survivors.7 Thus, the roles of culprit versus law enforcer were reaffirmed. News reaching the general public about the horrors of the concentration camps was threatening to rock the boat. Was the sentence too harsh? Those who had a vested interest in keeping the equation firmly in place could still voice their views with relative freedom. A typical example is quoted by columnist Gyorgy Parragi in September 1945: "That damned race never suffered. They came home fatter than they left Now there are more Jews in the country than before they were taken away for a holiday."8 This early manifestation of Holocaust denial is more than just a sample of a journalist's hate mail. It expresses the latent wish of many Hungarians, in the wake of a major political turnover, to keep clear of the crime of having assisted in executing such a harsh sentence. Clearly, these treacherous Jews simply invented the horrors of the Holocaust to justify their inadmissible thirst for revenge against innocent, law-abiding people. Indeed, the lynchings at Kunmadaras, Dunabogdany, Miskolc were just around the corner. Survivors at this time were a double source of frustration for Hungarians. First, they reminded Hungarians of the Jewish property and valuables they may have unjustly acquired in 1944.9 Second, they threatened Hungarians with testimonies that might upset an otherwise neatly rounded-off scenario. In intellectual circles, as 155

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recorded in diaries and memoirs, the lengthy investigation (igazoltatdsi) procedures, often conducted in the troublesome presence of survivors, evoked much more anger and frustration than the gruesome realities of the Holocaust in their time.10 Mostly Jewish fellow intellectuals providing evidence against writers with a dubious wartime record were seen (and privately branded) as ungrateful, bloodthirsty troublemakers.11 The extremely informative investigations of 1945-46, conducted throughout the country, have not yet been adequately researched. One spin-off effect must have been the realization that Arrow Cross troops had been right in envisaging a postwar "Jewish revenge" when they sought to preempt it by rounding up and executing thousands of Jews hiding in Budapest. Writer Gyula Illyes's value-free metaphoric position on Lorinc Szabo's investigation, "why blow up a mill just because it was grinding away last year just like it is this year" (diary entry of May 7,1945), was tested in conference with top Communist politicians on behalf of Szabo and other fellow populist writers (entry of May 9, 1945). The strategic leniency and even protectionism of top Communist politicians toward nationalist writers, as opposed to their stringency toward left-wing Jewish intellectuals, surfaced again during the reprisals for the 1956 uprising.12 Notable was ultranationalist publisher Sandor Piiski's investigation, with repercussions in 1988-89. Recalling it, Piiski revived the shrewd argument that all actions taken by wartime Hungarian governments, including joining Hitler's war effort, and declining to leave it in 1942-43, should have been intended—byway of forestalling the German occupation of the country—to give maximum protection to 800,000 Hungarian Jews.13 This argument, of course, has been blown out of proportion by many, as it was by Piiski in his reply, claiming that had it not been for Hungary's Jews the country would have suffered less severely after World War II than after World War I. This is only another way of saying that the Jews of Hungary were to blame for the country's mutilation. And not a word of thanks from the Jews for all the protection and sacrifice. The mere reappearance of survivors confronted Hungarians with the joint task of having to account for both their acquisitions and their behavior vis-a-vis Jews. Neither was easy to confront. Yet, both might very well have been accomplished, as in Germany for example, if party politics had not seriously derailed the incipient process of repentance. The lack of mass support for the Russophile Communists, evidenced in the general elections of both 1945 and 1947, forced the 156

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Hungarian Communist Party to pay lip service to working-class people who had formerly belonged to the Arrow Cross Party, as well as to comply with the nationwide wish that the Holocaust remain a closed chapter. Although the top war criminals were convicted, many of the lesser ones were allowed to go free. In addition, the fact that the top echelons of the Communist Party were occupied by Jews who had enjoyed the shelter of the Soviet Union during the Holocaust made these party leaders reluctant to recall a historical juncture whose hardships they themselves had never felt. This issue was all the more sensitive in 1949-50, when an internal struggle was coming to a head between Communists working underground in Hungary during the war years and Communists living under Stalin's tutelage. The latter's contribution to progress and democracy at home consisted primarily of pompous wartime broadcasts on Radio Moscow. Most important, however, with the leadership consisting almost entirely of Jews, and this in a country imbued with antisemitism as well as anti-Communism, it would have been extremely ill-advised to harp on the Jewish toll of the war years—together with the Hungarian responsibility for that toll—and thus further alienate the bulk of the country's voters. It was much better policy to go along with the national sentiment by recalling how (Jewish) landlords, financiers, and industrialists had taken an undue share of the country's wealth, or by demonstrating how far the top Communists had moved from "tribal solidarity" by using a particularly firm hand when nationalizing Jewish property followed by the internment of the former owners, or clamping down ostentatiously on allegedly predominant Jewish black marketeering. The latter was a motif directly responsible for the pogrom at Miskolc.14 This reorientation in historical memory was further corroborated by the general Soviet guideline of keeping silent about the Holocaust. Istvan Bibo's 1948 eloquent essay on the Jewish issue, with its harrowing perspective on Hungary's share of the responsibility for the atrocities, was one of the last pieces of social science writing on a Holocaust-related subject allowed to be printed for many years. The issue of Soviet reticence is far from fully researched, but one can nevertheless conjecture three major reasons why the highly censored Soviet press refrained in a protracted manner from Holocaust-related subjects.15 First, the great myth of Hitler, seeking above all to demolish the glorious achievements of the Soviet Union out of sheer greed and envy, would have exploded if confronted with the simple truth that his main targets—even in the last throes of the German war effort— 157

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were in fact the Jews. The Jewish toll, therefore, was simply incorporated into overall war losses in Soviet statistics, as well as in those of all satellite countries. Second, although Soviet Jews, particularly in the metropolitan areas, fared somewhat better than those in other Eastern European countries, excluding Bulgaria, the Soviet record vis-a-vis support for persecuted Jews was far from spotless. Local officials in occupied Soviet territories were often all too helpful with Einsatzgruppen massacres. Also, Jews fleeing to the Soviet Union to escape persecution were summarily deported to prison camps that boasted death records comparable to those of German-run concentration camps.16 The Red Army proved particularly idle in putting a halt to the mass murder of Jews. For example, due to the Soviet Union's proximity to Poland, Russian planes were in a better strategic position to bomb railroads leading to Auschwitz than those of the Allied forces, yet they failed to do so. Third, to arouse excessive, if only retroactive, sympathy and compassion for the Jews would have clearly undercut the official Soviet policy before, during, and particularly after the Holocaust of presenting world Jewry as a body of conspiring, parasitic, Trotskyite, Zionist-racist-fascist plutocrats, staunchly opposed to the glorious ideas and practice of proletarian internationalism.17 Furthermore, it seemed to pay political dividends to keep alive, rather than extinguish, popular Russian antisemitic traditions, thus providing a safety valve for widespread, repressed frustrations. Thus it came to pass that in Hungary, practically the only common ground between the Soviet-instigated political propaganda machinery and the local national sentiment proved to be the tacit assumption that the Holocaust never happened; whatever did or did not take place, it was better for everyone, including the survivors, to keep silent—or at most to include it in an "etcetera" fashion on the much larger balance sheet of sufferings brought on by the war.18 Again, in fairness, especially in the early post-Holocaust period, when the dubious dealings of some Jewish dignitaries or the cruelties perpetrated by some Jewish concentration camp inmates were not yet fully clarified, the silence about the Holocaust was not entirely against the wishes of the Hungarian Jewish community— ashamed of its expulsion from the body of the nation and longing to start a new life even at the cost of burying the old one. Some troubling aspects of Jewish martyrdom were bound to arise, giving renewed strength to arguments that the Jews had deserved everything they got. Here again, antisemitism was coupled with Jewish 158

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self-hate to complete the cover-up operation concerning the realities of the Holocaust. I have, at some length, analyzed the political background of the silence lasting several decades (not including the small-edition archival or belletristic publications).19 Far from starting the dual process of contrition and forgiveness, this silence not only froze all free discussion of the subject but also reinforced and hardened nonJewish (as well as Jewish) ideological positions on this, the most sensitive of issues. None of these issues surfaced during the brief spell of freedom in October-November 1956, or during the Communist restoration, despite the many Jewish protagonists.20 If, for example, Gyula Illyes, populist poet-laureate of several regimes, spoke in his 1946 diaries about "approximately half a million Budapest Gentiles" (i.e., every second citizen), having been instrumental in sheltering persecuted Jews, in the same entry he complained bitterly about the press' and the Jewish community's lack of gratitude for such rescue work, which in the minds of those sheltered was apparently a matter of simple moral duty requiring no special acknowledgment.21 Jewish survivors, on the other hand, even if they did have some memories of Gentile compassion from the days of their ghettoization, as did Edith Bruck, could not help focusing on the harsh welcome they usually were given on the first tentative return to their native localities: We came up to our house to find only one cupboard and two soiled sofa cushions. There were Jew-baiting inscriptions all over the walls. We tried to clean up but this was no longer our house of old. . . . Neighbors named someone who had taken away our furniture. We hoped we might get everything back and could stay in the village. However, the family that had carted our furniture away called us filthy Jews and chased us out of their premises. I felt I could not remain in this village where I was being hurt in the midst of my misery and where pain was piling up on pain.22 Could the pain Gyula Illyes was feeling at the lack of Jewish thankfulness be comparable to Edith Bruck's pain? No one can know for certain because there was no exchange of feelings and ideas for several decades. Non-Jews even today tend to focus on rare examples of compassion and comradely rescue, while Jewish survivors concentrate on the maliciously hostile post-Holocaust environment that made it emotionally forbidding for decades for many even to visit their native locality. 159

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For non-Jews, the unique barbarity of the Holocaust experience is still difficult to distinguish from other, perhaps equally shattering—but certainly less humiliating—wartime experiences.23 For them it is but yet another demonstration of "Jewish sensitivity," alternating with "Jewish arrogance," to hear them claim uniqueness for their saga of sufferings. Jews, on the other hand, may well appear insatiable with regard to apologies.24 They cannot bring themselves to admire a Gentile's tolerance just because he says he detests the thought of SS-men knocking Jewish babies' heads against brick walls. Tolerance and respect for Jews, they think, begin far ahead of such things. With this set of bitterly entrenched, irreconcilable positions taken up immediately after the Holocaust, I could very well stop. But I must round out this discussion with two remaining issues. First, there is the issue of public-opinion surveys on Holocaustrelated topics. Gyula Illyes in his diaries (entry of February 18,1946) refers to a Hungarian government calculation claiming that 40 percent of the nation's population "sharply condemned" the persecution of the Jews. (A poll conducted in Austria in 1986 showed that 39 percent of the 1,215 Austrian adults surveyed had agreed with the statement, "The murdering of the Jews was the greatest disgrace of the twentieth century.")25 In a survey commissioned by the American Jewish Committee and conducted in January 1991, no fewer than 61 percent of the 1,201 Hungarian adults questioned said that even after all these years they still would rather preserve the memory of the Holocaust than put its memory behind them.26 Although most younger adults, notwithstanding the skinhead phenomenon, may well be free of some of the antiquated and antisemitic ideological positions, a very wide gap no doubt exists between a public speech context, which poll results undoubtedly reflect, and the hidden realm of unconscious fears, anxieties, and hostilities. I suggest that precisely the people who answered in the "politically correct" fashion would disagree vehemently with their own earlier public statements if approached by their peers in an ordinary, spontaneous speech situation. I find the crowds' chants of "Filthy Jews" or "Gas chambers," at soccer matches in the mid1980s involving MTK players, much closer to the national subconscious than any measured manifestation of the public mind.27 Yet, the psychodynamics of post-1989 Hungarian politics make many recent Holocaust-minimizing or Holocaust-denying pronouncements if not pardonable, certainly understandable.28 160

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Each time the theme of the Jewish disaster is raised, non-Jews are reminded of their past actions or inaction in a forceful, almost aggressive way.29 The theme itself is an affront to the sense of "normality" they attribute to the Holocaust. No wonder, then, that many of them include Jews—the reminders of that theme—among the forces that have put their national existence into "mortal danger" {vegveszely). The only way one can escape from the lingering suspicion of having given criminal assistance to the Jewish disaster is the approach I have described earlier: it is by retroactively incriminating the victims that one can hope to attain a chance, however slim, for "purification."30 For example, one can claim that "the Jews" of the Commune of 1919, as well as of the people's courts after the Holocaust, the Communist secret police (AVO), and the post-1956 Communist restoration have in cold blood killed many more innocent Hungarians than the Jewish people lost during the Holocaust—a theme recurring throughout the right-wing press since 1989. The same "purification" can be effected by retroactively justifying the murderers. Examples include the pronouncements concerning the justness of not only the Hungarian, but also the Wehrmacht troops' campaign,31 or an even more ambitious statement: "The powers that were victorious in both world wars are rotting away, while the losing states are on the ascendancy worldwide, together with their preserving (megtarto), eternal human ideas."32 (The ascending losers include, incidentally, Iraq as well, a favorite with Hungarian right-wingers boasting of having originated in Mesopotamia.) By relegating Holocaust survivors and/or their descendants into world mafias of various denominations, Hungarian right-wingers not only manage to dramatize the "mortal danger" thesis, they also succeed in proving retroactively that the Holocaust, provided it took place at all, was merely an act of legitimate self-defense—an allegation not frequently heard since Goebbels was silenced.33 Holocaustdeniers point out, furthermore, that even Jewish historians disagree as to the exact number of those killed, which should prove beyond doubt their basic contention that the death toll is a mere figment of Jewish imagination. However, as Edward Alexander points out, if world Jewry is indeed all-powerful, why has it not forced its hireling scholars to be in well-disciplined agreement on theirfindings?34Still in line with the world conspiracy theme, if world Jewry is indeed almighty to the extent that it threatens to strangle even insignificant countries like Hungary, why was it utterly unable to get its hireling, 161

