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Holocaust in Hungary

Didkovska Valeriia11/27/2012

TSPMI

Hungary in the WWII Hungarian Jews before WWII Measures taken by the Hungarian

government against Jews Concentration zones and ghettos Aftermath of Hungarian Holocaust

Table of Contents

No deportations and ghettos until middle of 1944

Elimination during the final year of war

Accelerated actions (most of the killings were held during two months)

Acknowledgment of the Jews of what was yet to come

Carrying out deportations in full view of the whole world

First attempt of international society to halt extermination operations

Dependence of the fate of Jews on the personality of Hungarian Prime Minister (pro-German/reluctant collaborator)

Active position of the Catholic Church to prevent discrimination of the Jews

Specific features of the Hungarian Holocaust

Hungarians were opportunists who joined German camp in order to gain territory

Hungarian Prime Ministers were either pro-German or reluctant collaborators

Divergence of German and Hungarian interests laid in the different objectives during the war: Germans fought for all or nothing; Hungary - to annex territory

Since Germany’s defeat was obvious, the Hungarian government was much under Allied pressure (especially in the “Jewish question”)

Satellite relations between Germany and

Hungary

Before German Intervention

Till March 1939 Imrede (pro-German)

March 1939 till April 1941 Teleki (reluctant collaborator)

April 1941 till March 1942 Bardossy (pro-German)March 1942 till March

1944Kallay (reluctant

collaborator)

After German Intervention

March till August 1944 Sztojay (pro-German)Augaust till Octomber

1944Lakatos (reluctant

collaborator)Octomber 1944 till wars

end Szalasi (pro-German)

The Hungarian Prime Ministers

Demography: 725,000 belonged to Jewish religion in 1941 787,000 “Jews by definition” according to the

law of 1941 185,000 Jews living in Budapest

Economical position: Backbone of all professional and commercial

activity Indispensable part of normal economic life Lack of businessmen among Hungarian

“If the Jews were to replace in a year or two with incompetent elements the country would become bankrupt”, - Miklós Horthy, Hungarian Regent

Jews of Hungary

Three laws with definition of notion “Jew” (1938, 1939, 1941)

Earliest definitions were less radical. Of all the definitions in Europe, the Hungarian one was probably the widest in scope (even harsher than German’s one)

Quota regulation of the Jewish economical activity

Jewish participation didn’t exceed certain maximum percentage or totally prohibited. Reduction of Jewish business and employees of at least 50%

First measures of the Hungarian

government

Jewish Quotas in Hungary

FieldJewish Share under

the Law of 1938Jewish Share under

the Law of 1939

Trading licenses 6%

Licenses for sale of state monopoly products

Complete withdrawal within 5 years

Public contracts 20% (after 1943 automatic reduction to 6%)

Agricultural propertyCompulsory Aryanization authorized without time

limit

Professions 20%

6% (total exclusion of civil servants, journalists,

managers of entertainment

establishments)

University students 6%

Private employees in industrial, commercial

and banking firms

20% of labor force in individual firms

12% of labor force in individual firms

(immediate goal)

Complete displace of Jewry in business

activityMay 1942 January 1943

Cattle trading Textile trade

Potato export Fats and hogs trade

Wholesale sugar Eggs and milk trade

Fruit export Trade in church articles

Wholesale gasoline Restaurants

Wholesale fodder Cement trade

Wholesale coal Onion and wine trade

Wholesale leather Export of hay and straw

Wholesale milk  

Start of the “Final Solution” (seemed that Hungary will become the first “Jew-free” country). Organization of forced labor-auxiliary service.

