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Immediately
after the German army occupied Hungary on March 19, the Germans took
rapid organizational action to annihilate Hungarian Jewry, the
largest Jewish community in Europe that had not yet been swept away
for genocide. In short order, from the first deportation on May 15
until the transports were halted on July 7, 437,000 persons were
deported and a large majority of them met their deaths in the gas
chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, to which they were sent directly
upon arrival at the camp. The others were put to work in Auschwitz,
its sub-camps, and various other Nazi camps. Out of the more than
800,000 Jews in Greater Hungary (as defined by the Hungarian racial
definition), nearly 570,000 were murdered.
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