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President Roosevelt, to raise America's immigration quotas to create shelter for their persecuted European brethren? As to the cui prodest argument that it was ultimately Israel that consciously exaggerated the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust in order to squeeze more compensation out of Germany— since the money was based on the cost of resettling survivors—it would have been in Israel's interest to lower rather than exaggerate the number of deaths. One could go on much longer about the absurdities and obvious logical flaws of Holocaust denial. The right-wing press even presents denials of a specially "authentic" belletristic sort.35 However, the crucial question is elsewhere; it is also beside the point how much of this Holocaust denial ever affects official government policies.36 Some of it apparently has (i.e., the justness of Hungary's participation in the war, or shifting the entire blame for the deportations to the Germans). The real question remains: How far has the Holocaust itself made it impossible for Hungarian Jews and non-Jews to return to their earlier, relatively peaceful coexistence? How much has it disrupted, once and for all, the chances for mutual understanding and an exchange of perspectives? The politically weighty populist poet Sandor Csoori, in introducing his distorted theorem concerning Hungarian Jews out to "assimilate" their ethnically "pure" Hungarian countrymen (an elaboration on the contagious infiltration theme), wrote the following: "With the Holocaust, the chance for Jews and Hungarians to weld together mentally and spiritually was gone."37 In my view, this opportunity was not quite gone until a few years later when the entrenched ideological positions were completed on both sides. As recent political developments show, the rift cannot be bridged. The Holocaust did not destroy the whole of Hungary's Jewry. Nor did it involve in a criminal or morally reprehensible way the whole Hungarian nation. However, the ensuing ideological battles that failed to bring contrition on one side, and forgiveness on the other, have destroyed the chance for every single Hungarian, whether Jewish or not, to belong to a nation in the moral, rather than just the ethnic, sense. That, too, is part of the toll—taken not by the Holocaust itself, but by Hungary's failure to come to terms with it.

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NOTES This essay was prepared with the generous support of the "J. and O. Winter" Holocaust Research Fund of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. 1. Istvan Deak, "How Guilty Were the Germans?" New York Review of Books, May 31, 1984. 2. See this author's "Ujra a magyar zsidosag koriil" (Again on Hungarian Jewry), Elet es Irodalom (Life and literature), May 19,1989. A rudimentary survey of Hungarian war criminals during or before trial demonstrates that all top Hungarian Nazis professed to be devoutly religious. See Rezso Szirmai and Pal Gartner, Fasiszta lelkek (Fascist souls) (Budapest: Faust, 1946). Possible theological implications of the Holocaust, including reconstructing those killed asAgniDei, fall outside the scope of this essay. 3. Phenomenological descriptions of everyday life stress the universal tendency to maintain an unbroken chain of commonsensical interpretive procedures informed and structured by shared, unspoken presuppositions. With "abnormal" occurrences, there is a deep cognitive and emotional need to account for them in a way in which they can be integrated into a whole set of already accounted for, thereby less disturbing, precedents. See this author's Kisbetus tortenelem (History in small print) (Budapest: Gondolat, 1990), passim. See also the enormous social-psychological literature on cognitive dissonance. Note that Zygmunt Bauman discusses the "normality" of the Holocaust in terms of its logical rise from the rational-bureaucratic mentality of modern industrial society. See his "Sociology after the Holocaust," British Journal of Sociology 4 (1988). Excerpted in Hungarian in Magyar Tudomdny (Hungarian science) 1 (1990). 4. For an interpretation of the Holocaust as an extreme example of positive discrimination on behalf of the statistically underrepresented majority, see this author's "Numerus clausus, kvotarendszer, pozitiv diszkriminacio" (Numerus clausus, quota system, positive discrimination), Kommentar (Commentary) 1 (1994): 25-26. 5. See the entry on the ghetto visit of Gyor Bishop Vilmos Apor in Ferenc Herczeg's memoirs, printed for the first time in Valosdg (Reality) 6 (1992): 68-69. For the texts of Bishop Endre Hamvas's letters of protest, see Laszlo Karsai, ed., Befogadok (Integrators) (Budapest: Aura, 1993), 170-71. A very rare and early protest, replete with anxiety about the future international prestige of Hungary, was that of Catholic missionary Margit Slachta regarding the pre-Holocaust deportation of Jewish families from Csikszereda. See Tamas Majsai, "Egy epizod az eszak-erdelyi zsidosag masodik vilaghaboru alatti tortenetebol" (An episode from the wartime history of northern Transylvanian Jewry), Medvetdnc (Bear dance) 4, no. 1 (1989): 3-33. For an overview of the attitudes of the Hungarian Christian churches, see chapter 30 of Randolph L. Braham's Politics of Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 6. See Jewish dignitary Bela Berend's letter of April 1, 1944, to Holocaust mastermind Laszlo Endre, ending in: "We have the same goal, why should we not work together?" Access to a copy of the letter was given to me by Randolph L. Braham, New York.

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Miklos Hernddi 7. Laszlo Karsai, ed.,Kirekesztok(Excluders) (Budapest: Aura, 1992), 144-46. 8. Karsai, Befogadok, 179. 9. Even after decades, journalist and dramatist Gyorgy Szaraz was deeply troubled by some ink bottles he had taken as a child from the looted stationery shop of a deported Rozsnyo Jew. See Gyorgy Szaraz, Egy eloitelet nyomdban (Following up on a prejudice) (Budapest: Magveto, 1976), 248. 10. Lorinc Szabo writes, "Together with my family, I have been pounded in a mortar for almost ten months." See Lorinc Szabo, Naplo, levelek, cikkek (Diary, letters, articles) (Budapest: Szepirodalmi, 1974), 646. 11. Lorinc Szabo, reporting from Germany, for example, even got away with extolling Hitler's gifts as an orator with his article in Pesti Naplo (Pest diary), April 29, 1939, 649. 12. See Gyorgy Litvan, "Zsido szerepvallalas a magyar kommunizmusban, antisztalinizmusban es 1956-ban" (Jewish activism in the movements of Hungarian Communism, anti-Stalinism, and 1956), Szombat (Saturday) 8 (1992): 16. 13. "Valasz Cserepfalvi Imrenek Piiski Sandortol" (Sandor Piiski in reply to Imre Cserepfalvi), Magyar Hirlap (Hungarian journal), December 7, 1988. 14. See Janos Varga, "A miskolci nepitelet, 1946" (The popular verdict of Miskolc, 1946), Medvetdnc 2-3 (1986): 293-314. For an agitated overview of the victimization of the Jewish middle classes under Stalinist terror, see Bela Fabian, "Concentration Camps in the Communist World," in The New Red AntiSemitism, ed. Elliot E. Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952). 15. "It was widely published that more than 100,000 people were murdered by the Nazis in Babi Yar, but nowhere was it recorded that they were all Jews until the poet Yevtushenko told the story." Asher Cohen, "Shoah or Holocaust: A Retrospective on the Historiography" (paper read at a Pecs conference on the Hungarian Holocaust, August 1990). 16. See the memoirs of former Jewish inmate Sandor Lendvai, Elet es haldl mezsgyejen (On the ridge between life and death) (Budapest: Gondolat, 1990). 17. In Hungary, anti-Zionism ranked high in the political trials of 1948-53, and diplomatic relations with Israel were quickly severed after the Six-Day War of 1967, but there was practically no anti-Zionist propaganda under the post1956 Kadar regime. This was probably due to the personal influence upon party chief Kadar of Gyorgy Aczel, the only high-standing Jewish Communist. Like Kadar, Aczel had not been a member of the Moscow group during the war, and Aczel, unlike Kadar, had not soiled his name during the Stalinist period of 194853, spending much of it in prison himself. 18. It must be said, in fairness, that the joint treatment of Jewish and nonJewish dead might have been intended to forestall painful recollections of Soviet Jews' discrimination during the German occupation. Paradoxically, in the Soviet Union Jews were obliged to proclaim their Jewish nationality in all their official documents. 19. For an assessment of these, see Braham, Politics of Genocide, chap. 33. 20. See Gyorgy Litvan, "Zsido szerepvallalas," as well as Viktor Karady and Istvan Vari, "Felelem es reszvetel: zsidok 1956-ban" (Fear and participation: Jews in 1956), Vildgossdg(Light) 6 (1989). 21. Gyula Illyes, Naplojegyzetek 1946-60 (Diary notes, 1946-60) (Budapest: Europa, 1948), 30-31.

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Unlearning the Holocaust 22. Edith Bruck, Ki teged igy szeret (He who loveth thee so) (Budapest: Europa, 1964), 58-59. 23. However, in a late 1945 diary entry, Gyula Illyes found it aggravating that Jewish columnist Bela Zsolt should be "stepping upon his murdered mother's burial-mound," while taking him to task in a newspaper article. Naplojegyzetek 1929-1945 (Diary notes) (Budapest: Szepirodalmi, 1986), 379. JozsefDarvas protested against Jewishness being used as a "patent of nobility" by virtue of "more suffering." For an early, non-Jewish example of a full admission of the uniqueness of the Holocaust experience, see Istvan Bibo, "Zsidokerdes Magyarorszagon 1944 utan" (The Jewish question in Hungary after 1944), in Vdlogatotttanulmdnyok (Selected essays) (Budapest: Magveto, 1986), 2:654-55. In an interview, Viktor Karady, another non-Jewish student of the Hungarian Jewish question, found the principal mitigating circumstance for Chief Rabbi Gyorgy Landeszman's hotly debated anti-Hungarian statements in the fact that they came from a Holocaust survivor. See Magyar Hirlap, May 22,1993. 24. Is it insatiability on my part to regret that the speech given by then Minister of the Interior Balazs Horvath on October 14,1990, apologizing for the Holocaust, promising maximum protection to Jews residing in, and maximum hospitality to Jews returning to, Hungary was not delivered by Prime Minister Jozsef Antall, for whom I had originally prepared the speech-outline? For the text of the speech, see Magyar Naplo (Hungarian diary), October 25,1990. 25. Neues Forum, March 13, 1987,19. 26. The figure for Poland was 81 percent, for Bohemia 73 percent, and for Slovakia 66 percent. Renae Cohen and Jennifer L. Golub, Attitudes toward Jews in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1991), 23. 27. See Zsofia Mihancsik, Hajrd, MTK? (Hail MTK?) (Budapest: Hatter, 1988). 28. For its international ringleaders, see Randolph L. Braham, "Revisionism: Historical, Political and Legal Implications," in Comprehending the Holocaust, ed. Asher Cohen, Yoav Gelber, and Charlotte Wardi (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1988), 61-96. Excerpted in Hungarian in Vildgossdg2-3 (1990): 174-85. 29. It can easily be proven that there was even room for action to stop the deportation of provincial Jews. Bibo speaks with full justification about the real possibility for civil servants, gendarmes, and others of effectively boycottingthe anti-Jewish decrees collectively, which "would have decreased individual risktaking substantially." See Bibo, "Zsidokerdes Magyarorszagon," 638. 30. Retroactive incrimination was the order of the day after the killing of four antiwar protestors at Kent State University, as witnessed by the rumors that both female students were found to be pregnant (i.e., sexually licentious), and all four corpses were covered with lice as well as showing symptoms of the last stage of syphilis; hence they would have died in two weeks anyway. See "SelfJustification," in The Social Animal, ed. Elliot Aronson (San Francisco: Freeman and Company, 1976). The details above are on page 138 of the 1978 Hungarian edition. 31. Hunnia, December 25, 1991,24. 32. Ibid., January 25, 1992, 17. 33. Viktor Padanyi, "Nehany szo a zsido katasztrofarol" (A few words on the Jewish catastrophe), Hunnia, April 25, 1991, 2-9. Although this particular issue

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Miklos Hernddi oiHunnia was subsequently banned by the chief prosecutor, Hungary has yet to include Holocaust-belittling and Holocaust-denial into its penal law. 34. Edward Alexander, "The Deniers," Commentary 96 (November 1993): 54-56. 35. See, for example, Albert Wass, "A 'haborus biinos'" (The "war criminal"), Hunnia, July 25, 1991, 1-6. A complicated story written in awkward Hungarian, entirely absolving its Hungarian expatriate hero of the guilt of killing several people toward the end of World War II, incriminating instead a local Jewish storekeeper as well as his son, now also residing in the United States. 36. See Istvan Deak, "A Fatal Compromise? The Debate over Collaboration and Resistance in Hungary," Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen Newsletter (July-September 1993), 10. 37. "Nappali hold" (Moon at daylight), Hitel (Credit) 18 (1990): 6.