Two main incidents of the period: Deportation of the “East Jews” from the

Carpatho-Ukraine Killing of the Yugoslavian Jews at Novi

Sad

Bardossy, Pro-German regime April 1941 to March 1942

Jews were liable to be drafted into the army for “auxiliary service”

According to the Jewish resource the number of men serving in the labor forces was 130,000 (brought death of 30,000 or 40,000)

Jews were employed in army engineering projects

Sometimes Jews participated in hostilities within Hungarian battalions

Forced labor-auxiliary service

Refused Germans to deportate Jews No labor camps and ghettos existed Extension of labor service and

expropriation process

“The Hungarian government was not taking earnest actions against the Jews and the labor service was only the show’, - Berger, the chief of the SS main office (December 11, 1942)

Kallay, reluctant collaborator regime

March 1942 to March 1944

Three standard German wishes (spring 1943):

Exclusion of the Hungarian Jews from economic life

Marking Jews with a star

Evacuation to the East

Kollay’s reply:

The extent of measured are already taken

Impossible to introduce the star without provoking protests

Lack of any legal and technical basis for evacuation

“The Kallay government in an effort to integrate itself with the ‘Anglo-Americans’ would give to the Jews the best possible treatment”, - Berger, the chief of the SS main office (May, 1943)

German Pressure

“In Hungary live more Jews than in all of Western

Europe… It is self-explanatory that we must attempt to

solve this problem; hence the necessity for temporary

measures and an appropriate regulation. The final

solution, however, can be none other than the

complete resettlement of Jewry. But I cannot bring

myself to keep this problem on the agenda so long as

the basic prerequisite of the solution, namely the

answer to the question where the Jews are to be

resettled is not given. Hungary will never deviate from

those precepts of humanity which, in the course of its

history, it has always maintained in racial and religious

question”.

The Great Speech of the Kallay

(May 21, 1943)

Was responsible to its German policy masters for every step it took. In country were present: German legation (diplomats) Sondereinsatz commando headed by

Eichmann German Police

Sztojay, Pro-German regime

March to August 1944

Main steps: Establishment of Jewish Council (Judenrat)

Mobilization of the Hungarian government for destructive actions (adoption of new discriminative laws)

Collection of personal assets

Increasing of labor battalions

Closing Jewish population stores, bank accounts

Land expropriation

Imposing of Jewish star

Massive arrests

Ghettoization with immediate deportation

No ghettos in Budapest (to prevent bombing of non-Jewish areas)

Concentration zones

Zone’s Number Area

Number of

Ghettos

Start of Systematic

Concentration

End of Deportation

Number

Deported

Zone I Carpathians 17 April 16 June 7

289,357

Zone II Transylvania 7 May 4 June 7

Zone III North of Budapest

5 June 7 June 17 50,805

Zone IVEast of Danude

without Budapest

4 June 17 June 30 41,499

Zone VWest of Danude

without Budapest

7 June 29 July 9 55,741

Concentration Camps

3 June July 8,000

Deportations from the Hungarian Ghettos

Regular functioning since January 1943.

Activity:

Smuggling people out of the country

Organizing refuges

Helping newcomers to stay in Hungary

Improving living conditions of the Jews in camps, ghettos and during transportation

Aid and Rescue Committee

Initial plan – deportate 20,000 people in July was stopped by regent Horthy

Approaching of Soviet Army and hard pressure on Hungarian government outside

In Oct 1944 25,000 people were sent to Austria (death march), 50,000 to German to built fortification, 120,000 were held in Budapest’s Ghetto

Raids and mass executions in two Budapest’s ghettos In the two months between November 1944 and February 1945, 10,000-15,000 Jews were shot on the banks of the Danube

Budapest QuestionLakatos (reluctant collaborator Aug.- Oct. 1944)

Szalasi (pro-German, Oct. 1944 to end)

619,000 killed or deported

5,000 succeeded in escaping

139,000 remained (20,000 outside Budapest)

116,500 returned from their places of deportations or from labor services

TOTAL NUMBER OF SURVIVORS: 255,000 people (762,000 Jews were living in Hungary in 1944)

Hungarian Holocaust’s figures

Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985. Vol. 2, pp. 796-860.

Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) pp. 501-520.

Hungary after the German occupation , United States Holocaust Memorial Museum URL:www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005458 (Web. 24 Nov. 2012)

References:

Thank you for attention.