The detailed study of Holocaust in Hungary

1. {
Holocaust in Hungary
Didkovska Valeriia
11/27/2012
TSPMI

2.  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

3.  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

4.  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

5. 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 1944 Kallay (reluctant collaborator)
After German Intervention
March till August 1944 Sztojay (pro-German)
Augaust till Octomber 1944 Lakatos (reluctant collaborator)
Octomber 1944 till wars end Szalasi (pro-German)
The Hungarian Prime
Ministers

6. 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

7.  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

8. Jewish Quotas in Hungary
Field
Jewish Share under the
Law of 1938
Jewish 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 property
Compulsory 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)

9. Complete displace of
Jewry in business activity
May 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

10. 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

11.  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

12.  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

13. 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

14. “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)

15. 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

16. 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)

17. Concentration zones
Zone’s
Number
Area
Number
of
Ghettos
Start of
Systematic
Concentration
End of
Deportat
ion
Number
Deporte
d
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 IV
East of Danude
without Budapest
4 June 17 June 30 41,499
Zone V
West of Danude
without Budapest
7 June 29 July 9 55,741
Concentration
Camps
3 June July 8,000

18. Deportations from the
Hungarian Ghettos

19. 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

20.  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 Question
Lakatos (reluctant collaborator Aug.- Oct. 1944)
Szalasi (pro-German, Oct. 1944 to end)

21.  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

22.  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?Mod
uleId=10005458 (Web. 24 Nov. 2012)
References:

23. Thank you for attention.