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; Charles Fenyvesi

VARIETIES OF THE I HUNGARIAN JEWISH EXPERIENCE

Why is this tribe different from all other tribes? Many a time I have heard this question, referring to Hungarian Jewry. The tone of the inquiry is a varying mixture of amusement, bewilderment, and exasperation. Why indeed should Jews born and raised in Hungary differ from those originating north of the Carpathian basin, in the Czech lands and Poland, or from others to the east, in Romania and the Ukraine, or to the west, in Austria? History gives a few answers but raises additional questions. There is the drum roll of the proud patriotic past, from the miraculous year of 1848 when thousands of Hungarian Jews volunteered for the army fighting a war of independence against imperial Austria. The inevitable defeat of the nationalist forces was eventually followed by the Ausgleich, the grand compromise between Vienna and Budapest that turned the Habsburg realm into the Dual Monarchy. The year of the compromise, 1867, coincided with the official emancipation of Jews in Hungary, followed by a period during which Hungarian Jews wholeheartedly pledged their allegiance to 167

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Franz Josef, the same ruler who once presided over the suppression of the 1848 revolution. Then came an unprecedented explosion of Hungarian Jewish talent in every aspect of life: industry, literature, the arts, politics, journalism, medicine, law, and science. The golden age of Hungarian Jewry was at the turn of the century, and its glow lingered even in the unhappy period after the First World War that saw not only the breakup of the Dual Monarchy, but a short-lived Communist revolution in Budapest, with Jews playing lead roles. The Red Terror instituted in 1919 by the world's second Bolshevik regime was followed by the White Terror, complete with the kind of ultranationalist antisemitism that became the norm in the successor states to the old empires. In Hungary—as elsewhere in Central Europe—many ambitious young Jews joined the Communist Party that declared war not only on the old ruling class but also on the national past and its historic values. At one time in Hungary, in the early 1950s of high Stalinism, Jews who converted to the Communist faith included the head of the party, his deputy, the secret police chief, the minister of defense, and the minister of culture. But then came another miraculous year—1956—and among the leaders who led the revolution against the Communists were many Jewish intellectuals, some of whom had once been faithful party members. Instead of compounding paradoxes or analyzing the ironic swerves of history, I hope that a presentation of some of my favorite Hungarian Jewish personalities will help explain the different character of Hungarian Jewry. Their lives, in part, illustrate the diversity of the Hungarian Jewish experience. When discussing the golden age of Hungarian Jewry during the reign of Franz Josef of blessed memory, we need to add that some of the most successful Hungarian Jewish personalities shifted their intellectual loyalty from Jerusalem to Paris. Their parents attended Orthodox synagogues, living and praying with a piety that had been honed for generations in yeshivas indistinguishable from those of Poland, the epicenter of East-Central European Jewish tradition. But Western Europe, primarily Paris, became the source of inspiration for the generation of Hungarian Jews born in the second part of the nineteenth century and responsible for the finest novels and plays, for new twists in mathematics and physics, for the most memorable music and the most exciting canvases. Their goal was to catch up with the West, rather than to remember Jerusalem. Zionism, which began as a political movement at about the same time, had a very limited appeal in Hungary. The fact that Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest is less illuminating than the 168

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fact that, prior to his launching the idea of the Jewish State, he had first migrated to Vienna and then had himself dispatched to Paris as a journalist. He did not build a political base in Hungary, then home to a Jewish community nearly a million strong. For years after his death, Zionist leaders routinely dismissed Hungarian Jewry and "the rotting branch of the tree of world Jewry." In their patriotic fervor, Hungarian Jewish intellectuals took upon themselves the task of upgrading a deeply insular, primarily rural native culture, giving it the urban sophistication of the civilization they perceived as the world's leader, France. Napoleon once said that everyone has two countries: his own and France. The leading lights of assimilated Hungarian Jewry took that quip most seriously, and the literary magazine they founded, financed, and wrote for was called, simplistically enough, Nyugat ("West"). Theirs was the best magazine, a class above the competition's, called Napkelet ("Orient"), which referred to the mythic homeland of the Hungarian nation, east of the Carpathian Mountains. The two magazines fought a ceaseless cultural war, a Kulturkampf, which is still being waged, along much the same lines and over some of the same issues. One of the many great talents of the period was Moric (Maurice) Weisz, born in Budapest in 1869. In his teens, when he began to write for a newspaper, he adopted the nom de plume Dezso Szomory. To Hungarianize one's name—a programmatic statement of assimilation—was a common enough practice in those days among minorities such as ethnic Germans, Slovaks, and Romanians. In the case of Jews, it meant to change a German name, the prime anathema to nationalists, that had been handed down in the late eighteenth century by an Austrian bureaucrat implementing the decree of Josef II, the one reform Habsburg emperor, the Mikhail Gorbachev of his days, who tried to germanize the many nationalities of his empire. Yet, oddly enough, Szomory never went through the simple legal process of acquiring a proper Hungarian name, encouraged by the Hungarian state and public opinion. People assumed that Szomory was his legal name, and he soon became famous enough not to be questioned on that technicality. To understand the origin of the name Szomory, we need to mutter his original name, in the Hungarian manner: family name first, then the given name. Or, better yet, we should repeat the two names rapidly, as if chanting a Hebrew prayer and paying little attention to vowels. Weiszmoric, vszmoric, v'szomori, szomori. Moreover, "Szomory" had a linguistic connection to "szomoru," the Hungarian word for "sad"—a nice touch for a romantic writer in love 169

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with sorrow and reveling in pain. The name also had an unmistakable aristocratic ring, and the image of the aristocrat was what Szomory, a descendant of poor village Jews, chose for himself. He wore a monocle and sported silk shirts and exquisite tailor-made suits. In a letter sent to his friends and literary associates, he declared that henceforth he ought to be addressed as "Your Grace," a form of address familiar in Britain and adopted by Hungarian society, a class-conscious culture that found it insufficient to use merely "Mr." or "Sir." Szomory's unique move was the equivalent of conferring nobility, which was, however, the singular privilege of the ruler, not of a subject. Yet people did, indeed, begin to call him Your Grace. In displaying the mannerisms of a prince of the realm, Szomory played the role every bit as well as those born into such a status. Szomory had an organ in his grand, antique-filled apartment, which friends described as a museum, and he played J. S. Bach beautifully, with great feeling and dexterity. He also had a lovely voice that, he confided in his friends, came from an ancestor, a cantor in a small synagogue in the remote eastern part of the country. For at least thefirstfiftyyears of his life, Szomory was described as slim and seductively handsome, with a great shock of blond hair parted in the middle and a large, aggressive, unmistakably Semitic nose. He never married, but he maintained—in fact flaunted—his many liaisons, and his lovers included some of the nation's most famous actresses. In his old age, he still cut a dashing figure as a man of ineffable elegance and theatrical presence in the grand romantic tradition. On the streets of Budapest, people turned around and admired him passing by—even if they did not know who he was. As a literary personality, Szomory was the Hungarian equivalent of Marcel Proust, whose "A la recherche des temps perdu" was one of his models, as well as of Edmond Rostand, whose historic dramas such as "Cyrano de Bergerac" he admired and emulated. Szomory ranks as one of Hungary's greatest writers, if not the greatest, says Peter Esterhazy, himself one of the best writers in Hungary today. Esterhazy can recite entire passages from Szomory— and does so at the slightest provocation because he thinks of Szomory's baroque imagination as "the higher reality," for which he himself ought to reach. Szomory would have tears in his eyes if he knew that Esterhazy, a descendant of Hungary's most famous princely family, once the patron of Haydn, thinks of Szomory as his literary hero and has learned to deliver adoring imitations of Szomory's unique style, dubbed by colleagues as szomorysm, complete with an intonation hostile critics called insufferably effete if 170

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not foppish. That much-debated Szomory style consists of an odd clustering of subordinate clauses stacked with adverbs and adjectives that do not always track grammatically. To some ears, the cadence sounds much like the singsong of Hebrew prayers recited in the Ashkenazi tradition, known as davening. In his historic dramas Szomory had the chutzpah to put words in the mouths of Habsburg emperors and empresses that they would not have uttered in real life. They all spoke in a distinct, unmistakable, Szomory stream of consciousness—an irrepressibly fluid recitation of wounded feelings and a torrent of second thoughts, which were interrupted with exclamations such as "oh my sweet God," which Jews may safely translate as "gottenyu," or "riboyno shel oylam" Inauthentic as they were in the strictly factual sense, these words might well have reflected something of the secret inner world of the Habsburgs—thoughts and emotions that they were trained to repress and divert. Even on the pages of a book, that cadence strikes many readers as strangely, incongruously, hauntingly Jewish. Yet, we are told, the audience applauded it precisely because it was so strange, incongruous, and haunting—and so surrealistically out of context as to be effective. Szomory understood his Habsburg characters in a way that historians dismissed as highly personal at best and false at worst. The trick he played in his dramas was that the men and women who had once ruled over his ancestors became his subjects. It was Szomory who was the real hero, which was freely conceded by many in the audience. Szomory's plays were enormously successful in his lifetime, and they are still staged in Budapest. After a hiatus of some fifty years, his novels and short stories are being republished, and he has a small but dedicated group of admirers who, like Esterhazy, are convinced that he is one of the most important personalities in the Hungarian literary pantheon. To the right-wingers in the period between the two world wars, he was the very image, even the caricature, of the un-Hungarian, enemy Jew. They condemned his literary style as alien, corrupt, and corrupting, and his imagination as decadent, destructive, and absurd. The Communists had the same basic judgment, and he was a literary nonperson until the loosening of Communist rule in the 1970s and 1980s. In his youth Szomory spent seventeen years in Paris, eking out a most precarious existence, writing for Hungarian newspapers and soaking up his beloved French culture. He ran away to avoid the draft, and was allowed to return to Hungary only after his mother 171

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managed to get an audience with Franz Josef and secured his supreme imperial pardon. Szomory's enemies—and even some of his admirers—suggest that his literary preoccupation with the Habsburgs began as a form of plea for Franz Josef's pardon—which might well have been the case, because he was determined to return home at all cost, and he suffered immensely from homesickness. His visitors testified that he truly suffered; homesickness was not just another of his many poses. Szomory did write a few fine essays and even a few poems in French, and he might have perhaps become a writer in the language of Proust, but he chose not to. In his own emotional commitments and in his writing, he remained part of the Hungarian culture—or the Hungarian globe, as Hungarians lovingly call it. Szomory was a Hungarian patriot, and he was infuriated by every suggestion that his style was not sufficiently Hungarian. In the 1920s and 1930s, he ignored his critics and did not respond to their charges. He felt it beneath his dignity to raise his voice in the controversy raging over his work. In the 1940s, he felt deeply hurt when new, Nazi-inspired laws restricting Jewish participation in Hungarian cultural life prevented his plays from being staged in Budapest theaters and his books from being published. How could such a thing happen? Like so many of his fellow Jews, Szomory could not and would not understand. But he felt flattered when the Budapest Jewish community, organizing its own theater and publications, turned to him for material. Though inhabiting a lofty ivory tower of his own, he never disassociated himself from his fellow Jews. Nevertheless, he refused all offers of help when Jews were confined to ghettos in the terrible year of 1944, prior to deportation. Shivering in his room, he declined the gift of a truckload of coal offered by a wealthy Jew who had heard of his plight. The coal—a compressed fuel known as coke—was not the right shape, said Szomory. Always the aesthete, he sent back the truck. Szomory also declined the generosity of a fellow writer and admirer, a Christian, who offered his house in the countryside to hide Szomory and save him from deportation. "He is not a good enough writer to rescue me," Szomory said, and his words have survived as one of the legendary Hungarian Jewish quotes from the Holocaust, enshrining the primacy of aesthetic judgment over mere survival. At age seventy-five, reduced to a tiny room in the Budapest ghetto, Szomory died. The cause was either a heart attack or starvation. His last will and testament, rewritten many times over the years, is an exquisite monologue proving for the last time that he 172

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thought of his life as if he had been on stage. His life was a play, and he was a great actor capable of playing many roles, all of them skillfully, and with passion. His last wish—which he called "unalterable"—was for a simple Orthodox funeral, and the coffin had to be an unadorned, plain pine box without nails. He had often said that only devout Jews know how to die. Szomory was a most urbane man, a product of the refined civilizations of Budapest and Paris. His work—his oeuvre—is cited in the argument still fought in Hungary between the so-called urbanists, many of whom are Jewish or influenced by Jews, and the nativist nationalists whose point of reference is the Hungarian village. There is, however, another kind of life I would like to cite as one explanation for why Hungarian Jews often feel that they are Hungarians among Jews—and Jews among Hungarian Christians. I'll start with a story, a meise. Once upon a time, more than two hundred years ago, in the county of Szabolcs, a Jew by the name of Daniel, eighteen years old and at a crossroads of his life, happened to meet a rabbi of the same age. Daniel was driving his father's wagon to the market in the capital, Buda, to sell the fleece of his sheep. Raising sheep for wool had been his idea, not his father's, and he was now uncertain whether he could profit from such a new, risky enterprise. The rabbi, by the name of Yitzhok, had just completed rabbinical school in Poland and was on his way to apply for his first job. He was walking to a small town in Hungary, called Kallo, in the hope of becoming the rabbi of an important community that counted as many as eighty Jewish souls. The two young men traded their doubts and uncertainties during the night they spent under a structure that had a roof but no walls, and hosted people as well as horses and oxen. Daniel was afraid that he was going against Jewish tradition by dreaming of owning land where he wanted to raise sheep as well as crops. Yitzhok feared that he loved music more than he loved interpreting the holy scriptures, and thus might not be meant to be the leader of a congregation. As they talked through much of the night, however, the two young men gave strength to each other. After the sun rose, they prayed together, and then Yitzhok sang a song for Daniel, and Daniel thought he had never heard anything so beautiful. Then the rabbi conferred on Daniel the first blessing of his life, asking the Almighty that Daniel and his descendants find peace and prosperity in working the land. In the years to come, the rabbi became Hungary's most beloved rebbe, Yitzhok Taub, known in Yiddish as the Kallever Rebbe. He 173

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composed many songs, blending traditional Jewish melodies with Hungarian folk tunes. His haunting song about a rooster and messianic times is still sung by Hasidic Jews and Hungarian Christians. He was a rabbi who loved to walk the fields and roam the countryside. He made friends with shepherds. On one occasion, he astonished his guests by letting an old unknown shepherd join them for the Passover seder. He motioned to his guests to say nothing after the mysterious shepherd reached for Elijah's cup and drank its wine. Who was that shepherd? Was he Elijah, who travels in disguise? Or was he just an old Gentile shepherd who saw an open door, heard the singing inside the house, and joined the celebration? Allowing for the possibility that the shepherd was indeed Elijah entailed risk, particularly for a rabbi, because a mistake of this kind only invites disbelief and ridicule. Yet the Kalever Rebbe would not have it otherwise. He had to allow for the possibility, no matter how remote. He had to do what he could for the long-promised miracle to take place. He believed in miracles, and he argued that Jews had the right to expect them. History records that his friend Daniel, selling the first fleece of his sheep and the dream of owning land, was indeed successful. In the first years of the nineteenth century, Daniel was the first Jew in Szabolcs County to buy land—even though the law still did not allow a Jew to own land. It did not matter to him that the fourteen acres he acquired was a sandy plot almost as useless for agriculture as a stretch of desert. He and his descendants found ways to improve the soil, and they bought more land, again worthless pieces, and they improved each parcel. By the end of the century, Daniel's great-grandson, Shmuel Schwarcz—who fought against the Habsburg emperor in the revolution of 1848—developed a new system of improving the soil and eventually acquired thousands of acres. When he died in 1895, Shmuel left a considerable fortune for his seven sons and one daughter, all of whom lived in villages near the ancestral land and all of whom were engaged in farming. Rabbi Taub, who died in 1821, did more than bless Daniel's venture to own and work land. In his teachings, Rabbi Taub went so far as to suggest that Hungary was something of a surrogate Holy Land and that Hungarian Jews should have the courage to buy land, and not just rent it. He counseled his congregation, and his many visitors, that Jews in Hungary should not be afraid to buy land because of the ancient fear that they could not strap land on their backs if they were compelled to leave. 174

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Under his guidance, Daniel and his descendants observed the talmudic rules that pertain to farming in Eretz Yisroel—the Land of Israel. His grandson's grandson, named Akiba in Hebrew, Karoly in Hungarian, and Karl in German, followed the rules all his life. For instance, after all the wheat stalks were cut and bound, he had it announced in the village that his fields were open to those who wished to pick up whatever had fallen on the ground. Nor were the edges or corners of the fields harvested. In the Talmud, the poor were entitled to such gleanings, and he observed that rule. He died in March 1919, the day the Romanian troops then occupying parts of Hungary withdrew from Szabolcs County. A villager came running to tell him the good news, in the hope that it would bring him comfort. "Thank God," he said, managed a smile, then turned to the wall and died. Karl Schwarcz was my maternal grandfather. His favorite nephew, Menyush, married Dezso Szomory's favorite cousin Piroshka. At least once a year Szomory visited her and spent a few days in various Schwarcz households, famous for their hospitality, and within one-hour coach rides, in tiny villages of Szabolcs County. It helped that they were landsmen. Szomory's father was born in Mateszalka, in Szabolcs County, and Szomory was proud of his roots. Though a man of the city, Szomory loved visiting his country cousins, and he understood the Schwarcz love of the land and their flammable heart. He respected their intact Orthodox faith—even if he would not share all of it. According to our family tradition, he accompanied his Schwarcz relatives to the synagogue. Encouraged by the Kallever Rebbe—whose memory has not faded even today— the Schwarczes and Szomory shared a belief in reaching for the impossible. They believed in our right to miracles. Like so many other Hungarian Jews, Szomory and the Schwarcz clan savored the absurd and found something admirable in attempts to ignore the equivalent of the law of gravity. They refrained from excluding the assimilated Jew who acted more Hungarian than his Gentile neighbors whose nomad ancestors crossed the Carpathian Mountains through the route taken earlier by Attila the Hun, a distant cousin of theirs. It's the show that counts, the excellence of the performance. Nimble on their feet and cunning in their schemes, Hungarian Jews have been overachievers not only as Hungarian patriots but also as Olympic swordsmen and world-class mathematicians, as businessmen and poets, as Communist henchmen and movie 175

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moguls. (When not assimilated, however, Hungarian Jews can be so devout that they will drink slivovitz only if no Gentile hand touched the plums at any stage. And drink they will, and even in Jerusalem they dance like the Gentile peasants who lived next door to them three or four generations ago). Like Jews from other communities, Hungarian Jews remember the demons of the Holocaust—but along with the rescuers responsible for the survival of many of us who got out alive. Despite the risk of angering other Jews who faced unrelieved hatred, we keep saying: there were the killers and there were the angels; on one hand, on the other hand. We have known tragedy, and we have known miracles. Our stories are heartrending, bittersweet, endless. Our melodies, as our gossip, have the cadences of Gypsy music. To play the fiddle we do not need a roof. The ground on which we stand is always a steep slope where we swagger and we slip.

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= PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS

It was Sunday, March 19, 1944, when German soldiers entered Hungary—the last country to be invaded by the Nazis. Until this date, Hungarian Jews were quite optimistic. The Nazis were losing the war. At Stalingrad, the Germans had lost 330,000 troops by February 1943, when the few remaining German soldiers surrendered. In North Africa, it became clear that by May 1943 Germany's drive had failed. And in July of that year, the Allies invaded Sicily; Mussolini was overthrown. Even Hungary, one of Nazi Germany's most faithful allies, was flirting with the idea of extricating itself from the war in March of 1944. No one, of course, knew yet of D-Day—to happen two and a half months later on June 6—but everyone was hoping for an imminent landing of the Allies in Western Europe. While most Jews in German-occupied lands already had been massacred, Hungarian Jewry, in the midst of this terrible annihilation, was still relatively intact during the early months of 1944. 177

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Families were living in their homes, Jewish institutions and organizations were functioning, and Jewish schools were operating normally. Yet business and professional activities were severely curtailed and restricted by the Hungarian government's anti-Jewish legislation that began in 1938. Soon after the promulgation of these antiJewish laws, tens of thousands of Jewish men were drafted into forced labor companies attached to the Hungarian Army, which, after June of 1941, were fighting on the Russian front alongside the Germans. The Jews in these forced labor formations were assigned to the most dangerous and menial tasks. They were forced to wear yellow armbands (Jews converted to Christianity wore white ones). They served as a kind of buffer between the Russians and the Hungarians. Their tasks included the clearing of minefields. Jews were also required to dig ditches to prevent the Russian advance. Many were killed or maimed during these operations. Yet the biggest danger came not from the fighting but from the officers and soldiers of the regular Hungarian Army. Their cruelty and sadism raised the eyebrows of even the German Nazis. Poorly clad, exposed to the elements, many Jews froze to death, including those whom Hungarian soldiers doused with water until they turned to ice sculptures. Jews were ordered to climb trees, sit on the branches, and shout "I am a dirty Jew," as Hungarians shot at them. On April 30,1943, the last day of Passover, Hungarian soldiers herded eight hundred Jews into a shed, ignited the structure, and shot anyone who tried to flee the flames. The suffering and fate of these Jewish victims served as entertainment and amusement for a number of the Hungarians. Out of some fifty thousand Jews in the forced labor companies, only between six and seven thousand returned. Most of the deaths occurred on the Russian front, but many other Jews in these units met their deaths elsewhere. In late 1944 and early 1945, just weeks before the end of the war in Hungary, Jewish men were forced to dig antitank ditches on the western border of Hungary, not far from Vienna, in a totally senseless effort to prevent the Red Army's rapid advance. Jews died there of beatings, shootings, typhoid fever, and exhaustion, but principally of starvation. My father was there, but miraculously survived. One of his brothers was not so fortunate. Miklos Radnoti, a great Hungarian poet of Jewish origin, though completely assimilated, was among the victims of the forced labor. Poems that he had composed during these brutal days were found on his body. In a fragment written on May 19,1944, he said: 178

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I lived on this earth in an age when man became so debased that he killed on his own, with lust, not just on orders. I lived on this earth in an age when in informing lay merit, and murderers, backstabbers, and muggers were your heroes. I lived on this earth in an age when a mother was a curse to her child and the woman was happy to miscarry, the living envied the worm-eaten dead their prison. I lived on this earth in an age when the poet too just kept his silence and waited, maybe to find his voice again, for surely, no one else could utter a worthy curse but Isaiah, learned master of terrible words. Still, with all these sufferings, there was hope in the air during the spring of 1944. Hungarian Jews believed that as they had survived until then amidst all the destruction, it was unlikely that anything would happen to them now, so late in the war. The Nazis would not want to expend energy to liquidate hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews at a time when the Germans were so busy fighting for their own survival. The Jews of Hungary lulled themselves into a false sense of security. This is not an accusation; it merely describes their mood—a mood that was not completely irrational. Two examples demonstrate this point, one trivial, the other more significant. In a newspaper that appeared around the date of the Nazi invasion of Hungary, March 19, 1944, an uncle of mine placed an advertisement, looking for a nanny for his daughter. The same issue carried advertisements for Passover products. Clearly, this was an expression of a certain measure of normalcy. A more significant example of the atmosphere prevailing in the preinvasion days in Budapest, and in Hungary in general, can be found in the reaction to a speech delivered on January 16, 1944, by the brother of the famous Hasidic Rebbe, the Belzer. The Belzer Rebbe and his brother were passing though Hungary on their way to Palestine. Their followers were able to arrange for the Rebbe's escape from a Polish ghetto, as well as for their own safe passage. In the presence 179

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of thousands of Orthodox Jews in Budapest the Rebbe was quoted as saying that only goodness and mercy would pursue and reach the Jews of Hungary. The address was published in February of 1944 in a special brochure; it was republished a few weeks later, practically days before the invasion. Clearly, the Rebbe most likely meant a blessing, a wish, and not a prophecy or assurance. However, it is clear from the number and fast distribution of the published brochures that Orthodox Jews in Hungary considered the Rebbe's words, in terms of their relevance for the future of Hungarian Jewry, as encouraging and reassuring. This interpretation was supported by a previous announcement by an earlier Belzer Rebbe. He was quoted as saying that when the Messiah arrived, he would choose members of the Sanhedrin [rabbinical parliament] mainly from among Hungarian Jews. This was a great compliment to Hungarian Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish leaders. With Jewries to the north, south, east, and west of Hungary virtually destroyed by early 1944, the two statements were taken to mean that Hungarian Jewry would not only avoid the horrors that had befallen their brethren, but that it would also become a remnant—and a source of renewal—for Jewry in general. This fatal self-delusion was shattered on March 19, 1944. By April 5, all Jews were required to wear yellow stars. I remember how my mother had sewn the stars on my jacket and coat and how scared I was to go into the street for the first time branded with the yellow badge. I remember the hushed whispering of adults—I was then ten years old—as they prepared to bury our silver candlesticks in the courtyard of our house. I remember the day in May when Hungarian gendarmes, in their distinct feathered caps, rounded us up, put us and our meager belongings on horse-drawn wagons, and drove us to a ghetto in the neighboring town of Bacsalmas. In this ghetto, 2,793 Jews from the towns, villages, and hamlets of the countryside (specifically the Szeged District) were concentrated— to await deportation. From the ghetto days I remember vividly the cries of people who were beaten by the gendarmes, and the screams and bizarre behavior of Jewish former inmates of a mental asylum who were ghettoized together with us. On June 25, 1944, we were taken to the railroad station and placed into cattle cars, which began their journey to the north— destination Auschwitz. At a certain station in northern Hungary a few cars were directed to the west, to a concentration camp called Strasshof, near Vienna. My mother, my brother, and other members of my family happened to be in those cars, and we survived the next ten months, until the end of the war in Austria. All my classmates 180

Personal Recollections

were in the section of the train that continued to Auschwitz—none returned. Long after the Holocaust I found out the reason for our survival. About twenty thousand Hungarian Jews, out of the more than four hundred thousand deported, were "put on ice," to await the outcome of the famous bargaining between Adolf Eichmann and various Jewish leaders and organizations on trading "trucks for blood"—a proposal to let Jews go in exchange for a supply of trucks and other goods badly needed by the Germans. As a goodwill gesture, the Nazis stopped the deportation of twenty thousand Jews headed to Auschwitz, who were to be kept alive in concentrationcamp conditions until the completion of the negotiations. The selection of the twenty thousand was arbitrary. In this connection falls my painful and traumatic postwar experience. One of my uncles and his family lived in the western Hungarian city of Gyor. His wife and two children were murdered in Auschwitz. After the war, we, the surviving Schmelzer children, tried to avoid the uncle because we sensed that whenever he saw us he was reminded of his own children. He told us that when he returned to Gyor after the war he could not pull himself together to go to the main street because all along the street he could see photos of his daughter, taken before the Holocaust, used as an advertisement for a photography store. Many years after the war, I read in Randolph Braham's book, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, that it was the deportation train from Gyor that was supposed to be taken to nearby Austria. As a result of a switching error the train was directed to Auschwitz. To substitute for the missing Jews, our train was stopped on its way to Auschwitz, with the appropriate number of cattle cars detached and routed to Austria—and it was we who survived and not our cousins from Gyor. By the end of June 1944, three months after the invasion, the Germans, with the help of Hungarian gendarmes, deported hundreds of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz from every locality in Greater Hungary, with the exception of Budapest. The Hungarian countryside became judenrein. There used to be a kind of morbid competition between Hungarian and Polish Jews—the latter's fate more protracted, more brutal, more tragic. Polish Jews had suffered for years before 1944, while their Hungarian brothers and sisters were still enjoying relative tranquility. When, in May and June of 1944, the large transports of Hungarian Jews were arriving in Auschwitz, well-dressed and well-fed, with neat bundles and suitcases, the Polish Jews were totally emaciated. Resentment was harbored toward Hungarian Jews, 181

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who seemed to have fared much better than other Jewries under German occupation. The Hungarian Jews, on the other hand, were crushed by the suddenness, swiftness, and completeness of their liquidation. The collapse of their world in such a short time, in less than three months, was so cruel that Hungarian Jews felt that no other Jewry could match the enormity of their tragedy. One is reminded of the elegy, recited on the eve of the Ninth of Av, in which Ohola and Oholiva, symbolic representatives of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and of Judea, debate whose suffering was greater. If one wants to understand the state of mind of Hungarian Jewry on the eve of its destruction, one should take a brief glance at its history. When compared to other Jewries, Hungarian Jewry is young, at least in regard to the beginnings of its creativity and assumption of distinct characteristics. German Jewry was at a creative peak in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; Polish Jewry in the sixteenth century; but Hungarian Jewry only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The expanding importance of Hungarian Jewry coincided with Hungary's first steps toward extricating itself from Austria and feudalism. Jews became leaders in the Hungarian modernization and capitalization process. They were the middle class—in the middle between the decadent Hungarian nobility and the downtrodden serfdom. An unprecedented dynamic burst of economic, social, political, cultural, and religious activity made this period the Golden Age of Hungarian Jewry—lasting until 1944. Jewish participation was immense in commerce, industry, agriculture, music, arts, literature, and the sciences. In the 1920s Hungarian Jews constituted 5 percent of the total population, but 50 percent of all lawyers, 46 percent of physicians, 41 percent of veterinarians, 39 percent of engineers and chemists, 34 percent of journalists and editors, and 40 percent of all industrial-firm owners were Jews, and, most surprising: almost 20 percent of all largelanded estates were in Jewish hands, while 26 percent of those who either owned or rented small estates were Jews. It is quite well known that in the late 1930s and early 1940s a group of Hungarian Jewish scientists, including Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, and Janos von Neumann, played a pioneering role in the development of the American nuclear bomb. All of them were refugee Jews from Budapest who studied at the same high school, attended mainly by extraordinarily talented Jewish students. Probably much less well known is the fact that seventy-six Jews won Olympic medals for Hungary before 1968, compared to the fortyseven who did the same for the United States. Large numbers of 182

Personal Recollections

Hungarian Jews were ennobled and carried the title "baron." One can say that there was no Jewry, including German Jewry, that was more a product of, or a contributor to, its environment than was Hungarian Jewry. A great non-Jewish Hungarian writer once said: "No nationality was more loyal to us than the Jews." Another writer observed: "No one could out-duel, out-ride, out-drink, or outserenade an assimilated Hungarian Jew!" Indeed, Hungarian Jews were great patriots. Rabbi Simon Hevesi, the rabbi of the famous Dohany Temple in Budapest, the grandfather of New York City Comptroller Alan Hevesi, would say in a prayer in the early 1940s: "I believe that Thou hast worked wonders with Hungary, our beloved nation, and shalt work wonders with her forever." Immanuel Loew, the learned rabbi of Szeged, looked upon Hungary as the land of Canaan. Abraham von Freudiger, head of the national Orthodox organization of Hungarian Jews, was photographed in Hungarian folk costume with the family coat of arms, received when his family was ennobled in Hungary. The coat of arms is engraved on the tombstones of family members in a Jerusalem cemetery. I have referred previously to the city of Szeged. Many people confuse it with Sighet. There could be no greater difference than that between these two cities. Szeged is in southern Hungary, on the Hungarian Great Plain. In and around it lived Jews who became very successful and wealthy by introducing modern methods into agriculture and the marketing of agricultural products. Indeed, the rich soil of the "Land of Canaan" provided its inhabitants, including the Jews, with milk and honey. In behavior, manners, and language the Jews of Szeged were greatly assimilated. In religion they followed the liberal Neolog branch of Hungarian Judaism. Immanuel Loew, Szeged's great rabbi, led his congregation in designing and building a synagogue, dedicated in 1903, that in his day was perhaps the most beautiful synagogue in the world. It is like a cathedral and it is the sight that perhaps most characterizes the city of Szeged. The community and Low intended it to be a monument to the prosperity and permanence of Szeged Jewry. What a sense of security and self-confidence those people must have possessed to build such an edifice! In contrast to the rich, assimilated, magyarized Jews of Szeged, the Jews of Sighet, in northeastern Hungary, had many poor among them. Their language was mainly Yiddish; they were Orthodox, with a large Hasidic element. The life of the Jews of Sighet was not much different from that of their brethren in Galician shtetls: full of cheders (religious schools), talmidei chakomim (learned teachers and students), rebbes and rabbis, among them members of the 183

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Teitelbaum rabbinical dynasty, from whom the Rebbe of Satmar descends. In the Golden Age of Hungarian Jewry there were many shades of communities and individuals, representing all colors of the rainbow between these two extremes—Szeged and Sighet. Jews in Budapest and Jews in the smallest of rural settlements, Germanspeaking Jews in the west, Yiddish-speaking in the east, with the great majority in the middle speaking Hungarian and looking down upon and loathing those whose language was Yiddish; rigidly Orthodox and liberally Neolog, totally assimilated and Zionistic— following the movement founded by the Budapest Jew Theodor Herzl—all were part of a multicolored tapestry. The Hungarians and the Germans did not differentiate between them. Immanuel Loew at the age of ninety was placed in a cattle car to be deported. Through highest-level intervention he was removed from the train to be taken to a hospital in Budapest, where he mercifully died shortly thereafter. The 1932 Olympic gold medal winner in fencing, Attila Petschauer (notice the very Hungarian first name!) was beaten to death by Hungarian murderers. And our neighbors from across the street, a veterinarian who converted to Christianity and his family, died in Auschwitz. Out of 825,000 Hungarian Jews of all persuasions, 565,000 were murdered. The rich tapestry of what was once a great community was completely destroyed. How should we remember the Jews of Hungary and what happened to them? Mourning, crying out, reminding, warning, or perhaps most eloquently, silence, are all ways of remembering. But so is searching and studying their brilliant lives and dark deaths. Not to forget means that we must first know. We must know about their lives before the Holocaust as we must know about the Holocaust itself—so that we should be able to incorporate into our own lives the rich traditions of those who were martyred. We shall never be able to make sense of what happened. But perhaps we can make the lessons of their lives part of ours, and of our children's and our children's children's, so that their tragically extinguished lives will be bound up with the life of the people of Israel for all generations to come.

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CONTRIBUTORS

MICHAEL BERENBAUM, formerly director of the Research Institute of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is Hyman Goldman Professor of Theology (Adjunct) at Georgetown University and president of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. He is the author of The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (1993). His most recent work is Witness to the Holocaust (1996). RANDOLPH L. BRAHAM is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of political science, the City College and the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, where he serves as director of the Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. He is the author of numerous works in comparative politics and the Holocaust, including the revised and enlarged edition of The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (1994). ASHER COHEN was professor of contemporary history and an associate of the Strochlitz Institute for Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa. He authored several scholarly works, including The Halutz Resistance in Hungary (1994), La Shoah (1989), and Persecutions et sauvetages: Juifs et Francais sous Voccupation etsous Vichy (1993). CHARLES FENYVESI is a senior editor of U.S. News and World Report and a garden columnist at the Washington Post. His reports and opinion pieces have also been published in the New York Times, the New Republic, and Ha'aretz. He has written several books, including Splendor in Exile (a series of historical essays on European royalty no longer reigning), When the World Was Whole (an account of three centuries of family memories), and Trees (a compendium of botanical essays). 185

Contributors MlKL6s HERNADI is editor-in-chief at Gondolat Publishers in Budapest. He is the author of a dozen books of fiction and sociology, including A fenomenologia a tdrsadalomtudomdnyban (Phenomenology in the social sciences) (1984), Kisbetiis tortenelem: A mindennapi elat elmeletehez (History with small letters: On the theory of everyday life) (1990), and Otto (1993). LASZL6 KARSAI is an assistant professor of history at the Jozsef Attila University in Szeged, Hungary. A recognized expert on contemporary Hungarian history, including the Holocaust, Dr. Karsai is the author and/or editor of numerous works, including A nemzetisegi kerdes Franciaorszdgban (The nationalities question in France) (1983), Cigdnysors Magyarorszdgon, 1919-1945 (Gypsy fate in Hungary, 1919-1945) (1991), Kirekesztok: Antiszemita irdsok, 1881-1992 (Excluders: Antisemitic writings, 1881-1992) (1993), Befogadok: Irdsok az antiszemitizmus ellen, 1882-1993 (Admitters: Writings against antisemitism, 18821993) (1994), and Az Endre-Baky-Jaross per (The Endre-Baky-Jaross trial) (1994). SCOTT MILLER is coordinator of university programs in the Education Department of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as a research historian for the museum's multimedia Learning Center and Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. He is also an adjunct lecturer of Jewish history at the American University in Washington, D.C. ATTILA P 6 K is the academic secretary of the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. A specialist on European and Hungarian political and intellectual history, Dr. P6k is the author of A Huszadik Szdzad Korenek tortenetfelfogdsa (The historical conception of the "twentieth century" circle) (1982), A nemzetkozi politikai elat kronikdja, 1945-1985 (The chronicle of international political life, 1945-1985) (1986), andAmagyarorszdgiradikdlisdemokrat ideologia kialakuldsa (The formation of radical democratic ideology in Hungary) (1990). ROBERT ROZETT is director of the Yad Vashem Library. The author of several studies on the Holocaust in Hungary, focusing on rescue and resistance, he has served as an associate editor of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Most recently, he has written the entry "Bibliography" for the Yale Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, and is currently compiling an analytic bibliography of Jewish memoirs since the Holocaust. MENAHEM SCHMELZER is provost and professor of medieval Hebrew literature and of Jewish bibliography at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He is the author and/or editor of several works, including The Rotschild Mahzo (1983), Index to Union Catalog of Hebrew Manuscripts and Their Location (1973), and Bibliographical Studies (1977). RUDOLF VRBA is an associate professor emeritus of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. An escapee from Auschwitz, Dr. Vrba coauthored the famous "Auschwitz Report." He is the author of / Cannot Forgive (1964) and of many studies in the field of pharmacology. He was also involved in several major film documentaries relating to the Holocaust. 186

INDEX OF PERSONS Agmon, Efra: cooperation with International Red Cross in Budapest and, 142,146; Economic Division of Section A of the International Red Cross (Budapest) headed by, 146 Alexander, Edward: Holocaust denial analyzed by, 161; writings on Holocaust of, 161 Airport, Gordon: scapegoating theories of, 46 Anger, Per: rescue activities in Budapest of, 143 Antonescu, Ion: antisemitism of, 50 Attila the Hun, 175 Baeck, Leo, 79 Baeck, Mrs.: relative of Leo Baeck, 79; Vrba and Wetzler hidden by, 79 Baky, Laszlo: postwar trial of, 38 Batizfalvy, Nandor: neutral diplomats and, 148 Bauer, Yehuda: Holocaust historiography of, 70, 91, 93 Becher, Kurt: Hungarian Jewish leaders and, 92, 93; Jews fleeing to Bratislava permitted by, 94; post-

war protection by Rudolf Kasztner of, 95; postwar residence in Hamburg of, 95 Belzer Rebbe: passing through Hungary en-route to Palestine, 179-80 Beregfy, Karoly: forced labor of Jews in Hungary and, 106 Berend, Bela: food for ghetto and, 111-12, 113; Jewish Council (Zsido Tandcs) and, 111-12,113 Berg, Lars: rescue activities in Budapest of, 143 Bethlen, Count Istvan: conservative regime of, 32 Bibo, Istvan: postwar writings on Holocaust in Hungary of, 157 Biss, Andreas: Hungarian Jews and, 94; Nazi officials and, 93, 94 Bonaparte, Napoleon: French culture and, 169 Born, Friedrich: Edmund Veesenmayer meets with, 145; International Red Cross sends to Budapest, 139; rescue activities in Budapest of, 141-42,148 Braham, Randolph: history writing on the Holocaust of, 181

187

Index of Persons Brand, Hasni: Economic Division of Section A of the International Red Cross (Budapest) headed by, 146 Brand, Joel: Relief and Rescue Committee headed by, 126 Breslauer, Arie: rescue activities in Hungary of, 148 Bruck, Edith: postwar return to native localities in Hungary of, 159 Canecky, Andrej: Vrba and Wetzler hidden by, 77-78 Carlsson, Grotte: rescue activities in Budapest of, 143 Churchill, Winston: comments on killing of Jews in Hungary, 37 Cohen, Asher: Holocaust historiography of, 91,93 Csoori, Sandor: writings on Jews in postwar Hungary of, 162 Danielsson, Carl: relief activities for Jews in Budapest of, 143 Darvas, Jozsef: postwar writings on Holocaust in Hungary of, 155 Domonkos, Miksa: food for Budapest ghetto and, 111, 113; Jewish Council {Zsido Tandcs) and, 111, 113 Eden, Anthony: Miklos Horthy warned against participating in Nazi crimes by, 138 Ehrenpreis, Rabbi Marcus: King Gustav appealed to on behalf of Hungarian Jews by, 139 Eichmann, Adolf: arrival in Budapest of, 56, 68; "trucks for blood" proposed by, 181; deportation of Jews from Hungary and, 83, 85, 109; deportation of Jews from Slovakia and, 85; forced labor of Hungarian Jews in Reich and, 105; Hungarian Jewish leaders negotiate with, 92, 93, 95, 105-6, 181; "Large Ghetto" in Budapest opposed by, 109; Sonderkommando in Hungary of, 3637,38 Ekmark, Yngve: rescue activities in Budapest of, 143 188

Endre, Laszlo: postwar trial of, 38 Esterhazy, Peter: writings on Dezso Szomoryof, 170-71 Fischer, Rolf: historical writing of, 49 Fleischmann, Gisi: Vrba-Wetzler Report and, 57, 89, 90 Foldes, Istvan: Jewish Council {Zsido Tandcs) and, 112 Franz Josef: Dezso Szomory pardoned by, 171; emancipation of Jews in Hungary by, 167 Freudiger, Abraham von: Hungarian patriotism of, 183; orthodox organization of Hungarian Jews headed by, 183 Freudiger, Fiilop von: fleeing to Romania, 93; Hungarian Jews and, 94; Nazi officials bribed by, 91; negotiations with Nazi officials, 91, 93,94 Goebbels, Joseph: defense of Holocaust by, 161; propaganda activities of, 86 Gombos, Gyula: antisemitism of, 31, 32; appointment as Prime Minister of, 32; Germany and, 32 Graf, Otto: SS- Unterscharfuhrer at Auschwitz, 66 Gruenfeld, Bernat: grandmother of Rudolf Vrba, 86 Gustav, King: appeal to Miklos Horthy on behalf of Jews by, 139; Rabbi Marcus Ehrenpreis appeals on behalf of Jews to, 139 Heider, Fritz: scapegoating theories of, 46 Herzl, Theodor: antisemitism in Hungary analyzed by, 37; born in Budapest, 184; migration from Budapest to Vienna of, 168; Zionism in Hungary and, 184 Hevesy, Rabbi Simon: Hungarian patriotism of, 183; rabbi in Budapest, 183; rabbi of Dohany Synagogue, 183 Himmler, Heinrich: deportations

Index of Persons from Hungary halted by, 144; orders end to mass killing of Jews, 109 Hitler, Adolf: 8, 36; German-Hungarian relationship established by, 50; Miklos Horthy meets with at Schloss Klessheim, 38; racial antisemitism of, 104 Horthy, Miklos: 8, 37, 38; Adolf Hitler meets with at Schloss Klessheim, 38; Anthony Eden's warnings to, 138; anti-Jewish policies of, 84, 125-26; confiscation of Jewish property by, 94-95; deportation of Hungarian Jews and, 27, 40, 41, 55, 56, 93, 94,105; Franklin Roosevelt's warnings to, 138; gendarmarie of, 84; German occupation of Hungary and, 55; "Horthy Offer," 140, 141, 145; International Red Cross appeals on behalf of Jews to, 141; King Gustav appeals on behalf of Jews to, 139; pressure to stop deportations on, 40, 57; Switzerland's pressuring of, 40; Szalasi regime and, 127; United States appeals on behalf of Jews to, 141 Hoss, Rudolf: Auschwitz commandant, 92 Huber, Max: appeals to Horthy on behalf of Jews by, 141 Hunsche, Otto: Hungarian Jewish leaders and 92; postwar protection by Rudolf Kasztner of, 95 Ignotus, Paul: writings on Hungarian Jews of, 29 Illyes, Gyula: postwar writings on Holocaust in Hungary of, 156,159, 160 Istoczy, Gyozo: antisemitism of, 47 Jaeger, Maximilian: activities in Budapest of, 144; appeal to Hungarian government on behalf of Jews by, 139-40 Jaross, Andor: postwar trial of, 38 Jaszi, Oscar: antisemitic writings of: 48,49

Johnson, Herschel: United States representative in Stockholm, 139; rescue activities in Hungary of, 148 Josef II: edict on germanization of names issued by, 169 Kadmon, Eliezer: rescue activities in Obuda of, 148 Kallay, Albert: Jewish Council {Zsido Tandcs) and, 112 Kallay, Miklos: antisemitism of, 50; negotiations with Allies of, 36 Kallever Rebbe. See Taub, Rabbi Yitzhok Kapo Yup: Vrba at Auschwitz receives information from, 58, 68 Karny, Miroslav: Vrba-Wetzler Report and, 87-88 Kasztner, Rudolf (Reszo): assassination of, 95; Hermann Krumey protected after war by, 95; Hungarian Jews and, 91, 92, 94; Otto Hunsche protected after war by, 95; Kurt Becher protected after war by, 95; negotiations with Germans of, 93, 94; Relief and Rescue Committee headed by, 126; Vrba-Wetzler Report and, 82 Katzenelson, Itzhak: Honduran citizenship papers provided to, 140 Kemeny, Gabor: Charles Lutz protests to, 146; Foreign Ministry policies of, 104; International Red Cross appeals to, 145 Kertesz, Imre: postwar writings on Holocaust of, 45 Komoly, Otto: Hungarian Zionist Association {Magyar Szovetseg) headed by, 126; Jewish Council {Zsido Tandcs) headed by, 107; Section A of International Red Cross in Budapest and, 142; Swedish Red Cross in Budapest and, 143 Korvarcz, Emil: Arrow Cross troops commanded by, 104 Kovner, Abba: Vilna resistance manifesto of, 18, 122 189

Index of Persons Krasnyanski, Oscar: Jewish Council (Ustredna Zidov) represented by, 81, 82, 84, 85; Vrba and Wetzler meeting with, 81, 82; Vrba-Wetzler Report recorded by, 88-89 Krausz, Moshe: Charles Lutz and, 144; El Salvadoran passports distributed by, 140; Palestine Office, Budapest Section directed by, 126; rescue activities in Hungary of, 148; reports to Switzerland on deportations from Hungary forwarded by, 148 Krumey, Hermann: Hungarian Jewish leaders and, 92; postwar protection by Rudolf Kasztner of, 95 Kuhnemann, Hans: SS-Unterscharfuhrer at Auschwitz, 66 Kun, Bela: Communist regime of, 30 Langlet, Waldmar: rescue activities in Budapest of, 143 Lewin, Kurt: scapegoating theories of, 46 Locsey, Istvan: ghetto in Budapest guarded by, 113; Police Department in Budapest and, 113 Loew, Rabbi Immanuel: death in Budapest of, 184; rabbi of Szeged, 183 Lubetkin, Zivia: hiding in Warsaw ghetto, 122 Lutz, Charles: Palestine Office and, 126; protests to Hungarian government by, 146; rescue activities in Budapest of, 143; rescue activities in Obuda of, 147 Macartney, C. A.: Holocaust historiography of, 104 Manoliu, Dr. E. Florian; dispatched to Hungary, 140; Romanian commercial attache in Bern, 140 Mantello, George: El Salvador representative in Switzerland, 140; protective passports for Jews in Hungary issued by, 141; Vrba-Wetzler Report publicized in Switzerland by, 83 190

Martilotti, Msgr. Mario: Vatican nunciature member in Switzerland, 85 Mezei, Erno: Theodor Herzl and, 37 Mordowicz, Czeslaw: escape from Auschwitz of, 83-84, 89; escape to Slovakia from Auschwitz of, 83-84, 89; Rudolf Vrba and Rabbi Weissmandel meeting with in Slovakia, 83, 85; Rudolf Vrba and Vatican diplomat meeting with in Slovakia, 83, 85 Mussolini, Benito: overthrow of, 177 Neumann, Janos von: nuclear bomb developed by, 182 Neumann, Oscar: Jewish Council {Ustredna Zidov) headed by, 79, 80, 82 Nilsson, Asta: protective passports for Jews in Hungary provided by, 143 Parragi, Gyorgy: postwar writings on Holocaust in Hungary of, 155 Pavelic, Ante: antisemitism of, 50; fascist regime in Croatia of, 71 Petain, Henri Philippe; nationalism of, 71; Vichy regime headed by, 71 Petschauer, Attila: death of, 184; gold medal in fencing won by, 184 Pollack, Dr.: Vrba and Wetzler meet with, 77-78 Piiski, Sandor: postwar writings on Holocaust in Hungary of, 156 Radnoti, Miklos: forced labor of, 178 Rajk, Endre: food for Budapest ghetto and, 111 Rakoci, Ferenc: exile years of, 48 Revesz, Peretz: Swedish Red Cross in Budapest and, 143 Ribbentrop, Joachim von: Edmund Veesenmayer and, 106; Hungarian Jewish policies of, 109 Ringelblum, Emmanuel: Jewish resistance and, 120 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano: immigration policies of, 162; Miklos Horthy and, 138; War Refugee Board established by, 138 Rosenberg, Alfred: racial antisemitism of, 104

Index of Persons Rosin, Arnost: escape from Auschwitz of, 83-84, 89; escape to Slovakia from Auschwitz of, 83-84, 89 Rosta, Janos: Jewish Council {Zsido Tandcs) and, 111-12 Rotta, Angelo: appeals to Hungarian government on behalf of Jews by, 139, 145; Ferenc Szalasi meets with, 106; rescue of Jews by, 107, 146 Satmar Rebbe: descendant of Teitelbaum rabbinical family, 184 Schirmer, Robert: activities in Budapest of, 141; Berlin Office of International Red Cross and, 141 Schreiber, Rabbi Akiva: Chief Rabbi of Bratislava, 92 Schwarz, Karl: farming on Hungarian land by, 175 Seton-Watson, Robert: historical writings on Hungarian Jews of, 7 Solymossy, Janos: "Large Ghetto" and, 110, 111, 112; Police Department in Budapest headed by, 110, 111,112,113 Steiner, Erwin: Jewish Council {Ustrednd Zidov) represented by, 79; Vrba and Wetzler meeting with, 79 Steiner, Ibolya: wife of Erwin Steiner, 79 Stockier, Lajos: food for ghetto and, 111, 112,113; Jewish Council {Zsido Tandcs) and, 111, 112, 113, 143; Swedish Red Cross in Budapest and, 143 Szabo, Lorinc: postwar writings on Holocaust in Hungary of, 156 Szalasi, Ferenc: Angelo Rotta meeting with, 106; antisemitism of, 103-4, 106; anti-Jewish policies of, 105, 106,107, 108, 109; Arrow Cross lead by, 103; coup of, 141,144; death marches halted by, 109-10; Germany and, 106,107,109, 110; ghetto in Budapest established by, 109; Jewish community in Budapest and, 105; neutral diplomats and, 107,112,144; postwar reha-

bilitation of, 114; pro-Nazi regime of, 57 Szego, Miklos: Jewish Council {Zsido Tandacs) and, 111, 112 Szekfu, Gyula: 48, 49 Szenes, Hannah: arrival in Hungary of, 127 Szilard, Edward: nuclear bomb developed by, 182 Szomory, Dezso: death of, 172; Franz Josef pardoning of, 171; Hungarian culture and, 169-71; in Budapest ghetto, 172, 176; in Paris, 171; Jewish relatives of, 175; plays banned by Nazis, 171 Sztojay, Dome: deportation of Hungarian Jews and, 104 Taub, Rabbi Yitzhok: Hungarian culture and, 174-75; Kallever Rebbe known as, 173; Music of, 174 Teitelbaum: rabbinical family in Sighet, 184; Satmar Rebbe as descendant of, 184 Teleki, Pal: proposal of separate labor service for Jews of, 49 Teller, Edward: nuclear bomb developed by, 182 Tenenbaum, Mordecai: HeHalutz headed by, 118 Tiso, Jozef: antisemitism of, 50, 71; Catholic regime in Slovakia of, 86; deportations of Jews and, 77 Tudicom, Dr.: activities in Budapest of, 141 Tyn: Lagerdlteste at Auschwitz, 69 Uher, Captain Milan: Slovak National Uprising lead by, 87 Ujvary, Sandor (Alexander): rescue activities in Hungary of, 148 Ungar, Rabbi S.D.: yeshiva head in Slovakia, 86 Ungluck, Charles: escape attempt from Auschwitz of, 71, 72 Vajna, Gabor: forced labor of Jews in Hungary and, 107; ghetto in Budapest decreed by, 111 191

Index of Persons Veesenmayer, Edmund: forced labor of Hungarian Jews and, 107, 109; Friedrich Born meeting with, 145; Joachim von Ribbentrop and, 106; Nazi policies in Hungary of, 36, 38, 105; postwar testimony of, 38; Szalasi coup and, 106; Vrba, Rudolf: Czeslaw Mordowicz meeting with, 83, 85; Dr. Pollack meeting with, 77-78; Erwin Steiner meeting with, 79; escape from Auschwitz of, 56, 71-74, 79, 82, 89, 90; escape to Bratislava from Auschwitz of, 57, 87; escape to Cadca from Auschwitz of, 77-78; escape to Slovakia from Auschwitz of, 56, 70, 72, 73, 89; escape to Zilina from Auschwitz of, 79, 81, 82; in Majdanek, 81; Kapo Yup provides information to, 56, 68; Oscar Krasnyanski meeting with, 81, 82, 83, 89; preparations for mass murder of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz witnessed by, 56, 57-58, 68, 73, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92; Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel meeting with, 83, 84, 85, 87; Vatican representative meeting with, 83, 84, 85 Vrba-Wetzler Report, 56, 57, 58, 66, 74, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87-90, 91, 92, 93 Wallenberg, Raoul: disappearance of Jewish staff of, 146; protective passports provided by, 130,141; rescue activities of, 139,143,146, 148; Sweden sends to Budapest, 128, 139 Weiner, Zolly: Economic Division of Section A of the International Red Cross (Budapest) headed by, 146 Weiss, Joseph; Rudolf Vrba meeting with, 82

192

Weissmandel, Rabbi Michael Dov: Dieter Wisliceny and, 85; Europa Plan and, 95; Hungarian Jews and, 91, 92; in Bratislava, 85, 86, 94; Nazi officials negotiating with, 95; Rudolf Vrba and Czeslaw Mordowicz meeting with, 83, 85; protection from deportation of, 86; retirement in New York City of, 95; Rudolf Vrba meeting with, 83, 84, 85, 87; Vrba-Wetzler Report and, 57, 89, 90; yeshiva head in Bratislava, 86 Wetzler, Alfred: Dr. Pollack meeting with, 77-78; Erwin Steiner meeting with, 79; escape from Auschwitz of, 56, 71-74, 79, 82, 89, 90; escape to Bratislava from Auschwitz of, 57, 87; escape to Cadca from Auschwitz of, 77-78; escape to Slovakia from Auschwitz of, 56, 70, 72, 73, 89; escape to Zilina from Auschwitz of, 79, 81, 82; Oscar Krasnyanski meeting with, 81, 82, 88, 89; settling in Canada of, 87; settling in Israel after war of, 87; studying in Prague after war of, 76 Weyermann, Hans: rescue activities in Hungary of, 148 Wiesel, Elie: 45; testimony on Hungary by, 94 Winkelmann, Otto: postwar testimony of, 38 Wisliceny, Dieter: Fiiliip von Freudiger and, 93; hanging of after war, 95; postwar trial of, 95; Rabbi Weissmandel and, 85; deportation of Jews from Slovakia and, 85; Hungarian Jewish leaders and, 93,92 Zuckerman, Yitzhak: hiding in Warsaw ghetto, 122

INDEX OF PLACES Auschwitz: Allied refusal to bomb, 39, 40, 158; antisocial prisoners at, 69; Aufrdumungskommando at, 58, 59, 63, 66, 69, 73, 74; Canada complex at, 58, 59, 63, 66, 69, 73, 74, 77, 94; communist prisoners at, 64; crematoria at, 56, 58, 64, 67, 68, 74, 94; criminal prisoners at, 68; Czech family camp at, 80; deportations from Benzburg to, 88; deportations from Bialystok to, 69; deportations from Bohemia to, 69; deportations from Belgium to, 69; deportations from France to, 69; deportations from Greece to, 70, 86, 88; deportations from Grodno to, 70; deportations from Gyor to, 181; deportations from Hungary to, 55, 69, 70, 81, 84, 89-90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 180-81; deportations from Hungary re-routed to Austria, 181; deportations from Netherlands to, 69, 88; deportations from Poland to, 69; deportations from Slovakia to, 69, 72, 74, 78, 86, 80, 88; deportations from Sosnowiec to, 88; deportations from Szeged to, 18081; deportations from Theresien-

stadt to, 69, 80, 88; deportations from Ukraine to, 69; Deutsche Ausrustungswerke at, 65; escape of Mordowicz and Rosin from, 83, 84, 89; escape of Vrba and Wetzler from, 56, 71-74, 79, 82, 89, 90; gas chambers at, 56, 59, 63, 64, 67, 70, 90, 94; Hiroshima bombing compared to, 94; informers among prisoners at, 73; Oswiecim as site of, 73, 74; Polish Major's Report on, 85; Polish prisoners at, 68; preparations for mass murder of Hungarian Jews at, 56, 57-58, 68, 73, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92; quarantine camp at, 58, 66-67, 69, 80; railroad line of Krakow through, 59; railroad line of Vienna through, 59; railway at, 80; Rudolf Hoss as commandant at, 92; satellite slave labor camps of, 74; secrecy of mass murder campaign at, 56, 71, 93, 94; "selection" at, 70; shipments to Germany of Jewish possessions from, 65; slave labor at, 64; SSmen at, 63-64, 65-66, 67-68, 70, 73; testimony by Vrba and Wetzler on, 81; transport arrival ramp at, 193

Index of Places Auschwitz (continued) 59, 63; Women's camp at, 58, 6667,72 Auspitz: deportation from Hungary to Auschwitz diverted to, 93 Austria: Anschluss (incorporation) by Germany of, 33; Bedzin Jews escape to, 121; death marches from Hungary to, 108, 147, 148; deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz re-routed to, 181; Hungarian extrication from, 182; Imperial Empire of, 167; Jewish communities in, 167; Jews with protective passports returned to Budapest from, 148; postwar survey on Holocaust conducted in, 160 Bacsalmas: ghetto in, 180 Bacska: massacre of Jews in, 34-35 Balkans, 35 Bedzin: deportations from, 121; Jewish revolt in, 121; Jewish youth movements in, 120; refugees fleeing to Austria from, 121; refugees fleeing to Germany from, 121; refugees fleeing to Slovakia from, 121, 125; refugees fleeing through Carpathian Mountains from, 121 Belgium: deportations from, 69 Belorussia: partisans in, 120 Belzec: deportations from Slovakia to, 78, 86, 87; Slovak Jewish leadership's knowledge of mass killings at, 85 Benzburg: deportations from, 88 Berlin: Robert Schirmer in, 141 Bern: Dr. E. Florian Manoliu in, 140; HeHalutz in, 89; Vrba-Wetzler Report arriving in, 83 Bialystok: deportations from, 69; HeHalutz in, 118 Bielsko-Biala: escape from Auschwitz of Vrba and Wetzler through, 76 Bohemia: deportations from, 69 Bratislava: Dietrich Wisliceny hung in after war, 95; escape to Switzerland of Jews from, 94; escape to

194

Vienna of Jews from, 94; Jewish Council (UstredndZidov) in, 82, 90, 91; Kurt Becher permits Jews to flee to, 94; liberation of 93-94; Rudolf Vrba meeting with Rabbi Weissmandel in, 85; Rabbi Akiba Schreiber as Chief Rabbi of, 92; Rabbi Weissmandel as yeshiva head in, 86; Rabbi Weissmandel in, 80, 85, 86; Rabbi Weissmandel fleeing from, 94; Vrba and Wetzler escape from Auschwitz to, 57, 87; yeshiva in, 85; 86 Budapest: Adolf Eichmann's arrival in, 68; Adolf Eichmann negotiates with Jewish leaders in, 105-6; Albert Kallay in, 112; Arrow Cross violence against Jews in, 106,112— 13, 131-32, 144, 149, 156; BelaBerand in, 111, 112; Belzer Rebbe in, 180; children's homes in, 132, 142; Christian rescue of Jews in, 39, 40; Communist revolution in, 168; death marches of forced laborers from, 109, 144; "dejewification squads" in, 40; deportations halted from, 109; Dezso Szomory in, 169-71, 172, 176; Dohany Synagogue in, 183; Edmund Veesenmayer in, 105; Efra Agmon works with International Red Cross in, 146; Endre Rajkin, 111; Friedrich Born in, 139, 141-42; ghetto in, 109, 110-11,112,113, 114, 131, 144, 146, 148; Glass House in, 105, 126, 128, 130, 131,144; HeHalutz rescue activities in, 40,130,13132; Hansi Brand works with International Red Cross in, 146; international ghetto in, 112, 144, 146, 149; International Red Cross in, 111, 112, 113, 130, 131 141-42, 146; Istvan Foldes in, 112; Istvan Locsey in, 113; Jaeger Maximilian in, 144; Janos Rosta in, 111-12; Janos Solymossy in, 110, 111, 112, 113; Jewish Council {Zsido Tandcs) in, 82, 90, 91, 105, 107, 110, 111,

Index of Places 112,113,142; Jewish forced laborers marching through, 107-8,110; Jewish youth movements in, 124; Jews with protective passports returned to from Austria, 148; Joint Distribution Committee relief activities in, 143; Lajos Stockier in, 111, 112; liberation of 21,114,130; Miklos Szego in, 111, 112; Miksa Domonkos in, 111; Moshe Krausz in, 83; neutral nations legations in, 107, 109, 111, 132, 144, 146, 148, 149; Otto Komoly in, 107; Palestine Office in, 83; Papal nuncio Angelo Rotta in, 139; plans for Jewish revolt in, 128; Police Department in, 105, 110, 111, 112,113; Portuguese officials in, 148; protected houses in, 106, 108-9; Rabbi Simon Hevesy in, 183; protective passes issued in 108,130, 145,148; Raoul Wallenberg rescue activities in, 139, 143,146; Rabbi Immanuel Loew dies in, 184; Red Army approaching, 130; Red Army blockade of, 113; rescue activities in, 39, 40, 139, 143, 145-46,149; Robert Schirmer in, 141; Spanish officials in, 145-46; SS officials in, 95; surviving Jews in, 127, 137; Swedish Red Cross in, 143; Swedish relief activities in, 143; Swedish rescue efforts in, 139; Swiss legation in, 105, 143, 145; Szalasi regime and Jewish community of, 105; Theodor Herzl born in, 168, 184; Tiyul (illegal crossing of border) into Romania, 124,127; Vatican representatives in, 106; War Refugee Board relief activities in, 143; Zolly Weiner works with International Red Cross in, 146 Bulgaria; remaining Jews in, 105, 158; rescue of Jews in, 38; treatment of Jews during postwar period in, 158 Cadca: escape from Auschwitz of Vrba and Wetzler to, 77-78; Jewish

representatives contacted by Vrba and Wetzler in, 78 Canada: Rudolf Vrba settles in, 87 Carpathian Basin: Jewish communities in, 167 Carpathian Mountains: Bedzin Jews escape through, 121; Jewish communities in, 169; nomads crossing over, 175 Constanza: immigration to Palestine from, 140 Croatia: antisemitism in, 50; fascist regime of Ante Pavelic in, 71; Ustasa government of, 70 Czechoslovakia: Hungarian revisionist policies and, 33; Jewish communities in, 167; postwar period, 82, 87, 95; postwar trials in, 95 Czestochowa: Charles Ungluck born in, 71 Danube River: Arrow Cross shooting of Jews in, 106,112, 131 Dniester River: Red Army crosses, 36 Dresden: Allied bombing of, 39 Dunaboydany: pogroms in, 155 Dunatul: forced labor of Jews in, 110 El Salvador: George Mantello in Switzerland representing, 140; protective passports for Jews issued by, 141 Finland: rescue of Jews in, 38 France: Allied landing in, 124; Allied military victories in, 138; defeated army as source of weapons for resistors, 128; deportations from, 69, 122; Henri Philippe Petain's government in, 71; internment of Jews in, 123; Hungarian Jewish intellectuals and, 169; Jewish Communist resistance in, 132-33; Jewish rescue activities in, 132-33; Jewish youth movements in, 122; remaining Jews in, 105; rescue activities in, 123; rescue vs. resistance dilemma in, 124; Vichy regime in, 71, Vittel transit camp, 140

195

Index of Places Germany: Anschluss (incorporation) of Austria by, 33; anti-Jewish legislation, 50, 51; anti-Jewish policies in Hungary of, 50, 52, 126, 145; Arrow Cross coup assisted by, 103; Bedzin Jews escape to, 121; Bolshevism opposed by, 33; compensation money paid to Israel by, 162; death marches of Hungarian Jews to, 109-10,130; defeat at Stalingrad of, 177, 179; defeat in North Africa of, 177; elections of 1932 in, 32; Final Solution, 138; Final Solution in Hungary and, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 162; Ferenc Szalasi and, 106; forced labor of Hungarian Jews in, 105,107-8, 109, 110; Gyula Gombos and, 32; Nuremberg Laws in, 33; occupation of Hungary by, 36-37, 40, 50, 55, 56, 68-69, 104, 125, 126, 137, 138, 177; occupation of Poland by, 121; occupation of Vilna by, 118; postwar period in, 94; Reichsbank in, 65; relations with prewar Hungary of, 32, 33; scapegoating Jews in, 31; shipments of Jewish possessions from Auschwitz to, 65; Soviet Union invaded by, 34; Third Reich, 29,36 Great Britain: immigration of Jews from Hungary to Palestine and, 140; mandate over Palestine of, 140; represented by Swiss legation in Hungary, 128, 141; Rudolf Vrba teaches in after war, 87 Greece: deportations from, 70, 86, 88 Grodno: deportations from, 69 Gyor: deportations from, 181 Habsburg Empire: Ausgleich (compromise agreement) with Hungary of, 167; collapse of, 30; Hungarian states in, 47 Hamburg: Kurt Becher in, 95 Hegyeshalom: death marches from Obuda to, 148; death marches of Hungarian Jewish forced laborers

196

to, 108; deported Jews returned to Hungary from, 148 High Tatras: escape of Mordowicz and Rosin from Auschwitz through, 83; escape of Vrba and Wetzler from Auschwitz through, 81 Hiroshima: Auschwitz compared to bombing of, 94 Honduras: citizenship papers to Yitzhak Katzenelson provided by, 140; citizenship papers to Jews from Warsaw provided by, 140 Ireland: pressured to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Hungary, 141 Israel: compensation money paid by Germany to, 162; Rudolf Kasztner assassinated in, 95; Rudolf Vrba teaches in after war, 87 Istanbul: HeHalutz offices in, 126, 128; Palestine {Yishuv) representatives in 124, 126, 128, 133 Italy: Allied military victories in, 138; extrication from Axis Alliance of, 35, 36; fascism of, 31 Jerusalem: cemetery of von Freudiger family in, 183; religious Hungarian Jews in, 176 Kallo: Jewish community in, 173, 174; Jews buying land in, 174 Kamenets Podolsk: massacre of Jews at, 50 Kety: escape from Auschwitz of Vrba and Wetzler through, 74 Krakow: Jewish youth movements in, 120; railroad line through Auschwitz of, 59 Kunmaduras: pogroms in, 155 Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas: escape of Vrba and Wetzler from Auschwitz through, 82 Lubina: Captain Milan Uher from, 87

Index of Places Majdanek: deportations from Slovakia to, 58, 78, 86, 87; Rudolf Vrba in, 81 Mateszalka: Dezso Szomory's father born in, 175 Memel, 65 Milowka: escape of Vrba and Wetzler from Auschwitz through, 74, 76 Miskolc: pogroms in, 155,157 Mlava: escape of Mordowicz and Rosin from Auschwitz through, 83 Nedeca: escape of Mordowicz and Rosin from Auschwitz through, 83 Netherlands: deportations from, 69, 88 New York City: Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel in, 95 Nitra: deportations from, 86; yeshiva in, 86 Normandy: Allied landing in, 83,127 North Africa: Allied defeat of German forces in, 177 Novaky, 77 Novi Sad: massacre of lews at, 50 Obuda: Charles Lutz in, 147; death marches to Austria from, 147-48; Eliezer Kadmon in, 148; protective passports issued in, 147, 148 Palestine {Yishuv): aliyah (immigration) to as form of rescue, 128, 133, 140-41; aliyah certificates permitting immigration to, 14041; Belzer Rebbe en-route to, 179; British mandate over, 140; "Horthy Offer" permitting immigration to, 140; immigration from Constanza to, 140; immigration from Romania to, 140; Jewish emigration from Hungary to, 127; Jewish paratroopers from, 127; Palestine Office in Budapest, 83; representatives in Istanbul of, 124,128, 133; Swedish government and immigration of Hungarian Jews to, 139 Paris: Dezso Szomory in, 171; Hun-

garian Jewish intellectuals and, 168, 171; Theodor Herzl as a journalist in, 169 Pisarowiche: escape from Auschwitz of Vrba and Wetzler through, 76 Poland: border with Soviet Union of, 158; defeated army as source of weapons for resistors, 128; deportations from 69; deportations to, 86; escapes into forests in, 121; escapes from ghettos in, 179; German occupation of, 121; ghettoization in, 110,128; HeHalutz members in, 126; Jewish communities in, 167,168; Jewish refugees in Hungary from, 34; Jewish rescue activities in, 121,122; Jewish youth movement activists flee to Slovakia from, 88,124; Jewish youth movements in, 119,122; partisans in, 39,120; rescue verses resistance dilemma in, 132; Tiyul, clandestine border crossing of Jews from, 124; Zionist youth movement leaders fleeing to Vilna from, 118; Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB; Jewish Fighting Organization) in, 120 Polesie: partisans in, 120 Porebka: escape from Auschwitz of Vrba and Wetzler through, 76 Portugal: Chorin and Weiss families from Hungary escape to, 104; neutral government in Hungary of, 39, 149; protective passports issued by, 108, 148; United States pressures to rescue Jews, 139 Prague: Rudolf Vrba studies in after war; 87 Rajcza: escape from Auschwitz of Vrba and Wetzler through, 74 Romania: antisemitism in, 50; Fulup von Freudiger fleeing to, 93; Hungarian revisionist policies and, 33; immigration to Palestine from, 140; International Red Cross rescue efforts in, 138; Jewish commu-

197

Index of Places Romania {continued) nities in, 167; remaining Jews in, 105; rescue of Jews in, 38; Tiyul, clandestine border crossing of Hungarian Jews into, 127, 129 Saybusch: escape from Auschwitz of Vrba and Wetzler through, 74 Schloss Klessheim: Adolf Hitler meets with Miklos Horthy in, 38 Serbia: Hungarian Jews died in, 34, 41 Sicily: Allied invasion of, 177 Signet: Hasidic Jews in, 183; Jewish culture in, 183; Jewish community of, 183,184; Jewish learning in, 183,184; Jewish religious life in, 183,184; Teitelbaum rabbinical dynasty in, 184; Yiddish spoken in, 183 Silesia: escape of Vrba and Wetzler from Auschwitz through, 74; ethnic Germans in, 74 Skalite: escape of Vrba and Wetzler from Auschwitz through, 82 Slovakia: antisemitism in 50, 71; Bedzin Jews fleeing to, 121; Captain Milan Uher leads Slovak National Uprising in, 83, 87; Catholic regime in, 86; deportations from, 69, 72, 74, 77-78, 79, 81, 85, 86, 124; deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz through, 92; escape of Mordowicz and Rosin from Auschwitz to, 83-84, 89; escape of Vrba and Wetzler from Auschwitz to, 56, 70, 72, 73, 89; HeHalutzin, 126; Hlinka Guard in, 70; International Red Cross rescue activities in, 138; Jewish Council {tJstredndZidov) in, 57, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85 86, 87, 89, 90, 92; Jewish leadership's knowledge of mass killings in death camps, 85, 94; Jewish organizations in, 79, 82; Jewish refugees in Hungary from, 34; Jewish youth movement members fleeing to Hungary from, 125,128; Jewish youth movements in Slovak National Uprising, 129; partisans in, 198

39; Polish border of, 120; Polish Jewish youth movement activists fleeing to, 88, 124; Polish Jewish youth movement activists fleeing to Hungary from, 124; pro-Nazi policies of, 83; Rabbi S.D. Ungar heads yeshiva in, 86; Rudolf Vrba and Czeslaw Mordowicz meeting with Rabbi Weissmandel in, 83, 85; Rudolf Vrba and Czeslaw Mordowicz meeting with Vatican representative in, 83, 85; Slovak National Uprising in, 83, 87, 128; Tiso dictatorship in, 83, 86; Vrba-Wetzler Report written in, 56; yeshiva in, 86; Zionist leadership in, 94 Snina: escape of Mordowicz and Rosin from Auschwitz through, 83 Sobibor: deportations from Slovakia to, 78, 86, 87; Slovak Jewish leadership's knowledge of mass killings at, 85 Sol: escape from Auschwitz of Vrba and Wetzler through, 74 Sola River: escape from Auschwitz of Vrba and Wetzler through region of; 74, 76 Sosnowiec: deportations from, 88; Jewish refugees fleeing from Slovakia to Hungary from, 125; Jewish youth movements in, 120 Soviet Union: border with Poland of, 158; Bratislava liberated by, 93-94; Budapest liberated by, 21, 114; deportations of Jews to prison camps in, 158; German invasion of, 34; Hungarian army in, 34,177; Hungarian conservatives fear of, 35; Hungarian opposition to, 36; Jews fleeing Nazis to, 158; local collaboration with Einsatzgruppen in, 158; postwar Hungarian communists taking refuge in, 157; postwar silence on Holocaust in, 157; Red Army approaching Budapest, 39, 130, 137; Red Army approaching Hungary, 40, 149, 178; Red Army crossing Dniester, 36; refusal to bomb Auschwitz of, 39,158; treat -

Index of Places ment of Jews during postwar period in, 158 Spain: legation in Hungary of, 39,149; protective passports issued by, 108, 141, 145-46; 148; United States pressures to rescue Jews, 139 Stalingrad: battle of, 35,177,179 Stockholm: Herschel Johnson in, 139, 148 Strasshof: deportations from Hungary to, 180 Svaty Jur: Vatican representatives meeting with Rudolf Vrba in, 84 Sweden: Herschel Johnson in, 139; immigration {aliyah) of Hungarian Jews to Palestine and government of, 139; legation in Hungary of, 39, 149; protective passports issued by, 108,141,143,146; Rabbi Marcus Ehrenpreis appeals to King Gustavin, 139; Raoul Wallenberg sent to Budapest by, 128; relief activities in Budapest of, 143; rescue efforts in Budapest by, 139; United States pressures to rescue Jews, 139, 141, 143, 146 Switzerland: aliyah (immigration to Palestine) certificates issued by, 141; deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz diverted to, 93; diplomatic protection for Jews in Hungary provided by, 141; El Salvador government representatives in, 140; escape from Bratislava of Jews to, 94; George Mantello in, 140; Great Britain in Hungary represented by, 141; HeHalutzin, 57; legation in Budapest of, 105,106, 127,130, 131,149; Maximilian Jaeger in Hungary representing, 13940; Moshe Krausz forwarding reports on Hungarian deportations to, 148; pressure on Horthy by, 40; "protected houses" in Budapest of, 106; protective passports issued by, 108, 45, 146; United States pressures to rescue Jews, 139; Vatican nunciature in, 85;

Vrba-Wetzler Report received in, 83, 89, 90, 91 Szabolcs: Jewish community in, 173, 174; Jews buying land in, 174 Szeged: deportations from, 180-81; ghettoization in, 180; Hungarian culture in, 183; Neolog Judaism in, 183; Rabbi Immanuel Loew in, 183; synagogue in, 183

Tangier: Spanish protective documents for, 141 Tel Aviv: Rudolf Kasztner assassinated in, 95 Theresienstadt: deportations from, 69, 80, 88 Topolcany: Rudolf Vrba born in, 72 Toulouse: manifesto on Armee Juive in, 122 Transylvania: Hungarian border with, 127; Hungarian Jews illegally crossing border into Romania, 127 Treblinka: deportations from Poland to, 120; deportations from Slovakia to, 78, 86, 87; Slovak Jewish leadership's knowledge of mass killings at, 85 Trnava: deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz passing through, 72; Vrba and Wetzler contact Jewish representatives in, 82 Turkey: 36; legation in Hungary of, 39; United States pressures to rescue Jews, 139 Ujlak: brick factory in, 106 Ujvidek. See Novi Sad Ukraine: deportations from, 69; Hungarian Jews died in, 34; Jewish communities in, 167 United States: appeal to Horthy on behalf of Jews by, 140-41; Herschel Johnson in Stockholm representing, 139; immigration policies during Holocaust of, 162; Ireland pressured to accept Jewish refugees by 141; neutral countries pressured to rescue Jews by, 139; Vatican nunciature in, 138; War Refugee Board, 138 199

Index of Places Vatican: legation in Budapest of, 106; legation in Hungary of, 39, 106, 149; nunciature in Switzerland of, 85; nunciature in Washington, D.C. of, 138; protective passports issued by, 108; Rudolf Vrba and Czeslaw Mordowicz meeting with representatives of, 83, 84, 85; War Refugee Board appeals for rescue operations to, 138 Vienna: 66; escape from Bratislava of Jews to, 94; Habsburg Empire capital in, 167; railroad line through Auschwitz of, 59; Theodor Herzl as a journalist in, 169 Vilna: Abba Kovner in, 118,122; German occupation of, 118; HeHalutz in, 118; manifesto on Jewish resistance in, 118,122; Jewish resistance in, 118,120, 122; Zionist youth movement leaders fleeing from Poland to, 118 Vittel: deportations to, 140 Volhynia: partisans in, 120 Voronezh: destruction of Hungarian army at, 35 Warsaw: ghetto uprising in, 120,122, 130; HeHalutz members escaping

200

from, 126; hiding after ghetto uprising in, 122; Honduras provides citizenship papers to Jews from, 140; Jewish youth movements in, 120,124; Koordynacja (coordinating agency of Jewish youth movements) in, 124; Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB; Jewish Fighting Organization) in, 120 Washington, D.C: Vatican nunciature in, 138 Yishuv. See Palestine Yugoslavia: defeated army as source of weapons for resistors in, 128; Hungarian revisionist policies and, 33 Zaglembie District: Jewish youth movements in, 120,121 Zilina: deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz passing through, 81; Vrba and Wetzler contacting Jewish representatives in, 79, 81,82 Ziptoszentmiklos. See Liptovsky Svdty Mikulds Zywiec. See Saybusch